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McKiernan Interviews
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2009-07-09
Interviewer
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Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
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Elijah Anderson
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Elijah Anderson is a sociologist, cultural theorist, scholar, and professor of Sociology at Yale University. He specializes in Urban Ethnography. Dr. Anderson received his Ph.D. in Sociology at Northwestern University."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dr. Elijah Anderson is a sociologist, cultural theorist, scholar, and the Sterling Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Yale University. He specializes in Urban Ethnography. He is the author of several books including his most recent, titled <em>Black in White Space: The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life</em> (2022). His other books include <em>Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City</em> (1999), winner of the Komarovsky Award from the Eastern Sociological Society; <em>Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community</em> (1990), winner of the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award for the best-published book in the area of Urban Sociology; and the classic sociological work, <em>A Place on the Corner </em>(1978). Dr. Anderson received numerous awards and recognition, including the consultant for the White House, United States Congress, and the National Academy of Science. In 2002, he was awarded the Stockholm Prize in Criminology. Previous to his tenure at Yale University, he was a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Anderson received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University.<br /></span>
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Binghamton University Libraries
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<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Anti-War Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Vietnam Memorial; John F. Kennedy; Deviance; Howard S. Becker; Outsiders—Defining Deviance"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":2,"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Anti-War Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Vietnam Memorial; John F. Kennedy; Deviance; Howard S. Becker; Outsiders—Defining Deviance</span>
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52:43
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Sociologists; College teachers; Yale University; Anderson, Elijah--Interviews
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Elijah Anderson
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 9 July 2009
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:02):
... as soon as I get everything ready here. I got to turn the sound up. All right. Can you hear me?
EA (00:06):
Yeah, I can hear you.
SM (00:07):
All right. Very good. Pretty nice weather we are having.
EA (00:13):
Oh, it is.
SM (00:15):
Considering all that rain we had.
EA (00:16):
It is not as hot and humid as it usually is this time of year.
SM (00:22):
First question I would like to ask then ... Again, thank you very much for doing this. When do you think the (19)60s began, in your opinion? And what do you think was the watershed moment for most of the young people from the boomer generation?
EA (00:41):
Well, I guess it depends on how you think of the (19)60s because, for a lot of people, the (19)60s are thought of as this period of a certain quest for freedom, individualism, that kind of thing, but especially a time of free-thinking people. I know, stereotypically, it is all about relaxing standards and that kind of thing and the so-called deviant people becoming more legitimate, that kind of thing. I mean that is what people like to think. There is a book by a mentor of mine, Howard Becker, and the book is entitled Outsiders. Basically, in this book, what he does is speak about the issue of rules. He tries to account for deviant behavior. Up to this point, scholars have talked about deviance as, again, in an objective kind of way, that mission being that deviant behavior is behavior that goes against society's standards, values, and rules. Basically, given that perspective, it is pretty easy to tell what deviance is and what it is not. What Becker does in his book is raise a lot of questions about that. He comes up with the so-called subjective view of defiance and, basically, this view of deviance says that deviance is whatever powerful people say it is at the time, and to really know deviance, you have to know something about how people react to certain acts and how they then go about labeling people that they consider to be in violation of standards, values, and rules that you care about or that certain people labeling them deviant, that care about them, you see? What he introduced in this book, which was published in 1963, but the source articles were written over a period of time through the late (19)50s, what he points to here is a profound relativity with respect to rulemaking and rule breaking, and I think that, to some extent, his idea was, to some extent, perhaps a manifestation of the period which you are speaking, where people more and more were trying to embrace this kind of relativism and trying to see the other side, trying to put themselves in the place of people who would be thought of as deviant or people who would be castigated, put down, subjected to the whims of the powerful and that kind of thing. What he did was basically he was able to come to appreciate the so-called victims of society and even to underscore the fact that they were not so bad after all, if you know what I mean? But I think this is what you saw more and more in the 1960s with more and more young people raising questions about the status quo, raising questions about the established institutions, especially when those institutions were fomenting and fostering a war that they did not believe in, to go and die in. So, you have every reason, people, to raise up and to rise up, I should say, and raise questions about the system, and this is what people ultimately did in the (19)60s. I do not know if that is what you meant, but-
SM (04:55):
Yeah. Well, that is beautiful. As a follow-up-
EA (04:57):
But, to me, that is what the (19)60s kind of represented.
SM (05:01):
Based on what you just said and what Becker said in his book, The Outsiders, how do you respond? You have heard this over probably the last 15, 20 years from columnists, like George Will, and even politicians, like Newt Gingrich, that they place all the ills of American society and they point right back to that era of the boomer era, whether it be the (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s, for the breakdown of the family, the breakdown of American society, the breakdown of morals, the lack of respect for authority. When Ronald Reagan became president, they praised him for trying to beat these kinds of things. But still, they will write about the boomers in that era in very negative terms. How do you respond to that?
EA (05:54):
Well, I think basically what you had in the 1950s in America was a strong sense that we lived in a rather homogeneous society, and this society was basically quite Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Of course, this included people who were that way and wanted to be that way, it seemed, even to the point of divesting themselves of their own ethnic particularities instead of joining into this great American way, so to speak. So there was a great and strong pull or a push for people to assimilate, that is to divest themselves of their particularities, whether they be whatever ethnic group, and to really blend in to be a part of this great American way and to contribute, to some extent, to this homogeneity, if not in phenotype, then in values and orientation, so to speak. I think this is what you did have in the Eisenhower era when Blacks and other minority groups basically were pretty much likely to try hard to assimilate, to divest themselves of their own ethnic particularities, and join in the great American way, so to speak. A lot of people, of course, were fine with that. But the (19)60s, I wrote about a kind of license for people to experiment and to move off the plantation, so to speak, and that is what people did. I think that your more conservative commentators react to this with a great alarm, thinking that, well, if people really do go off the plantation, this has implications for the integrity of the plantation itself and the values that uphold that plantation. I think, to some extent, they would be in line with trying to support that ideology that supports the plantation, not to break it down, if you know what I mean, the structures that hold it together, so to speak.
SM (08:26):
Again, a lot of people that I have interviewed have had a hard time trying to classify boomers over a 20-year period because the early boomers, those born between (19)46 and (19)56, seem to have been more involved than those in the latter part. So, I have had some individuals having a hard time with labels on generations. This is a two-part question. If you were to look at this generation, is there one specific event that you think had the greatest impact on them in those early years, those years between (19)46 and, say, (19)70 or (19)75? And secondly, what is the most important event that affected your life?
EA (09:09):
Well, I think I could answer maybe both questions with one answer. I mean I think that probably John F. Kennedy's assassination was extremely important for so many of the so-called boomers, but not only his assassination but, not long after that, the assassination of King and Robert Kennedy. These political assassinations, I think, were really very important to the coming of age of boomers and perhaps the rise in a certain ability to question the system and even to embrace a kind of cynicism with respect to the system, I think. This is one of the things that came about for so many of the boomers, a kind of awakening, if you will, of losing one's innocence, so to speak. I think that may be the biggest thing that these assassinations contributed. I think those were probably the major development, so to speak. I am not just talking about one assassination. I am talking about a series of major political assassinations, you see. Even if they were not intended to be political, they became politicized, I am sure, if you will.
SM (10:45):
If you were to put a couple of adjectives to describe some strengths and weaknesses, you have already mentioned quite a few of them in your opening comments, but just some adjectives to describe the strengths and weaknesses of the boomer generation.
EA (10:57):
Well, I think probably the biggest thing is just the number of people who were just born after people returned from the war. I think just the number is pretty impressive and certainly provocative to the status quo. Just mere numbers, I think, is very important. I think, with that, faults, so to speak, in the system, you have all kinds of implications for various issues that people are dealing with, whether it is what to do about resettlement after the Great War, or whether it has to do with family life following that, how people live, the suburbanization of people, growing up in the suburbs. At the same time, growing up in the suburbs did not mean that people were leaving behind their racial predilections, so to speak. I think that the racism that we saw that basically undergirded the beginning of this country, not to mention the great Civil War that we had and then Emancipation and then the riots in the cities and then the incorporation process that gave us the Black middle class as we know it and even the split between the Black underclass and the Black middle class that followed thereafter. And yet, many of these people who were the middle class did not enjoy any ability to really live in suburban communities in the same way that their white counterparts lived in these communities before them. In fact, the whole history of this race relations period had to do with the fact that Black people were moving into communities and white people were constantly moving out, and it was almost like a dog chasing its tail, so to speak, getting nowhere fast in terms of really being able to deliberate the problems of race and racism and social place in this country. So I think that, for me anyway, that these are some of the big issues that were at least if not confronted by the boomer, at least these were issues that they were having to deal with, though many abdicated their responsibilities to deal with some of these problems. But at the same time, you have to say that some of these individuals stepped up to the plate, so to speak, and began to fight for social change in a very positive sense. But we have this problem that is really best described as unfinished business, so to speak.
SM (14:25):
Right. You bring up a very important point because, again, I got a two-part question here. What has been the overall impact of boomers on their kids with respect to carrying on some of their ideals and their activism into the next couple generations? And secondly, along that point, what is your thought regarding these boomers? Have they copped out, most of them? There's obviously many who have stayed with the fight for many particular issues. But did most of them fall by the wayside for the almighty dollar as they grew older
EA (15:07):
I would not try to judge that. I mean but certainly, there is a lot of work to be done in this country by all people, boomers included. Whether or not the torch has really been passed from one generation to the next in terms of the boomers' responsibility or whatever, I mean that is hard to say because so many of these issues and problems are not so much a function of one generation passing off to another as much as it is an issue of structural forces that beset each succeeding generation, so to speak. That generation then has to deal with what it has to deal with in order to be, and I think this is the biggest issue. When you have a period of quietism, so to speak, you probably get people who are not so energized. When you have a period where people are confronted by exigencies of life that they have no pattern for, no experience in dealing with, then people may well become quite creative, so to speak. So it really is not so much a matter of one generation passing on its values as much as it is one generation having to deal with the exigencies of life that are quite different from the generation and those conditions that preceded them, so to speak. So that is what I would say about this. I would not think that a generation could simply pass its values intact onto another generation without considering the issues and the factors of life that the succeeding generation would have to deal with. I think you would have to consider all that in order to get a good read on that particular generation's ability to cope, so to speak.
SM (17:13):
How do you respond to some of the young people of that era, when they were young said that we were the most unique generation in American history because we were going to be the change agents for the betterment of society in every way? Of course, young people have idealism. We are going to end racism, sexism, homophobia, and war. But just-
EA (17:33):
I do not think any generation has any premium on that, so to speak. I mean it is basically up to people to deal with what that we have to deal with. Every generation is unique, really. Every generation is different. I mean no generation has a monopoly on any of these answers, so to speak, to the problems that face mankind up to people to deal with, each and every generation. I would not go so far to say that it is the most unique generation. I think that it is more complicated than that. At the same time, it is really important to appreciate the fact that the generation that faces great challenges certainly have a real set of issues from which they might grow and develop in that a unique generation. But I do not think there is anything intrinsic about a group of people that make them the greatest, so to speak, other than the challenges that they face and the way they responded to those challenges, if you know what I mean? In a sense, out of their hands, if you follow me? It is a matter of how people respond to what is before them. I think that the World War II generation, oftentimes called the greatest generation, but I think you have to look at the challenges that face that generation and subsequent challenges that face the boomers after that, if you follow me, and how they were able or not able to respond to those challenges. That is what I would say.
SM (19:30):
How important were the college students of that era, I am talking about the (19)60s, early (19)70s again, in ending the war in Vietnam, their influence on policy in America, the pressures they put on universities? But in society, how important, on a scale of, say, one to 10, with 10 being the highest number, where would you place the impact that that protest had in ending the war?
EA (19:55):
Well, I think that that protest was extremely important for-
SM (19:58):
Dr. Anderson, could you speak up just a little bit, too?
EA (20:00):
Yeah. I think that that protest movement was very, very important, but it was not just antiwar. It was also the demonstrations and protests against the racial status quo and the ways in which the movement for civil rights somehow culminated in riots and, ultimately, an incorporation process that brought about greater civil rights not only for Black people, but for all Americans. Also, it paved the way for the emergence of a Black middle class that was no longer so dependent on living in these inner-city communities, but one that was increasingly corporate, so to speak. But I think that we had that situation, which is certainly one that has to be, I think, appreciated. But you also had this group of people who stepped up to the plate and basically demonstrated quite effectively against the war. But they had been previously edified by all the struggles that they witnessed, from civil rights to the cultural nationalism, to ultimately the incorporation process. They were all part of that. Basically, you have them becoming very, very concerned not only about the expression of American power in the world, but they were concerned about their own brothers and sisters being taken away from them and having to fight far off in Asian war. Another piece that is important to this is the fact that we had the draft then, you see, and we did not have the professional army the way we do today. So, the fact that there was a draft basically meant that certain constituencies would be, to some extent, informed and then perhaps active in a way that would call an end to the fighting that they would expect to shore the burden of, so to speak, fighting and dying, you see. That is one thing that we do not have today. We do not have the same political action related to ones that are trying to save one's own blood, so to speak, whether it be your son, your daughter, or yourself or your husband or whoever it was, you see. We do not have the same thing going on today. We have a more professional army. I think that if we had an equal opportunity to be in Iraq or to be in Afghanistan, I think that you would probably see more protests against the war today, you see. But the truth was, back in the Vietnam era, we had more of an equal opportunity for participating in that war. And even then, it was one-sided in terms of the rich and well-to-do versus the poor because the rich and well-to-do oftentimes could get college deferment or whatever or their parents kept them out of harm's way through their political and economic influence, so to speak. So, the burden of it oftentimes fell on the ordinary American more so than the others. But I think that when you have this equal opportunity situation, you are bound to have more protests and you are bound to have political leaders who basically take their decision making a bit more seriously, at least with the consideration of the viewpoint of people who would make up their constituencies, so to speak.
SM (24:14):
We saw in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s, kind of a split in the antiwar movement where African American students split away from the antiwar movement and, of course, toward what was going on in civil rights here in the United States, and we saw it a lot at Kent State. But I wanted you to comment on Dr. King's [inaudible] Vietnam speech. I think it should be required to be read in every college classroom because he was so far ahead of the game. Just your thoughts on the courage of him and that speech and maybe a couple comments on the reaction in America, not only in the civil rights community, but in America as a whole.
EA (24:56):
Well, I think basically a lot of people thought he was out of line with that speech, in part because they figured that he was really a civil rights leader, not somebody who should put his nose into foreign policy issues. And yet, he said very, very powerfully that, to some extent, the civil rights movement, it was related to this more general struggle for antiwar and peace and that kind of thing. That really disturbed a lot of people, including Lyndon Johnson himself, who had, up to that point, been listening more and more to King, but then, all of a sudden, recoiled. So there was that issue. But I think that, for King, it was a moral issue, that he thought he had a moral obligation to speak out, and he did.
SM (26:00):
One of the things that I am trying to get at in this process is the healing process. If you will bear with me, I had taken a group of students to see Edmund Muskie about a year before he died. He had just gotten out of the hospital, and he was not feeling very well. It was one of our Leadership on the Road programs, and there were 14 students. We taped it. We were talking about the (19)68 convention and a lot about the divisions in America as a whole. I asked him, "Have we healed at all since 1968 and the Vietnam War?" And he paused for a minute, almost had tears in his eyes. The students were looking at each other, "Why is not he responding?" And then he finally said, "I have been in the hospital for the last couple weeks, and I have been watching Ken Burns' The Civil War." He said, "We have not healed since the Civil War." So, he went on to talking about that particular aspect as opposed to the response since the Vietnam War. My commentary and question is this, with all the divisions that were happening in that (19)60s and (19)70s, the divisions in America, pro-war, antiwar, divisions between Black and white, between those who supported authority and those who were against, between those who supported the troops and those that were against, and all the other divisions, had we healed at all as a ... Do you think the boomer generation has healed at all since that time?
EA (27:40):
Well, I think that is a very provocative question, to be sure, and it may be a bit opposed as not so much a matter of healing as it is a matter of just simply ignoring the situation and dealing with other fish to fry, so to speak. Today, as we live our lives, we are dealing with economic change of a high order, probably the most important change since the Industrial Revolution, so to speak. As we make this change technologically, moving from manufacturing to service and high technology as a way to organize this economy, there are great numbers of people who are not making a change. So we have a lot on our plate right now today. You see, it's these kinds of issues, these kinds of demands that we have to deal with. But today, that oftentimes takes our attention away from other issues, so to speak, maybe going to preoccupy us and maybe even substitute for healing, so to speak. So, what we have is not so much healing as a scabbing over, so to speak, looking at issues and challenges all the time. It may be that that is the way it is, that nothing has healed completely. But we get new challenges from time to time. So today, we are dealing with this big economic issue, you see. That does not mean that we're done with slavery. It does not mean we're done with the Civil War. It does not mean that we have done with the civil rights movement. It just means that we have a sort of preoccupation with dealing with the present, so to speak, present problems and issues, the trials and tribulations of living our lives. That is what it seems to me.
SM (29:43):
Well, that is a beautiful answer because the last couple days I have been seeing some of my former students and the frustrations they have of finding a job. I have a friend who graduated from Penn who has been laid off twice in the last year, unbelievable stories. We are in a very-very, very tough economy. I think we're about hitting our 30 minutes here. Do you want to go 15 more minutes? We might be able to finish it.
EA (30:13):
Okay.
SM (30:14):
Because when my tape hits, and it has not hit yet, so we have not hit 30 minutes. I wanted to follow up to your response. Have you been to the Wall in Washington?
EA (30:25):
No, I have not.
SM (30:25):
I have been there many times. The Wall was built as a nonpolitical entity, mentored healing the wounds of the troops who fought and their families. It is supposed to be nonpolitical. I go down there every year on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and I cannot help but constantly hearing politics there, even though they do a great job with the Wall stuff. Do you think the Wall has done anything with respect to ... Well, I know it is done a lot for the soldiers and the troops that fought and their families, but those who may have been against the war before the war ... It gets right back to that healing question. Has it done anything beyond just the military?
EA (31:05):
Well, I think it is not only a symbol of the war and our involvement there, but it is also a very powerful ...
SM (31:18):
15 more minutes. Okay, here we go.
EA (31:20):
Yeah, I think that is basically a matter of it memorializes people who made the supreme sacrifice, and I think that is a very important consideration here. That is probably the most important consideration. It does not necessarily heal, but it is a way to pay homage to people who gave their full measure, so to speak.
SM (31:48):
In your eyes, when did the Vietnam War end, and what was the major reason that it did end?
EA (31:54):
Well, I mean that is a complicated piece. But certainly, you look at the pictures, the iconic photographs of the day. The helicopters were taking people from the rooftops of certain buildings there. You realized that even that moment was not going to be the end the war, so to speak, but it is something more than that. It is just not so much a particular moment that you can say it is over kind of thing, but it has to do with, to some extent, the healing process and the way in which the US military and diplomatic corps basically took themselves out of that situation. That does not happen all at one time, but it happens over a period of months and even years, if you follow me? Some people, even though the war would be officially over, would consider the war to still be going on months after the declaration that it is over, if you know what I mean, because people have to adjust and get back to a sense of normalcy and that kind of thing. So, it is not so much a matter of something that is exact and pinpointed, if you follow me, but it is something that goes on and on. I think today, we could certainly say that we're done with all that and we are moving on to something else. Of course, now you have development in those areas where people once were fighting. You have development. You have hotels. You have commerce. You have all kinds of things that really say quite emphatically that it is a new day. You have people from there and people from here who fought in the war, who fought each other, who are now coming back together and discussing issues and discussing their various roles, not so much in anger, but just as a way to communicate with one another and let one another know that the hatchet has been buried, so to speak. I think when you have that kind of a situation, then you can begin to say that it is done and over, if you follow me, no exact moment, no exact time. Although certainly, we have the official administrative definition of the end of the war, so to speak. But even though you had that, things continued to progress, if you follow me, I think.
SM (34:31):
One of the things about the civil rights movement, and it was such a great mentor and role model to other movements that followed. I would like your thoughts just on the impact that this movement had on, and just general comments, on the women's movement and the Chicano, the Native American movement, certainly the antiwar movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the Earth Day, the environmental movement. A lot of the people that lead these efforts looked back to the role modeling of the civil rights movement.
EA (35:05):
Oh, of course. Well, you have to understand that the Black situation was and is a special situation in this country. No other group has been brought here in chains and made to work for no wages and then emancipated in the Great War and then still subjected to second class citizenship, segregated in certain communities, discriminated against, hated, despised by people in the way that Black Americans were. So the civil rights movement, the protests for civil rights for Black people, is iconic and was major in so many respects. As people rose up to challenge the system, of course, a lot of people's heads were turning to this great race dealing with this situation of injustice, so to speak. A lot of people paid attention and even got involved, to some extent. It was not just the Blacks who went through this disestablishment, so to speak, and made itself free, but various people worked with Black people that helped to free not only them, but the country from its past, so to speak. But the civil rights movement itself culminated in the riots that happened in the cities around this country, great demand for civil rights and incorporation. Ultimately, what we did, we had the movement from the civil rights movement to the cultural nationalist movement and the riots in the cities. And then you had tremendous violence all over this country. The powers that existed had a real problem on its hands, how to deal with this whole situation in something of a very public kind of way, if you follow me? It tried to do this by putting these problems down by dealing with the revolts or the riots or whatever it was. You have to understand, too, that when this was happening, it was happening during the Cold War, you see, when this country and Russia, or the Soviet Union, were vying for leadership of the world. They were saying to each other, "Well, we have got the better system. We have got the better system." We were looking at the satellite, looking for people to follow them in some of the developing countries that were colored, in fact, looking for leadership from the Soviet Union or from the West. A big issue was who really had the better system in terms of being able to facilitate the development of people of color, to some extent. So given that this country was trying for leadership of the world, they really had a big fly in the ointment with the way that it had historically treated Black people and still treated Black people. You see? So there was a great need for this country to basically step up to the plate and get on the right side with respect to civil rights, you see, because there was a lot at stake. There was leadership of the world at stake, you see. So this is one thing that they had to do, that they had to deal with. When they did this, they engaged and you had this movement, the riots or what have you. They culled it out with violence. But they also worked to incorporate Black people in the system, you see.
SM (39:22):
[inaudible]-
EA (39:25):
Through affirmative action, set asides, what have you, they created a new Black middle class, you see, a class that effectively would cull out other people and show that if you work hard, you can be not only meritorious, but you can also have something in this world, you see. So, this was a very important thing because they brought Black people forward, in part, because of all these other issues that were going on at the time, especially the fact that the issues of the wider world, the third world, the developing countries, the developed nations. All those issues were very important to the success of the civil rights movement here that resulted in first class citizenship for Black people, but also, to some extent, an incorporation process that helped Black people to take their place in American society. That struggle is still going on. It is not over. But we have made a lot of progress, for sure.
SM (40:39):
Do you consider the Black Power movement a negative or a positive in that process?
EA (40:45):
I think, in some ways, it was bold. There were times when it was highly negative, and times when it was very positive. I think the major thing was that it set the stage for the incorporation process that we saw that basically gave us the Black middle classes that exist today. I think that without the issues that were put on the table in the (19)60s and the (19)70s by the cultural nationalists and by the so-called Black Power movement, that you probably would not have had the degree of incorporation that we have right now today, or even the motivation to incorporate Black people or to have Black people live as first class citizens in this country without that, without protests-
SM (41:41):
Could you-
EA (41:42):
... on the system's institutions, if you will.
SM (41:42):
Would you be able to comment on, since you are a scholar, if you think there were any books that were very popular at that time that influenced people of all colors, boomers, and then, of course, the impact that the music of the boomer generation has had because that is all you hear on the radio now is music from that period, it just seems that.
EA (42:01):
I think that if you are going to think about what effect that the boomers in that period, you have to undoubtedly look at the kind of education they were getting during the civil rights movement and during the antiwar movement and the cultural nationalist period and all that. Increasingly, you had these young students, white, Black, whoever, but especially the white middle class, more and more being edified, educated by people who brought a certain sensitivity to the problems of the history of Black people in this country, including the studies of slavery and race relations and that kind of thing. So many of these schools around the country began to incorporate Black studies courses and that kind of thing. All of this gave both Black people and young white people a clearer sense of the history of this country. I think that was very, very important for their understanding, but also the notion of the possibilities for the country itself. I think those things were very, very important to implement. We could go on and on with that. But I think that is-
SM (43:19):
Any thoughts on the music?
EA (43:21):
I think those are important. I think also what you began to see as a result of the civil rights movement and the incorporation process was a proliferation of different kinds of music that Blacks were involved in. You began to see the emergence, undoubtedly, of rhythm and blues and blues and jazz and hip hop and rock and all these variations that came about. You began to see the influence of Black singers and performers crossing over, you see. I think that was very, very important. I think that the music of The Beatles was very important. I think Elvis Presley was very important. I think Michael Jackson was very important. All these stars were important for the way in which they helped us to integrate our society, as it were. I think this, to some extent, is a function of the civil rights movement, but also the ways in which we have been able to move toward the diversity and the acceptance of diversity within our country with all of this, the music, the civil rights movement. All that was very, very important in this process, and I think we are all beneficiaries of what happened there.
SM (44:41):
I have two more questions. One's a question on trust. I can remember being in a college 101 psychology class many years ago, and the professor said in one of the very first classes that ... He was defining the meaning of trust, and he said, "We all have to trust someone in life. If you go through life and you cannot trust people, you probably will not be a success in life." So, I am bringing this question up because all the leaders that a lot of the boomers saw, they were lying to them many, many times, from presidents on down. The students at least that I knew, and many of the boomers, did not trust anybody that was in a leadership role, whether it be a university president, a congressman, a senator, even leaders in the church, corporate leaders, you name it. It is because they had been disappointed so many times by leaders who had lied to them, whether it be President Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin, in recent years, the things about John Kennedy and maybe being linked to the killings of the two people in Vietnam. President Eisenhower lied on national television about the U-2 incident. Then we had Richard Nixon and Watergate. And then there were just, over and over, things where leaders who were voted in, people wanted to trust them, realized that they could not trust them. The body counts in the Vietnam War, all these things. Just your thoughts on, finally, if these young people cannot trust, what are they passing on to their kids? So just your comments on do we have a problem with trust?
EA (46:26):
Well, I think trust is very important, for sure. I think that what you see with the major assassinations I mentioned, this period of political assassinations, that really ended the period of innocence for Americans, boomers in particular maybe, but Americans in general. I think this is very, very important. But it was also important not just in terms of people becoming more mature, so to speak, but it also ushered in a kind of cynicism, if you will. I think this was very, very important. I think that we're still living with consequences of that, and it will take time to get that back. But so many people have basically taken leave, abdicated, checked out, so to speak. But now and then, we have a charismatic figure emerge, and then hope is restored. I think that is what we have today with Barack Obama's emergence as the political leader that he is. The jury is still out, of course, whether or not he is going to do all that he has promised to do or whether he is going to have the integrity, ultimately, that we all like to attribute to him. But so far, I think he has been really showing first-rate leadership that basically begins to heal so much that has happened in our past that has made us doubt. So I think the trust issue is always there, and it gets rebuilt with succeeding generations, but most importantly, through acts that we can have faith in, so to speak.
SM (48:19):
My last question is, when the best history books or sociology books are written 50 years after a period, what do you think people will be saying about the boomer generation with all its complexities, with all its diversity? What will professors in your shoes be saying 50 years from now at Yale in soc classes and history classes about the boomer era, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, and their lives, basically?
EA (48:52):
Yeah. Well, why do not we hold off on that one for a while? Once we get a sense of how this works out, then I will respond to that. Okay? Give me time to think about that one.
SM (49:03):
Very good.
EA (49:08):
So now you have the tape, and you are going to transcribe it?
SM (49:11):
Yep. I am going to transcribe it probably myself and-
EA (49:19):
But let me say this. I do not want to make this available until I have had a chance to read it and to edit it, that kind of thing.
SM (49:26):
Oh, yeah. I am doing that with everybody. In fact, I have not transcribed any. I am doing the transcribing myself on all of them.
EA (49:37):
I understand. I just want to look because I like to be able to review it and edit it before it is out there, and I would like to respond more fully to certain points you raised.
SM (49:48):
Yeah. The only other part I could not ask you today is just responses to some of the names of the period.
EA (49:55):
Yeah.
SM (49:56):
So anyways ...
EA (49:57):
But you have your work cut out for you.
SM (50:00):
Yep. But ...
EA (50:00):
If you can get this back to me at a certain point, I can deal with it and we can move along. But you raised a lot of good questions, a lot of good issues. I want to commend you for that.
SM (50:12):
Well, it is my first book.
EA (50:13):
I was going to ask you.
SM (50:16):
You know what I want to do in my next book?
EA (50:18):
What is that?
SM (50:18):
I want to write about Dr. King and the Vietnam speech.
EA (50:23):
Well, that sounds good. That sounds good. I mean he was a great man, for sure, great American. I think that a lot of these issues you have been raising today, are just right on, right on the money.
SM (50:36):
Well, I know Mrs. Bagley. Do you know her?
EA (50:38):
No. No.
SM (50:39):
She is the sister of Coretta Scott King. So, I have gotten to know her. She is not well, but she has taken a liking to me. She was upset that I left Westchester. She used to call me. I have not talked to her in a while, but I am going to call her. She can only sit down for 20 minutes because she is not well. I am going to interview her for the book and go from there. But Dr. Anderson, Yale is so lucky to have you. That is all I have to say.
EA (51:10):
Well, thank you very much. I am glad I am here. I am glad that I am here and able to teach and spread the word and that type of thing.
SM (51:21):
Yeah. Of course, every one of my interviews is going to have a picture that I have taken of each of the guests, either when I interview them in person, but I have some great shots of you when you were here in Westchester two years ago.
EA (51:32):
Okay. Well, when you transcribe it, get it to me. And then I will have to edit it and work it out.
SM (51:35):
Yep. Will do.
EA (51:35):
Okay.
SM (51:36):
You have a great weekend coming up, and I hope your wife's arm's better.
EA (51:43):
Thank you. Thank you. I am looking forward to getting her back to her therapy today. I am going to leave tomorrow, heading to Philly. Then I got to be back Monday because she has got another appointment for therapy. So anyway, well, listen, I am glad we got this done, and I look forward to reading it and responding and editing the whole thing.
SM (52:05):
Super.
EA (52:06):
Okay.
SM (52:07):
You have a great day.
EA (52:08):
Okay, Steve.
SM (52:09):
Yep. Can I call you Eli?
EA (52:10):
Sure, absolutely.
SM (52:13):
Because I have so much respect for you, I want to call you Dr. Anderson.
EA (52:16):
I call you Steve. You can call me Eli.
SM (52:18):
All right, Eli, thank you very much.
EA (52:20):
I am glad you raised a lot of those questions. I thought they were good questions, and I tried to answer as best I could.
SM (52:26):
Yeah, they were great answers.
EA (52:28):
I think some of the points could be elaborated, that kind of thing. So I look forward to seeing the transcript.
SM (52:34):
Okay.
EA (52:34):
Take care now.
SM (52:34):
Yep, you, too. Bye now.
EA (52:37):
Okay, Steve. Bye.
(End of Interview)
Description
1 Microcassette
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Title
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Interview with Dr. Elijah Anderson
Contributor
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Anderson, Elijah ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
Subject
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Sociologists; College teachers; Yale University; Anderson, Elijah--Interviews
Description
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Dr. Elijah Anderson is a sociologist, cultural theorist, scholar and professor in Sociology at Yale University, where he specializes in Urban Ethnography. Dr. Anderson received his Ph.D. in Sociology at Northwestern University.
Dr. Elijah Anderson is a sociologist, cultural theorist, scholar, and the Sterling Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Yale University. He specializes in Urban Ethnography. He is the author of several books including his most recent, titled <em>Black in White Space: The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life</em> (2022). His other books include <em>Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City</em> (1999), winner of the Komarovsky Award from the Eastern Sociological Society; <em>Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community</em> (1990), winner of the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award for the best-published book in the area of Urban Sociology; and the classic sociological work, <em>A Place on the Corner</em> (1978). Dr. Anderson received numerous awards and recognition, including the consultant for the White House, United States Congress, and the National Academy of Science. In 2002, he was awarded the Stockholm Prize in Criminology. Previous to his tenure at Yale University, he was a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Anderson received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University.
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Date
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2009-07-09
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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.10.2016.16
Date Modified
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2017-03-14
Is Part Of
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McKiernan Interviews
Extent
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52:43
-
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/da609577937f41936d7db512b2e12e70.mp3
584dbbc537c7c8ba6871440fdbf5f244
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
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Bettina Apthker
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Bettina Apthker is a political activist, radical feminist, academic, and author. As a former member of the Communist Party USA she was active in civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and has worked in developing feminist studies since the late 1970s. Dr. Apthker has a Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dr. Bettina Apthker is a political activist, radical feminist, academic, and author. As a former member of the Communist Party USA, she was active in civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s and 1970s and has worked in developing feminist studies since the late 1970s. Dr. Apthker has a Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz.</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
Date of Interview
ND
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Protests; UC Berkeley; Free Speech Movement; Communist Party; Civil Rights; Police; Holocaust; WWII; Black Panthers; Weathermen; Feminism; Activism; Contraceptives; Montgomery Bus Boycott; Baby boom generation; Sexism; Equal Rights Amendment; Patriarchy; Women's Suffrage; Equality; McCarthy; Government Corruption; Fear of Activism; Vietnam Memorial; Kent State; Jackson State; Watergate; Summer of Love; Woodstock; 1968; Bobby Kennedy Assassination; Hippies and Yippies; Vietnam Veterans"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Protests; UC Berkeley; Free Speech Movement; Communist Party; Civil Rights; Police; Holocaust; WWII; Black Panthers; Weathermen; Feminism; Activism; Contraceptives; Montgomery Bus Boycott; Baby boom generation; Sexism; Equal Rights Amendment; Patriarchy; Women's Suffrage; Equality; McCarthy; Government Corruption; Fear of Activism; Vietnam Memorial; Kent State; Jackson State; Watergate; Summer of Love; Woodstock; 1968; Bobby Kennedy Assassination; Hippies and Yippies; Vietnam Veterans</span>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
61:26
Subject LCSH
Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Peace movements—United States--20th century; Feminists; Political activists--United States; Apthker, Bettina--Interviews
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Dr. Bettina Apthker
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Kimberly F Mourao
Date of interview: ND
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
00:02
SM: Testing, one, two testing. And we can take a break too if you want to.
00:07
BA: Well, actually, I have other things I have to do today so, and since Will Song was late, which you are very gracious in waiting, but-
00:15
SM: Okay, when you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
00:21
BA: Huge crowds of people and protests, demonstrations.
00:25
SM: Can you kind of give a little detail, were you connected to those?
00:30
BA: Yeah. You know, the first thing that I mean, in the, just in the context of this conversation, the, we had very, a week of very dramatic rallies at UC Berkeley, in the climax of the Free Speech Movement, in which I co-lead with Savio. And, and there is this, many moments there. But when I when I think about it, you know, if you asked me what I remember, was, so you probably know this incident, but we had all been arrested, and we had been released, after we had occupied the administration building. And President of the University was Clark Kerr. And he had assembled everybody from the campus at the Greek Theater, it was December 7th. And the objective was to take back control of the university from those of us that had disrupted it, get the faculty on the stage, all the chairs of different committees and everything like that. And he gave a speech. And in his speech, he said, you know, invoke the idea of the university as a center of light and learning. But he did not, he did not concede the major point on freedom of speech, which was why we had sat in in the first place, right. So, when he was done, Mario and myself, and I think it was Art Goldberg got up. And we approached the stage. And Mario, his intention was to make an announcement that the Free Speech Movement will hold its rally on the steps of Sproul Hall, which was our traditional place, the administration building, immediately following and ask everybody to come down there, and we will give our response. And as Mario approach the podium, police officers rushed out from the back of the stage grabbed him by the throat, actually the tie’s tie. And, and, and arrested him, pulled him back away from the microphone. And of course, pandemonium broke out in the, in the theater there were 20,000 people. And Kerr was still on stage. He was in the back looking, he knows it is a mistake, he was looking to shoes, he still had his written notes in his hand, and Art, and I faced the crowd, and it was like, there was going to be a riot. And so, we took up a chant, “let him speak, let him speak,” you know, and the crowd took it up. And then moments later, Mario was released, and he was up, and they turned the microphone back on. And he stood up. And he said, he just said to everybody, “come with us to Sproul Hall where the FSM will hold its rally.” And I think he said, “Let us leave this disastrous place.” So, we all left then. And so, the image in my mind is, there were 20,000, maybe more people in Sproul Hall Plaza immediately following. And so, if you know that Plaza, which you do cause you are from the Bay Area. So, you know, it is huge, and every single space was taken, and they were kids up on the, on the roof of the Student Union Building, across the way and the, I mean, it was called the Bears the, the restaurant, there was a restaurant there too. And there were people on the roof of the restaurant and every, every imaginable thing, we had our microphones set up and we gave a rally to great cheers and so forth. So that is like a moment that I completely identify with that period of, of my life in that period of the (19)60s.
04:26
SM: Would you say that moment more than any other shaped you when you were young? Was there something you did? Well, is there, is there one event that made you who you are even before you got to Berkeley?
04:38
BA: Well, in my case, that is a hard question because I came from such a, you know, my father, my parents were communists, and I came from a radical family already. So, I was already shaped in terms of politics in a certain kind of way. But there is a particular moment that, that was very personally empowering for me. In the, in the fall of protest, and that was October. I think it was October 1. Yes, it was the night of October 1. So, this was the start of the Free Speech Movement. And we had set up tables of the civil rights organizations right in the center of Sproul Plaza. And the police had come, and they had arrested Jack Weinberg, who was sitting at the table for the Congress of Racial Equality. And they brought a police car at 12 noon. I mean, I do not know what they were thinking. And so, everybody was coming out of class. I mean, they were just thousands of people coming out of class and did not know anything, you know. And they arrested Jack, and they put him in this police car, and I was there on the plaza, you know, hundreds and hundreds of other people and somebody shouted, “sit down.” So, we all sat down around the police car. And we prevented them from moving and from arresting Jack. And that is the start of the Free Speech Movement. Well, that night, the night of October 1, what happened was we used the top of the police car as a speaker's podium. And we would take our shoes off, and we climb up onto the roof of the car. And we were shouting-
06:23
SM: There is that picture that David has on the front of the-
06:25
BA: Yeah, yeah, I think it is picture Mario. Well, that night, I got up to speak at the top of the police car. And I had never given a public speech before. It was the first time I had ever given a public, that was, ever said anything in public. And it was in, it was at night, and, and then I would have been able to see people but the TV cam- the TV crews were there, and the lights were in my eyes. So, I could, I could, I could feel the crowd, but I could not see them. So, it was pitch black, and then another light coming in your eyes. And I started to talk with, with what I hoped was considerable, you know, feeling about the issue of freedom of speech. And, and this, this moment, and I invoked the quote from Frederick Douglass. That power concedes nothing without a demand. And when I said those words, and I said, you know where they were from, the crowd roared back as approval. And as they roared back at me, as they roared back at me, I felt this tremendous sense of empowerment. Just a tremendous sense of empowerment. And it was a glorious feeling. So, it was not, I was someone that had not experienced that before. I do not mean that I felt powerful in quite that way. But I mean, I felt human. I felt heard, I had been heard. And if you know something about my personal background, and you have read into it, politics and so forth, you know that that the emotional significance for me, of actually having my voice hurt. And it was a tremendous moment.
08:14
SM: Wow, wow. What, it is interesting that the three people that I am interviewing yesterday, and today are all born 1944. So, I consider you boomers, even though the classification is (19)46. You know, it is really not clear. But when you look at the young people of that era, with the (19)60s and the (19)70s. What would you consider their strengths, some of their weaknesses?
08:46
BA: Well, I cannot, sorry, for my voice. I cannot give an overview. I cannot give an overall estimate. I just know the people that I knew and the people that I knew from the civil rights movement and the Black Panther, I knew people in the Black Panther Party and of course in the Communist Party. So, one of the points I want to make here is that the Berkeley campus itself was it was almost exclusively white. Because this is before affirmative action. If you go to the Berkeley campus, now it is transformed. But there was a total of 100 black students on the Berkeley campus in 1964. Out of 27,500 students. That is something like the statistic, but I knew a lot of African American folks and, and other people from other races because of my political background, because of the political work that I did. So, I just wanted to make that as an observation. And I would say that the people that I knew in my generation, younger and older, some were a little older than me very idealistic, very much informed by World War II and the Holocaust, it is very, very fresh in our minds. In fact, in one of his speeches, Mario actually invoked the Holocaust, in which he talked about the pictures that he saw as a child, and that he cannot understand that the world has not changed as a result of what happens. I think for a lot of us who are Jewish, like myself, the Holocaust, the experience of fascism, the experience of World War II, was very fresh. And, and, and compelled opposition to racism, and, of course, anti-Semitism. But in this country, racism was very, very prevalent, and a tremendous commitment to never allowing that kind of violence to happen again. And they were very strong. If you actually look at those statistics, you will see that a very disproportionate number of the white people that went south in the (19)60s were Jewish. And I think that it comes out of this feeling. So we were, we were white, but we had this, you know, in this country, a Jew can be a white, but a Jew could also be a person of color, depending upon their skin color. Right, there is Jews who are very dark complected, you know, but I am talking about, you know, Jews who were Ashkenazi who were white like myself, but we were not quite white. A little complicated. And you had that awareness. And so, I found my generation to be very, very idealistic. And if there was a weakness, and I think there was a weakness, and it came out of this idealism, that was also a, among some people, tremendous frustration, at the lack of responsiveness of the power structure, which led I think, people to commit very unfortunate acts in the late (19)60s and (19)70s, part of the Weather Underground and Weathermen, and yeah, I did not agree with that. I have never agreed with those forms of violence, you know. So, I do not think that they were they were a relatively small number of people, overall, in terms of who was involved in, and I put the Black Panther Party in a different category, because in terms of the use of self-defense, you know, because although there has been a lot of publicity about the Black Panthers, having guns and all of that, and they did defend themselves with the police. They were constantly, young black people in that period, were constantly under attack, constantly being arrested, harassed shot, as they still are, I mean, it is still going on. So, they were not engaged blowing up buildings or something like that, which is what the Weatherman did. They were, they were very much engaged in trying to defend and protect their communities. I think that was why the Panthers had such a tremendous draw. So, they also had enormous idealism. I see the idealism that too, it just took a different slightly different form. And you think about the in the Panthers, you know, they, especially the women, like Erica Huggins, and, and Kathleen Cleaver and Elaine Brown, they, they ran breakfast for children, they ran freedom schools, they ran health clinics, they provided people with free clothing. In other words, they really tried to do very concrete, compassionate actions in their home communities. It did not get a lot of publicity. You know, if you think about Panthers, everybody thinks guns, you know, they do not think about all this tremendous daily work that-
14:11
SM: Kathleen, I actually been communicating with her down at Emory. She is working on a book right now. I think she is working on a biography. And she has agreed to be interviewed by me, but not until May. Because she has gotten to concentrate on getting the book done. One of the things, one of the criticisms of the, this era, the, the idealistic young people from the (19)60s and (19)70s, is that they have not followed through as they have gotten older. Now, I know you can only give the experiences of your friends, but have you been disappointed in some of your friends that what you saw at Berkeley, one of the things I like about David, David Lance Goines, is he was so committed he did not even go back to Berkeley. And he had not changed one iota. You know, he is an artist, and he is proud of his artwork and everything, but he has not changed, he is still the same guy he was then. Are you pleased with your peers, or are you somewhat disappointed in them? And the second part of the question is this. One of the things that really gets me is when the Newt Gingrich’s of the world or the George Will’s of the world, whenever they get a chance, will take shots at the (19)60s and (19)70s as the reason why we have problems in our society today, with the increasing divorce rate, the drug culture, the lack of respect for authority, the victim culture, you know, all the bad things happened then, and that is why we have problems today and we are going to try to fix them. So that is kind of a two-part question.
15:38
BA: Well, the first part, no, I am not at all disappointed in my generation. One of the things that you do not understand when you are young is that you have a life to live, a full life. So, David, for example, goes on to become a great artist. He is a tremendous graphic artist. Jack Weinberg, was the other example. Which is now one of the key leaders of Greenpeace. Very important. Jackie Goldberg, was one of the leaders of the Free Speech Movement, taught school for a long time in Los Angeles, then ran for the school board and ran for the LA City Council then joined the California State Legislature. She did tremendous work, built tremendous coalition of gay, lesbians, blacks. Chicanos, you know, Latino community, made a real coalition and was a very radical progressive person in Sacramento for twenty years. She recently retired. You know, if you look at Mario, even Mario himself, he was very, he was the same guy in terms of his activism, up until the time of his death, which was in (19)96. He was involved in the struggles to protect immigrants, you know, to reform immigration law. He did remedial mathematics teaching at Sonoma State College, in order to help mostly working-class kids of various races to be able to succeed in the university. I continued to be very critical of university hierarchy. And, you know, the politics that existed there, he was also a brilliant physicist. So, you know and say myself, I have taught for thirty years at UC Santa Cruz, I taught a very popular introduction to feminism class that had an annual enrollment of five hundred. And it was a course that my students filmed. So, it is available on DVDs now, but, but my point in talking about it is that it was it was to infuse students with a sense of empowerment, especially women, because I am part of the feminist movement, and activism, and what it means and now I am teaching a class called socialism, I am, excuse me, not socialism, called feminism and social justice. So, but I just started, you know, a new class. And so that is in myself, you know, and everybody. Margot Adler, who was part of the Free Speech Movement, is the, is a leading journalist for NPR. She is the head of the NPR in New York, she published a book many years ago called Drawing Down the Moon, which is a study of Wicca. And in the United States, you know, the resurgence of, of Wicca and the spirituality in that book is still in print. It is like, you know, one of the major texts, very progressive, very important journalists, NPR, as we all know, is plays a critical role. So, when I think of, or Angela Davis, if we want another person, you know, Angela has been out there in the trenches for thirty, thirty-five, forty years. She almost single handedly launched a national, international movement against the prison system. And the way it was set up and was finishing a book on that subject. She taught in the history of consciousness program at UC Santa Cruz, where I am for quite a number of years training graduate students to engage in radical intellectual work. She is, she is one of the she is one of the few recognized public intellectuals in the United States and internationally, you know, as public intellectual. So, I mean, these are examples, we could go on, but these are examples of people-
19:59
SM: So, what the George Will’s, and I do not single them out. But it is very obvious that when you see their writings, they love to take shots at the era. And that the permissiveness, the all the things that I had just mentioned, the drug culture-
20:17
BA: You know, that is also a very stereotypical view of that period. Because what, what the mass media did in a certain kind of way is focus on the drug culture, you know, the so-called permissiveness and free love and all of that. But, you know, try to give a little historical perspective, okay. The changes in sexual behavior had to do with the invention of the pill, which made it possible for women to engage in in sex, premarital sex. Without the continual fear of pregnancy. It is revolutionary, it was revolutionary. Did people get pregnant when they did not intend to? Yes, of course. And then the other thing that happens is the legalization of abortion in 1973. I know we are still fighting about it. But it made it possible for people to engage in sexual union without, you know, guys have been doing it. You know, it is, from a feminist point of view it is very interesting, you understand? Guys have been doing this forever. Guys. I am on tape. So, guys fool around, like, there is no tomorrow, you know, especially young guys. And I mean in, everywhere in the world, as far as I know. And there are no consequences, right? Because they do not get pregnant. So, they can just, you know, have a good time. feel like it is great. And all this sort of stuff they want to, but then, and then you look at, you want to talk about promiscuity, guys are promiscuous. But when women became promiscuous, then we have a promiscuous generation. Why is that? Because there is a double standard. And guys like Wills and these other, you know, these other commentators. That is it. That is really what you are talking about? What happens to the women, that is what they are talking about? They never say that because women are always invisible. But that is really what that movement is about.
22:30
SM: How have you or even Angela, could you know, or how have you been able to deal with the critics like David Horowitz and, and others who label certain individuals, obviously, the experiences you had when you were young, you kept your idealism, your sense of empowerment and your belief system, you kept it, whereas others have given in maybe, and accepted the status quo again. How have you been able to handle the critics like that, you know, and I know David, David used to be in the ramparts I interviewed him for the book too. And he is a real good speaker, he is a real good guy, he changed and everything, but he is really out there. He has got that book on the one-hundred professors-
23:13
BA: I am in it.
23:13
SM: Yeah. And Larry Davidson's on his list from West Chester University, but not in that book, but he has got Larry on his list, along with Bill Hewitt from West Chester, but how do you? How did you and Angela, how do you handle that?
23:28
BA: Well, I cannot speak for Angela, so I am not going to do that. I do not pay much attention to it. That is just nonsense. It is just nonsense. So, I just, you know, I mean, if you look at Horowitz’s book, for example, everything, almost everything he says about me, is, is untrue. It is, I am not saying I do not know whether he lies, whether, whether this is deliberate lies, or whether there is just an incompetence of research. I really do not know. But virtually every so-called facts in the paragraphs about me were wrong. I mean, even basic, innocuous information was wrong. I do not have it here, you know, it is in my office there, I can go, I mean, so I do not pay much attention to it. He was on Fox News not very long ago, and he was attacking me on Fox News. And I came into class the next day, and I told my students, you know, and I get a cheering ovation. I mean, they think it is funny. It is nothing. And most of this is nonsense. And the other thing I would say about it, and whenever I have come under attack, I do not give it much energy. It is, you do not put, do not put energy into it. This is like sort of advice to no energy because that just fuels it. So, he can have whatever viewpoint he wants to have. He has freedom of speech; he can publish whatever he wants. That is his business. I know-
24:56
SM: I know he had a very big problem with the Black Panthers because one of his associates came on our campus. One of the things I want to ask you, when did the (19)60s begin, in your opinion, your view? And when did it end?
25:10
BA: Well, I think the (19)60s in terms of the civil rights movement, myself, and I think it began in the mid (19)50s. With you know, this is always, I am a historian. So, when did something begin? Well-
25:31
SM: I am a history major, political science double major.
25:35
BA: Because then this led to this, and then that led to this, you know, I am saying, but I usually think about it from the point of view of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in (19)50, you know, the winter of (19)55, (19)56, there is stuff before then. But I usually, I mean, you could go back to the integration schools, you know, Arkansas, Little Rock, you know, you could, maybe, maybe there, but I usually think I will tell you why with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, because that was the first definable visible mass action, mass, you know, hundreds, thousands of people involved. And, and I do want to say that the women, the black women in in Birmingham and Montgomery were the backbone of that movement, because they, they provided the carpools that that arranged for people to get to doctor's appointments and get to work and, you know, provided food, and I mean, they, they were just it was the committee of one hundred. Committee of one-hundred black women. But anyway, I date it from them. Then the first march for integration on Washington was in (19)57. I was on it. There was a second one in (19)58. I was on that, too. And these were, you know, I do not know if there were thousands of people, but there were hundreds of people, we took buses, we camped out-
27:07
SM: Dr. King was in (19)57.
27:09
BA: Yes he was. Yeah. And, and then of course, by (19)60, you have the lunch counters, (19)60, (19)60, (19)61, the Freedom Rides, and then you are off, you know, and then the voter registration is (19)63, (19)64. And I think this is another thing in terms of how people view the (19)60s in the, in the sort of media type view of the (19)60s is they see it as white. But see, the backbone of the (19)60s was black.
27:50
SM: You raise a good point, because the fact that I have met with the individual, three or four interviews ago, said when I when I saw that you were doing something on the boomer generation, I think of boomers as white. And I do not, and then I tried to explain to him that I am trying to get boomers from all ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, you name it, and then I understand what you are trying to do now. But when I first see that term, Boomer, I think white and white male.
28:19
BA: Yeah, absolutely. Because that is the dominant media image, you know, that is absolutely right. You know, so that is why I say what I am, you know, what I am saying is, the (19)60s is, is a fundamentally in many ways, a black era.
28:36
SM: When did it end? Was there a was there a watershed moment when you date it. You know a lot of these young people moving on in jobs and careers, and they are still doing great things as leaders of different organizations. But was there something where you thought “it is over”?
28:54
BA: Well, you can mark it from different moments. I mean in the context; I would use is the fierceness of the repression. See, by the time Reagan comes in, as governor, Nixon comes in as President, Hoover, of course COINTELPRO, the mobilization of federal and state authority to crush this movement. It takes it a while to mobilize because it took them by surprise, but the effort to crush them when you think about what COINTELPRO did, you know and the numbers of young black people who were murdered, like Fred Hampton, for example, and Mark Clark in Chicago, I mean it is, or, or Bunchy Carter and John, John Huggins in Los Angeles. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. The deliberate murder, assassinated, they were assassinated. This is horrific. So, the movement took one blow after another. People were arrested. You know, think about Mumia still in jail. You know, Mumia Abu Jamal. It took one blow after another. And then there was a there was an anti-war protest that was inadequate. It was in Washington, DC and an SDS had organized it-
30:34
SM: (19)69. David Hawk, I interviewed him yesterday.
30:37
BA: Yeah, no, there was mass arrests. At that protest, the way I remember it, they released everybody afterwards. But they rounded everybody up, they rounded up thousands of people. And then they, then they did not know what to do with them. And I do not know where they put them, and then they let them go. Because they could not process that many people or do anything about it. Kent State 1970, Jackson State, same time. So, the movement is still I think, you know, there is still momentum, there is still momentum. And then I would mark the end of the movement with Angela Davis's freedom. We won her freedom in (19)72. And then I think the momentum after that is much diminished. Even though even though you have to say, the mobilizations against the war in Vietnam continued until (19)73, When the war ended.
31:36
SM: That is when Vietnam Veterans against the war come and took it over.
31:39
BA: Yeah. So, right. Nixon ends the war in (19)73. So, we are still out there. I was still part of the mobilization committees and things like that. So (19)72, (19)73, Angela’s acquitted on June 4, 1972. You know, and the war ends in (19)73. Right? Remember it is December or something? (19)75.
32:00
SM: (19)75 is when helicopter on the roof on April 30th. The very end. Well, it is interesting. I-
32:09
BA: So that is about when I end the era.
32:11
SM: I know, I know, the whole thing. When I was in my first job with George Jackson, the books and everything. And while I was in California, I actually did a concert in San Quentin Prison, and we broke a janitor by the San Francisco child's fancy, because I know the Bread and Roses group, Joan Baez’s sister had been able to do concert there. But they were really limiting the concerts. And so, I tried. And then finally, within a year, I was able to get in there with the jazz group, and it was one heck of an experience. Machine guns, the loved them, they loved the janitor, there is a rock group that came, and they booed them and threw apples at them and within five minutes, but that whole scene out there, I do remember, I want to, I got two parts here, one of the one of the general questions or one or more specific, and that is the second side. But I want to ask you about the boomer women. That is your age group. And that group that through 1964. Your thoughts on boomer women, all colors, sexual orientation, you name it, because one of the things that I found through studying history is the sexism that took place within the movements, within the anti-war movement, within the civil rights movement. And then I am, now I am even asking more about and now I, when David mixtures says “oh yeah it has been in the gay and lesbian movement. Oh, yeah.” And the Native American movement, the Chicano movement, and there was some of that because I have already spoken to a couple people of Chicano movement the same way. What is it about all these great, these very important movements that evolved in the early or late (19)60s, early (19)70s? And they use the example of civil rights movement. And women were in secondary roles. We all know, the women's movement kind of evolved from there, but is there truth to that. And in your views, what do you think about all these movements?
34:09
BA: Well, men were tremendously sexist. Just tremendously sexist. And they had no clue they were completely clueless. But in fairness, which I have to say, is some of the women you know, consciousness evolved slowly. And in particular conditions and circumstances. So, one of the things you have to acknowledge or you have to say is that Betty Friedan’s book was published in (19)59. I think it was the Feminine Mystique. When Kennedy ran for office, President Kennedy, he wanted Eleanor Roosevelt's endorsement and she said, I will give you your, my endorsement if you promise to establish a Commission on the Status of Women when you become president and investigate the institutional discrimination against women. So, President Kennedy said: Yes, I will do that, she endorsed him. She was the titular head of that commission when he came into office. And it was actually headed by Esther Peterson, who, as you probably know, was in FDR’s cabinet. And Peterson did a thorough study of institutional discrimination against women in housing, employment, education, everything. So, there was a tremendous report came out in (19)62. So, I remember those things. I did not read the Feminine Mystique until later. But I remember Mrs. Roosevelt, and I remember the, you know, the Peterson report, the commission report, I remember all of that. And I remember thinking about it. Because so I, here is what I am trying to say is the men ridiculed any kind of feminists or women centered movement, these are radical progressive men. I remember conferences of SDS, they were awful, they ridiculed, they booed, they hiss, they did not want to hear anything about it, they made jokes about it, and so forth. This was true in the Communist Party, also, except in the Communist Party, there had always been an understanding of the inequality of women in the workplace, equal pay for equal work and that sort of thing. So, there was a, there was a tradition in the communist movement of understanding, discrimination against women. But they saw it as a function of class, class struggle, not as something that had an independent existence. nobody talked about violence against women. We had all experienced it, but nobody talked about it, because it was to the woman's shame. Now. So, I think all these things are true. And if you look at the histories that have been written about the (19)60s by men, and you talked about it, Todd Catlin, and stuff like that. If the women's movement enters those histories at all, it is as a minor point. And they hardly talk about any of the women who were leaders of the movements. It is amazing. It is amazing to me, somebody just published a book on the left, I just got it on my email. And I do not know the name of the book, it must be the History of the Left in the (19)60s and (19)70s and does not mention any of the women's radical organizing that was going on. This is hundreds of pages, and there is no mention of it.
38:09
SM: Even when the Vietnam Memorial was built, Diane Carlson Evans had to fight to get the Women's Memorial. And a lot of people they do not know the battles behind the scenes, where she was called every name in the book, but she will not be, and she was just trying to get the Women’s Memorial.
38:23
BA: Yeah so, so my point is, yes, sexism was very deep and very profound. And it infused everything in all of the movements. And it was true, regardless of racial designation. But there were differences. For example, in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, black women held leadership positions, and lead field projects. white women in SNCC did not, the white women in SNCC were, they did voter registration work, they did dangerous work like that. They did office work, and so forth. They were voter registration workers, but most of the leadership, of course, it was black in general. But, so, black women have not, it was different, it is not that there is not sexism among black men there is, but it has a different history. So, I do not want to just lump everything together. And no, that is not true. Like Ella Baker, for example, Fannie Lou Hamer as another example, they are like key leaders, about civil rights movement, often unsung. Now, now they are known, you know, but there is, there is definitely on the part of men, which is, the women are just invisible. They are just there, but they are invisible. So, and then the other thing I am trying to say is that those of us as women who were involved in these movements, slowly developed the consciousness about sexism. It is not like we had it all at once or something. But because we were involved in freedom struggles for everybody else on the planet, it occurred to us at some point that we did not have very much. And people, you know, women began to talk to each other. And the so-called consciousness raising groups formed, you know, in the late (19)60s and the (19)70s, which were very important, informal groups in which women started actually talk about their own lives. And out of that experience, a feminist theory emerged, which had to do with the idea of there was something called “patriarchy” and it had a history. And there was something called “violence against women” and most women or a very large percentage of women had experienced it. And you know, and we began to define what you know, and then we gobbled up the Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir. You know, these other things, and everybody all of a sudden discovered, Rosa Luxemburg, and what is the other woman? I am trying to. Emma Goldman. You know, and all of a sudden, we are like, Holy smokes, you know, and then there is the suffrage. You know, the saying “you discover your history” is what happened.
41:21
SM: You know Johnnetta Cole who was president of Spelman-
41:23
BA: Yeah, I know Johnnetta quite well.
41:24
SM: She wrote a great book when she was president there. And then there, she talked. And she talked about the women that, from the (19)60s and (19)70s, about the split that took place between the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement, and that Kent State, like there was no students there of color. They were all told not to be there, there was a split happening. I know, at Ohio State when I was there, I saw the split. And so, she talks about that, too. But she also talks about Boomer women, or women as a whole who were black, who were, they wanted to identify more with racism, and not with the, the anti-war, and certainly not with gay and lesbian issues, and she did a tremendous job in that book of describing the conflicts, which I still see today at the university, that we all come together in a time of crisis like 9/11, and we were all standing there. But how many other times do we come together? You know, and because I know African American men who were gay at West Chester, who were afraid to walk across the hall to the gay and lesbian office for fear of being labeled, and it shows that there is still that happening within the community. And I always question what are the boomers gone to who are now reaching sixty-two. And then that particular age and kind of doing what they were doing in the (19)60s, helping these people along, their children and their grandchildren. Do you see that as there is still some conflicts within the boomer African American female community and in the areas of sexual orientation?
43:05
BA: Well yeah because the problem is, you see that. So my first point that I was trying to make to you was just that our own consciousness had to develop. That was where I was going with, my prior comments, now. And then every community was different, you know. So, I mean, there are two kinds of feminists, for example, who are coming out of their own experience in the struggle of Lavasa, you know, on the west coast and in the southwest, so, beginning to react to the sexism that they were experiencing and beginning to talk to each other, because liberation is contagious. Now, the other part of what you are asking about is, there were tremendous contradictions in these movements. For example, white women had almost no experience with race, or racism. Black woman that was what was in their face all the time, it was not that black women were not aware of sexism, especially. I mean, they bore the brunt of violence, especially for white men. So, it was not like they were not aware of it. But they tried to figure out how they were going to unite with black men in order to confront racism. You know, it was very complicated. All I am saying is, it was a complicated struggle. So, it is not a lack of consciousness about sexism. Any more than, I mean, they are perfectly aware of the sexism. And I think, you know, if you think about Ntozake Shange’s play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide.” That play was a groundbreaking breakthrough play, came out in (19)78. Because it named the violence against women in the black community. And it was a very controversial play and in (19)82 when Alice Walker published “The Color Purple,” a lot of black guys went nuts, attacking her and everything else, but there too she was naming, in that case its incest and, and violence against black women. So, it is not a lack of awareness. It is like, “Where is the priority?” I mean, you are one human being and how many battles can you fight? But white women will completely, almost, almost completely I mean, white women like me who are not but many white, let us put it that way, completely unaware of racism, even women who had been in the south thought “Well, the Klan is racist, but I am not.” You know, not thinking about all their assumptions, you know, it is, these are complicated questions.
45:50
SM: I can remember my first boss, Betty Mensen, after Betty Mensen. She has passed on now, but she the Equal Rights Amendment, why did I say that? I think actually we were, we were halfway through.
46:12
BA: Well, the equal rights amendment was introduced in 1923. Then it gets blocked and blocked and blocked and blocked, it is exactly the same history is suffrage. And another thing that needs to be said, I just want to, I am trying to make a point here, but say that the women's suffrage Okay, we get it in 1920, it was introduced first in about what 1868? Forty- or fifty-year struggle for almost forty years, I think.
46:57
SM: Patriarchy is deep. And men do not want to give up their power and, and privilege. Then say that the suffrage movement, it got intertwined with Southern white Dixiecrats not wanting to extend suffrage at all because they wanted to take it away from black men. So, the major opposition to suffrage, to this to the women's suffrage. The major opposition was from Southern racists, white racists, were trying to prevent it from being passed. So, you needed two thirds of the states, right? Or was it three fourths? Is it two thirds of the state, two thirds, whatever it is to pass it right? So, the last state to endorse women's suffrage and only men are voting, right? So, it is only men in the state legislatures. The last state to pass it is Tennessee. Okay. And it wins by one vote. And who was the guy, this guy named Huberts. I happen to know his history, the guy named Huberts voted for it. And when he was asked by a historian named Eleanor Flexner, “why did you vote for women's suffrage?” He said, “because if I had not, my mother would have killed me.” Now, so the way that women organized the suffrage campaign was, they went to speak to the wives, mothers, daughters of every man in the state legislatures, and then organize the women to pressure the men. That was how they won that campaign. Now, you say the Equal Rights Amendment, right? So that was introduced in (19)23, that was supposed to be a simple constitutional amendment. And it is logjammed at every possible point, it is about patriarchal privilege. That is how I see it. It is about not wanting, not truly wanting equality, because equality is a very deep concept. What would equality mean in a marriage? I mean, if you look at what does equality mean, in a marriage? What does equality mean in the workplace? What does equality mean in education? It is not just you know, if we really believe in equality, then women should have as much to say, as men about everything, the arrangement of human affairs. That is my definition of feminism. Women should have as much to say about everything in the arrangement human affairs, well, that is not true, is it? Who does who is the- who are the architects to design the buildings, who designs the cities, who, who decides allocations if there is going to be allocations for childcare, healthcare, for God's sake, you know, which is going on right now? You know, who is it that takes up the slack when the kids get sick? It is the, it is the women who stay home almost 90 percent, 100 percent of the time. Who takes care of the elderly? I am talking about average families that cannot afford fancy nursing homes. It is the women. Some women have a family, including their husband’s mothers. But a lot of times they cannot stand, moved in because well you cannot put them out. You cannot put them out in the hot in the you know, in the in the desert somewhere, you have to take care of them. So, you say these are very feminist issues, this healthcare things, very feminist issue. But it is always women who take up the slack. It is always women are doing these, performing social services, basically, these are all, this is all interesting.
50:55
SM: Do you think the Equal Rights Amendment will ever be passed.
50:57
BA: I do not know.
50:57
SM: Because I do not see any effort to bring it up again,
51:00
BA: No, it is kind of got dead. After the, there was a big push in (19)70s and then it kind of died, you know, and it, but the opposition to it, you know, the opposition to it is really about the, my point where I was going with this is it is the implications of what equality means. And if you have a constitutional fact like that, then a woman could sue and say, the conditions of my employment are not equal. I am not getting equal pay, then we are talking about economics then we are talking about restructuring the whole economy. No. So all this fluff about the Equal Rights Amendment, like how we got to have unisex toilets and all that, that is just fluff. That is just, that is not really what the issue is.
51:49
SM: Yeah, I see a lot of them on university campuses.
51:51
BA: What? Unisex? Yeah, I mean, you know-
51:54
SM: In the airport and everywhere. I want to read this question. Now, this is two basic issues that I want to deal with here. And one of them is the issue of healing and the other is trust. Qualities that I am not sure, I would like your opinions on, I have to read this. We took a group of students to see Senator Muskie about a year and a half before he died. And we asked this question to him, because the students thought that he was going to respond to the 1968 convention he was at. Do you feel that the boomer generation is still having problems from healing from the divisions that that tore this nation apart in their youth, divisions between black and white, male and female, gay straight, divisions between those who supported the verdict and those who criticize it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not? Kind of a preface here what did the Wall playing in this process? And 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 thirty-five to forty years made this statement “Time heals all wounds” a truth? Basically, what I am saying is, do you think that that generation of students who were at Berkeley in (19)64, the students that went through the (19)60s that at the moratorium in (19)69. And we are talking now about a generation of, I am not even sure they know the exact number of boomers I hear its seventy to seventy-eight million. So, there is, so we are talking about quite a few people here, and probably 15 percent were involved in some sort of-
53:25
BA: I was going to say the vast majority were not involved.
53:26
SM: Yeah, but still 15 percent is a lot. And actually, I am a firm believer that this, that all of them were affected, subconsciously, you could not live through this period without having some sort of a feeling and to share whatever it might be and or come to some sort of revelation later in life that this really did influence me. But your thoughts on whether this is an important thing, or it is just impossible to heal, is healing it problem here in America? Oh, yes, he-
54:00
BA: Oh yes, healing is a problem. We carry our grudges. It is an interesting question. And-
54:15
SM: Let me say that Jim Scruggs wrote the book “To Heal a Nation,” which is his book, I am sure it is probably in here some place, which was “To Heal a Nation” obviously, the Vietnam Memorial was built to help the veterans and certainly their families and the people who died in the war and so forth. It is done a pretty good job. And I have been to the Wall twice. Yeah, I go to the Memorial Day and Veterans Day, have been doing so since (19)94. There is a lot of black ideals on there. I mean, still it helps, but I know a lot of Vietnam vets, I cannot even go there. So, but on to the next statement healing a nation and the question is whether what, what is the Wall done for the nation? And maybe the boomer generation and what and then of course, it is a general question. I asked on healing overall because of all these other divisions.
55:03
BA: Well, my opinion about healing is that it is an individual process. And it has to do with the willingness of individuals. You cannot heal a nation unless individuals heal themselves. Healing begins in the heart. And it really is, it is an individual process, you can create certain conditions that facilitate healing. But and, you know, you can watch, like myself, for example, I try to be very careful about what I say, and to whom I say it and how I say it, and to have what the Buddhists call” right speech.” In other words, not to, I try not to attack, you know, and try to be very careful about anger, you know, very hard, these are hard practices. Building a wall, oh it is fine. I mean, that is not fundamentally where healing happens. In my opinion, healing happens in the individual hearts of people. And it requires intensive work. Nobody can heal you, you must heal yourself. And part of the healing process for each individual is a decision that you are making about the quality of your own life. When you carry anger, when you carry hatred when you carry wounds, you are injuring yourself. And so, the, the ability to, to heal is your own decision. I am an incest survivor, for example. And I write about it in my memoir, and I had to make a decision to forgive my father.
57:23
SM: He is a Big Nicky; I have one of a couple of his books.
57:26
BA: And I had to make that decision. Otherwise, I was going to carry the hatred. The anger, it was more anger was not so, I do not know if it was hatred, but anger, frustration, and other things that it was all part of a constellation of things, because he never saw me as I really was, as I truly was, he only saw me as an extension of himself in my opinion. So, what I said earlier about standing up on top of a police car and making that speech of being heard, that is what I meant. That was a healing moment for me to be heard. Because I was never heard as a child. I was always an extension of my parents. So, what I said had to conform with what they believed, then I could be heard, but then I was not really heard was I? Now, my father helped me to forgive him by asking me to forgive him. So, I had, I was, I was very fortunate in being able to talk to him. I was very fortunate in his response to me, for other people it does not happen that way. But the decision to forgive is your own decision. Now-
58:42
SM: Could you like for example-
58:43
BA: So, you have, so Angela Davis tells an interesting story in public. Very interesting story. When she was a little girl, she was in Birmingham, Alabama. She was one of the, she lived in a, in a home that was called Dynamite Hill. There it was called Dynamite Hill, because there were black families as they moved in the Klan would bomb their homes. So, you know, little kid, right? She was a little kid grows up with feelings about white people. So, she tells the story, I just, she just told that the other day, and remember this the bombing of the Birmingham church. Right and all that, she was, she was a child when that happened. I mean, she remembers it. She remembers bombs going off when she was a little kid, you know, like brushing your teeth in the morning, and she would hear the explosions. So, she told the story. She said the doorbell would ring and she would go to answer the door. And then the person would say, you know, is your mother home or whatever, and she would yell out: Mama, there was a white guy at the door. Or there was a white man at the door, something like that. And her mother would come in and very gently she would say, “Angela, there is a man at the door.” Angela was saying to us, you know, my mother did that. Because my mother did not want me to hate white people. She was teaching me, so, so then but I am just saying, so then that is trying to, you know, in terms of healing here, that was a very important moment that Mrs. Davis was doing for her children, not just Angela, but all of her children, because she had a different consciousness. She was a very radical woman. She was a political activist. She wanted her children to understand that not all white people were enemies. So that so that they would not internalize all that stuff and have to heal from it. See? So, yeah, that is what I am trying to get at there.
1:01:04
SM: It is very well said. Like, I know Alan Canfora at Kent State is trying to meet with some of the guard. Of course, one and finally he met with had passed away of a heart attack. So, I think one of the things is to try to, I guess it is tough for him to be in the room with them, but he is trying to come to terms and, and certainly,
1:01:23
BA: Give me another example-
1:01:24
SM: Senator Muskie said that we had not healed since-
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Dr. Bettina Apthker
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Apthker, Bettina ; McKiernan, Stephen
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Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Peace movements—United States--20th century; Feminists; Political activists--United States; Apthker, Bettina--Interviews
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Dr. Bettina Apthker is a political activist, radical feminist, academic, and author. As a former member of the Communist Party USA she was active in civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960's and 1970's, and has worked in developing feminist studies since the late 1970's. Dr. Apthker has a Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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ND
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.17
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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61:26
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Audio interviews
Title
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McKiernan Interviews
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2009-12-01
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
John S. Baky
Language
English
Biographical Text
John Baky is the Dean of Libraries, Emeritus & Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at La Salle University. <span>He earned his Bachelor’s degree in English literature from Gettysburg College, Master’s degrees from Columbia University and Wesleyan University, and a certificate from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. </span>Baky was in the Army (1969-1971) and served in Vietnam from 1970-1971 where he received a Bronze Star. In 1980 he joined the library staff at LaSalle University where he founded the Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War Collection that centered on how the transition of that war played out in the literature. He oversaw one of the most unique Special Collections in the world that oversees 3,500 items that include novels, short stories, comics, photography, poetry, films, music (Bob Dylan Collection is special), videos, TV productions, and graphic arts. Baky, from the outset, had first-hand knowledge of Southeast Asia as a former Army First Lieutenant assigned to the infantry division.
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":"John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address; Jungle School; Vietnam War; Veterans; Military Surplus; Students for a Democratic Society; Sexism; Stonewall riots; Richard Nixon; Spiro Agnew; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Robert McNamara; Civil Rights; Benjamin Spock; Jerry Rubin; Gloria Steinem; Daniel Ellsberg"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":2,"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address; Jungle School; Vietnam War; Veterans; Military Surplus; Students for a Democratic Society; Sexism; Stonewall riots; Richard Nixon; Spiro Agnew; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Robert McNamara; Civil Rights; Benjamin Spock; Jerry Rubin; Gloria Steinem; Daniel Ellsberg</span>
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150:15
Subject LCSH
Librarians; Soldiers; La Salle University; Baky, John S.--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
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Interview with John Baky
Contributor
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Baky, John S. ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
Subject
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Librarians; Soldiers; La Salle University; Baky, John S.--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
John Baky is the Director of Libraries at La Salle University and the Curator of Rare Book and Manuscript. Baky served in the United States Army from 1969-1971,specifically the Vietnam War. He completed his undergraduate work at Gettysburg College. He received a degree in Library Science from Columbia University and a Master’s Degree in Liberal Arts from Wesleyan University.
John Baky is the Dean of Libraries, Emeritus & Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at La Salle University. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in English literature from Gettysburg College, Master’s degrees from Columbia University and Wesleyan University, and a certificate from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. Baky was in the Army (1969-1971) and served in Vietnam from 1970-1971 where he received a Bronze Star. In 1980 he joined the library staff at LaSalle University where he founded the Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War Collection that centered on how the transition of that war played out in the literature. He oversaw one of the most unique Special Collections in the world that oversees 3,500 items that include novels, short stories, comics, photography, poetry, films, music (Bob Dylan Collection is special), videos, TV productions, and graphic arts. Baky, from the outset, had first-hand knowledge of Southeast Asia as a former Army First Lieutenant assigned to the infantry division.
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Date
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2009-12-01
Rights
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In Copyright
Language
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.18a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.18b
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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150:15
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
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Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-03-25
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Lewis V. Baldwin, 1949-
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Lewis Baldwin is a historian, author, and scholar. Dr. Lewis is a Professor of Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University. He specializes in the history of the Black churches in the United States. Dr. Baldwin received his Ph.D. in American Christianity at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dr. Lewis Baldwin is a historian, author, and scholar. Dr. Lewis is a Professor of Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University. He specializes in the history of the Black churches in the United States. Dr. Baldwin received his Ph.D. in American Christianity at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
2 Microcassettes
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
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Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Montgomery Bus Boycott; Rosa Parks; Teenage Pregnancy; Individualism; Segregation; Civil Rights Movement; Martin Luther King Jr.; Barack Obama; Black Nationals; Black Veterans; Dorothy Height; Ella Baker; Black Church; Richard Nixon; John F. Kennedy; Elvis Presley; Stevie Wonder; Aretha Franklin; O.J Simpson; Kent State; Jackson State"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":2,"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Montgomery Bus Boycott; Rosa Parks; Teenage Pregnancy; Individualism; Segregation; Civil Rights Movement; Martin Luther King Jr.; Barack Obama; Black Nationals; Black Veterans; Dorothy Height; Ella Baker; Black Church; Richard Nixon; John F. Kennedy; Elvis Presley; Stevie Wonder; Aretha Franklin; O.J Simpson; Kent State; Jackson State</span>
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152:21
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Historians; Authors; Scholars; College teachers; Baldwin, Lewis V., 1949--Interviews
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Interview with Dr. Lewis Baldwin
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Baldwin, Lewis V., 1949- ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Historians; Authors; Scholars; College teachers; Baldwin, Lewis V., 1949--Interviews
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Dr. Lewis Baldwin is a historian, author, and scholar. Dr. Lewis is a Professor of Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University. He specializes in the history of the Black churches in the United States. Dr. Baldwin received his Ph.D. in American Christianity at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2010-03-25
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.19a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.19b
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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172:21
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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
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-06-29
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Michael Barone
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, a historian, and a journalist. Barone was a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, which is a reference work on Congress and state politics. He received a Bachelor's degree from Harvard College and a Law degree from Yale Law School."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":7047,"3":{"1":0},"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}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial"}">Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the <em>Washington Examiner</em>, a historian, and a journalist. Barone was a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, which is a reference work on Congress and state politics. He received a Bachelor's degree from Harvard College and a Law degree from Yale Law School.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
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MicroCassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
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89:54
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Political Science; Vietnam War draft; Generational gap; Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Silent generation; Mainstream media; Nixonland; Native American/ American Indian Movement; Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Political Science; Vietnam War draft; Generational gap; Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Silent generation; Mainstream media; Nixonland; Native American/American Indian Movement; Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.</span>
Subject LCSH
Historians; Journalists; Barone, Michael--Interviews
Transcription
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Michael Barone
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Benjamin Mehdi So
Date of interview: 29 June 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
0:03
SM: Testing One, two. Yeah.
0:0:05
MB: I will speak right into it.
0:0:07
SM: And I have to double check to make sure.
0:0:13
MB: Yeah.
0:13
SM: First question I really want to ask is how did you become who you are early in your life or your parents, professors, role models, people to look up to when you were younger?
0:31
MB: Well, I was- guess I recounted that autobiography, that little fragmentary speech to the Bradley Prize you know I was an early reader. My parents were professional people. My father's a doctor. And his father was a doctor, my mother taught school for a while, it was full time. Homemaker and you know, we encourage reading and, you know, my mother claims I was a very early reader, I think she exaggerates, but, you know, trying to recognize letters when I was two. And I think I have just got a mind a brain that is kind of hardwired for-for reading. As I recount there, I was interested in things like statistics, the populations of major cities in 1940, and 1950. So, when I got an encyclopedia that had the 1950 census, when I must have been about six or seven, I was very excited to read this and to make tables and write up things and so forth. I just, you know, clearly had a desire to know these things. I think I tend to sort information out by geography, I would study the Detroit city map, I could recite all the streets, that cross seven mile from Woodward west to five points I was the- we went on a trip to Florida and road trip in the spring of 1951. And at one point, came to a traffic circle on a town in Tennessee or Georgia. And there was a dispute about which road they should take out of my parents that we should take this one, I said, no, you should take that one. And about 12 miles later, they said, we took the wrong one. And I became the family navigator, at that point; and stuff. So, I always want to know where I am. I learned north southeast to west before I learned right and left. And you know, one advantage when I am doing things like my Almanac, American politics is that I tend to sort information that comes my way by geography. So, if I am thinking about Lancaster County, Ohio, you the congressional district, [inaudible], I may remember about the boyhood home of William John Sherman, and stuff from your account of it, I will probably plug that information back and be able to plug that in, because it is sorted out by geography. It is not random. And, you know, I think that is one of the ways we do memory, is not it, we, we, we sort things out. And we have some organizing principle or something. Anyway, that is the way my brain works. So, I was sort of blessed with you know. So, high verbal being hardwired for reading, you know, very nonathletic, so I was terrible at that, wanted to avoid it. My mother made sure I was you know, advanced in school she sent me started sending me to elite private school in the fourth grade. Because she felt the public school was not doing enough for me. And so [crosstalk] so that I could, you know, boy that went on to the boy’s school in seventh through 12th grade. And I was so you know, intellectually very fast tracked or turns out there were lots of smart people there. This was a boarding and day school; I was a day student. We [inaudible] Cranbrook School, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, through a lot of smart people from the Detroit Metro area. I mean, I sometimes like to say that all the schools I went to the public school I went to from kindergarten through third grade Warren E. Bow School in Detroit, always the student body size about a third Jewish. And I always say if you want your kids to get a good education, put them in a school, that is about a third Jewish or more. And, you know, whatever the quality of the teachers, they are going to be a lot of smart kids around, and it will be a fairly-fairly fast track. So, you know, this was, I was always very interested in history. And so, I can sort things by dates. I tend to remember dates. I remember the dates of people's birth because it is easier to remember their eight o'clock back, remember their age later. So, when you mentioned Gene McCarthy, I remember 1916 first election of Congress in 1948, from the fourth district of Minnesota, Ramsey County, and that sort of information comes naturally to me.
5:09
SM: Gaylord Malcom, Wisconsin. Governor.
5:14
MB: Yeah, he was elected in, let us see, elected to senate 1962. I guess elected governor 1958 and (19)60 Pat Lucey succeeded at [inaudible]. Or no, they did they elect a republican governor for a while, yeah, they elected Warren Knowles as the republican governor. And then they went to Lucey one, later, and then stuff. So that was, so, you know, and I just wanted to you know, I wanted to learn more. And I wanted to know, how the world works. So, I want to learn those census figures. I was fascinated Detroit was the fourth largest city in the country in 1940. And then slipped a fifth in 1950 even though it grew, because Chicago, Los Angeles outpaced it, and everything. So, I wanted to know all that stuff. And I wanted to know dates. So, I have memorized, you know, the presidents, vice presidents, kings of England, stuff like that, I guess it is an attempt to want to make sense of the world around you and understand it better. And by having you know, precise geographic locations and dates, you can understand a lot, you know, absolutely cannot stand the whole theme of progressive education, which first goes back to 1920, where you do not want to make kids memorize dates, that is so dull and tedious. How the heck are they are able to understand things if they do not know that the revolution you know, 1776, the Civil War is 1861. No wonder they take tests now where the kids cannot figure out which one comes first. That little mnemonic of remembering four digits, the first of which is almost always won, is pretty easy way to sort information out. And even somebody that does not glass with high verbal aptitude or math aptitude can make sense of it. If you just make them memorize the dates, and if you make them memorize that at a young age, they will have it forever, like they have their times tables. When you I mean, adults do not forget seven times nine-
7:05
SM: When you look at, this is the question-
7:07
MB: If they have to make it up themselves to draw little boxes on the table to remember seven times nine, they are not going to remember it, memorize it-
7:14
SM: You like the way that higher education and the basically how they divided generations, you have got the World War Two, the greatest generation, you got the family generation, you get the boomers, which I am talking about.
07:28
MB: There is a lot to that.
07:30
SM: Your thoughts on how you like the identification of generations based on years, or you do [inaudible]?
7:38
MB: Yeah, I like that. I think, you know, Generations, that book by Neil Howe in the late William Strauss, pretty good book. You know, my first response is, gee, this is gimmicky, but I think they are actually on to something. And one of the things I have noticed in politics, you know, and I have been trying to analyze politics, when I first started off doing that, when I was in my teens, that I had to understand the point of view of people who were a lot older than I am an experienced and lived through many experiences, the 1920s (19)30s, (19)40s, and so forth. Now, I have to find out, and I have to find myself trying to understand people who have not lived through a lot of experiences, I have, and what the world looks like to them. And I think the point of the generations is that it works against the conceit of political science. Political science, you know, drawing from the analogy with the natural sciences, starting the 19th century wants to make generalizations that are always true. And what I find is that you want to- this generation stop being true after a while because people will bring to different experiences, they do not have the identical sort of experience going through. So that for that reason, I think that is the kind of flaw in political science and, you know, some of the lessons that everybody taught when I first started studying politics, the political scientists were teaching them subsequently disproved. You know, the President's party always loses seats in the off your elections. Well, as we sit here today, the President's party gained seats and two out of the last three off your elections. Yeah, well, there is some reason for the rule. You know, basically, the President's party is stuck with the President's program, the out party can adapt to local terrain. But the overall situation is that, you know, I am going to pause to eat for a while and so forth, but I sort of identify as baby boomer generation, even though I was born 1944, two years before the date of if you read the Generations book, they started in 1943 is the birth year, which gives them Newt Gingrich and Bill Bradley. Right. Hey, Tommy Haden was born earlier. Well, and you have got you know, John Kerry who was born in the last day of 1943. Or the last month took the there is something to it because generations teams tend to have the same experience with events and things. You know it is similar at least they confronted the same events and you know like the culture war within the conservative and liberal camps of the baby boom generation responded differently to it. But they, you know, they were they were facing many similar situations.
10:43
SM: We think one of the things that comes out that both early dinners those born between (19)46 and (19)54, are really totally different than the boomers that were born from the (19)55 to (19)64. Because they experienced different things even within the generation. And they [inaudible] went on college campus, when all this stuff was happening either.
11:07
MB: There is something to that. Um, now, Barack, Obama is technically a boomer-based disability or not being a boomer. Yet, I am above the culture wars of the boomer generation. That was the gist of his 2004 convention speech.
11:27
SM: Yeah, people try to identify him as a nation of boomer-
11:33
MB: I think that is part of his appeal. I think that is why he has not around to personal animosity that both Clinton and George W. Bush did. Because each of them happens to have personal characteristics, which struck people on the other side of the cultural divide, as just absolutely loathsome. And Barack Obama does not have those sorts of personal characteristics, in my view.
12:00
SM: The question I ask you right now is when you look at the boomer years 1946-(19)64. And the oldest boomers are now in the age of 64 and the youngest are 48 this year. Please describe, in your own words, the following periods during boomer live-
12:20
MB: [inaudible] One of my favorite things, to say good news is that the baby boomer generation will die out the bad news is that I am going to die about the same time-
12:32
SM: Yeah well, define that period 1946 to 1960, in terms of just a few words, your thoughts on-
12:38
MB: Well, you have got a period of you know, you are in a period of postwar app, once you are in a period where there starts to be a real commercial market for adolescent products, forms of entertainment, you start to get a split between the universal culture of, you know, 1930s, and (19)40s, movies’ 1950s and (19)60s television. And then you get generational niches in popular culture. You get this sort of oppositional sense adversarial sense to society. You have the episode of the military draft in Vietnam, which is technically an egalitarian thing, because-because of all the exceptions to the draft, it was actually go back you will find that fewer sons of members of Congress served in the military in Vietnam did in the Gulf War, or the Iraq war. Mostly worked out very inegalitarian place and you had groups of people worry and are identified as elite people refusing to fight which has vivid contrast with previous generations and most particularly, you know, the World War Two generation. [crosstalk] -generation, a match. See, you get the breakdown of universal cultural institutions of which the military draft does not operate in World War Two. And the years immediately, thereafter, was one.
14:09
SM: James Fallows talked about that in an article he wrote back in 1975, “What Did You Do in the [the Class] War, Daddy?”-
14:16
MB: You are right.
14:18
SM: Which is in the older generation book, and he talks about it in a symposium with Bobby Mahler and James Webb and Gen. Wheeler. If you look at the 1946, right after World War Two, right break through the time the President, we have already talked about it. But before President Kennedy was elected, boomers the oldest boomers are just starting to go into junior high school when President Kennedy comes on board. What were the major events and the business that kind of subconsciously or consciously affected those boomers?
14:55
MB: I think they came out of a society in which you had unusual high confidence in institutions. Bill Schneider and Marni Lipsett wrote a book about the confidence gap and was sort of saying, gee America starting in the (19)70s, or there abouts, late (19)60s loses confidence in institutions is a sort of theme is this is a country that always had confidences in their institutions. I think that is maybe an artifact of the fact that the pollsters did not start answering those questions till about 1950. If you could go back and pull people starting in 1787, or whenever he might have found that lack of confidence in institutions or discontent with them, was the norm rather than the exception.
15:42
SM: Now that was in the (19)60s and the (19)70s. But that is [inaudible] (19)50s, correct?
15:47
MB: Yeah, well.
15:47
SM: Because it was just a-
15:48
MB: We grew up in an America where they had consequences institutions. And they felt free to crash them. Particularly since it was to their advantage to do things like not serve in the military. I am speaking a part of the generation obviously, not the whole of it.
16:05
SM: What made President Kennedy so unique, so to speak, was that speech he gave when he became president resurrection ask not what you are going to do, or you can do for your country?
16:07
MB: Listen, these people got to sign up in the military, including me, right? Yeah.
16:25
SM: James Webb, we met many years before he became senator said that one of the weaknesses of the boomer generation is in this fear of them that speech was hoped to be the inspiration to service and that Peace Corps service or good managers and service to America that serving one country in the military would seem to be the norm after that point. Something try that top, top of the week recommended, this is in 1981. If the weakness was the fact that it is the generation that truly does not understand the meaning of serving one's nation, even though you had a president who inspired you.
17:05
MB: Yeah, I think there is something I think there is a lot to that. You just did not think- I am blaming [inaudible] the people structured the draft that way and gave exemption for college students. You know, this was based on some analogy in a World War One, where the British lost all these Oxford and Cambridge graduates, we, I mean, I have military deferments to all my college years. I went to law school; they gave me a deferment for that. Then they said, we are withdrawing graduate school deferments. But if you have already got one, you can renew it. Why the hell did the government need me to go to law school, but that was public policy and I took advantage of it. Then I got a job as a law clerk, for a federal judge. And I got a different occupational deferment for that. And then they announced they were getting rid of occupational deferments. But if you had one, you could renew it. Same thing, why was it so necessary that I be at a law firm to a federal judge instead of in the military? I mean, I would argue I was better at that than I might have been at something in the military, but from public policy point of view, pretty weak public policy, I sort of felt that way at the time, but I took advantage of these policies.
18:22
SM: When you look at the (19)60s, do you see a difference between the (19)60s and the (19)70s was like, overall?
18:32
MB: Well, the seeds of you know, mixed cultures, adversarial cultures, rejection, lack of confidence in society, which were nurtured by particularly by [inaudible] in the (19)60s then become the common norm in the (19)70s. I mean, Daniel Yankelevits wrote a book called New Rules that really sets that out back in 1981. And I think that is pretty definitive.
18:54
SM: Do You think that is why Carter was elected? They were-
19:03
MB: Well, that is a different question, we were talking about public more or less competence institutions to get a sense of whether you are supportive of or adversarial to the country and stop those attitudes, change. You get losses of confidence and some of its related to public policy failures, Vietnam, stagflation. You know, you have Presidents who are very experienced people, Johnson and Nixon who turned out to be grave disappointments to the public. That means the value of experiences just come by voters. So, they elect a peanut farmer from Georgia without Georgia as President. Then they become discontent with him. Then elect a former movie star far as they do not want to go. Because Reagan has one advantage that he was, unlike most of our current politicians could speak in the language of that universal culture of which he had been a part is a brave person and radio, movies and TV. When the purpose of those cultures was to attract universal audiences, everybody- Reagan just naturally fit into that he was the sort of person who in his personal values and character background, fitted him like a glove. I do not think that language. I think Obama tried to do that in just 2004 speech, but I think that it is hard to access that language for politicians today, maybe the next generations will find it easier. Boomers find it hard Clinton and Bush were never able to do.
20:54
SM: The People that protested five to 10 percent of the activists who were involved in the movements and protested against the war, a lot of them had a problem with President Reagan and President Bush one, because President Reagan really came to power in California based on his battles against the students out there during the student protest movement of (19)64.
21:20
MB: Well, he had a large riot. Right. I mean, you know, the democrats said, we are going to do lots of things for lots of people, and especially for students and blacks. And the students and blacks are rioting. And the taxpayers say what the hell is going on? People are the beneficiaries, and they are rioting. We need to have some exertion of control. And of course, that was an electorate that was tilted towards GI generation and silent generation and all that. They thought this stuff was terrible. So, you know-
21:53
SM: Well, the law I mean-
21:55
MB: I wrote, I wrote a piece in the Harvard Crimson, you can access by the way, any of my pieces of the Harvard Crimson. Yeah, [inaudible] too. It is not a particular friend of mine. He was on the Crimson later. If you look at the Harvard Crimson.com. It has got everything in the paper since 1873, you can access Franklin D, Roosevelt's writing.
22:16
SM: Oh, my God.
22:17
MB: So, you can go back to my columns 1963 through (19)65 and see what I was writing then when I was a liberal, but had some qualms about some aspects of liberalism, or just sort of predicted that Reagan had a chance to win. Fo-for example, in California, which was not the ge- the general perception was his way to the right. This is another Goldwater. He is too, you know, the political scientists were saying he is too extreme. And my conclusion, looking at the data and looking at some special election results was these people are embracing this and they do not like Watson Berkeley.
22:54
SM: Because that people [inaudible] talking about fifty-nine-
22:57
MB: Before that there was the Free Speech Movement in 1965-
23:04
SM: (19)64 [inaudible] Mario Savio-
23:05
MB: Well, that was the initial thing was that Berkeley would not give a permit to people who wanted to campaign for the Johnson Humphrey ticket on campus on Sproul Plaza. Seems pretty harmless in retrospect, but that was there was there was going to be no politics on campus. It is kind of stupid in retrospect, but lots of people at the Goldwater people go there, let everybody go there and have a booth and whatever.
23:29
SM: I think Parker was fired by President Reagan.
23:33
MB: He was born religious. And I was talking about the knowledge base.
23:38
SM: When you look at the (19)80s in terms of the links to boomers, they are now getting older. They are in their (19)40s [inaudible] generation fee, and then in the (19)80s, and the (19)90s with Bill Clinton?
23:53
MB: Well, I think it is one of the things you see, and I guess sort of foresaw this going back to the late (19)70s, late (19)60s, early (19)70s. And, in my experience in the McGovern campaign, you know, if you are looking at who enters politics is sort of the peace movement almost entirely the Democratic Party, not quite entirely. It is affluent people. I mean, I was, you know, I was involved in precinct delegates and Oakland County Democratic Party and the-the working-class towns did not elect PC. They elected union hacks, and sort of party loyalists went back 25 years. And the [inaudible] areas where there were very few Democratic voters at that time, elected peaceniks. A small number of people there that were Democrats were-were away to the left and stuff. And that sort of thing goes on, you know, and that is a harbinger. One of the things we have seen, and it comes most prominent, starting in (19)96 election is the movement of affluent professionals towards the Democratic Party. Based on liberal issues on cultural. This is the liberal half of the baby boomer generation, and they are voting for the democrat on California, they are running for Democrats who are bankrupting the states to enrich the public employee unions. But hey, they cannot bear to have anybody say anything bad about abortions. So, they are going to keep voting against their own immediate financial interest. But more importantly, for a bunch of, you know, greedy hacks who are bankrupting a private sector economy for no good reason-
25:27
SM: When we go into [inaudible] time the first 10 years of this century, President Bush was the first to talk about and we are about a year and a half into President Obama; there has been some writers out there in the past couple of years that have said that a lot of problems in our economy goes back to that boomer generation, that-that-that want it now generation got to have it now. That is the kind of mentality where people get in debt.
26:02
MB: Well, I do not know, it is just boomers, I mean, I think you got a lot of people. You know by this decade, the boomers have been homeowners, you know, for quite a while, my wife, they suddenly went out and bought a home. You know, on a dodgy mortgage. You know you had a period a period of extended low interest rates, this is maybe a product of the successful anti-inflation policies of the Federal Reserve and various administrations, when you have very low interest rates, you got an incentive not to save and you got an incentive to borrow. Right. I mean, that is what the market is suggesting you do. So yeah, I mean, one of the things that is good, I mean, as a general proposition, I think, you know, our method of home finance, over the long run of history has been a good thing. And it has helped people get a stake in society by owning property. You know, you look at 1945, we were a nation of renter's majority renters, we have become a nation of homeowners, that is probably a good thing. We got up to about 65 percent, that worked pretty well, when we got to 69 percent homeowners that fell apart. Well, that should tell us something which is, you know, 65 percent about as high as you want to go.
27:22
SM: That would be a quality, then oftentimes [inaudible] it is hard to talk about 74 million people, but if you were to get the positive or negative qualities. Thank you very much. of the people, you know, are the generation as a whole, can you say? Like, you know, that technology is basically coming from boomers. Technology, talks about the housings of certain things that come out that make this generation look good, as opposed to bad.
27:54
MB: Well, you know, [inaudible] arguments made by a lot of liberals is they are socially, culturally more tolerant. That culturally marked our and there is something to that, you know, if you go back and look at the racial attitudes that Robert Byrd was appealing to at the beginning of his political career, when he moved from Kleagle to state representative, they are not very attractive to us today. They were not very attractive to me in the 1950s, and (19)60s, and so forth. So, you know, I think there is, you know, clearly an improvement there. And when the liberals make that point, they got a good point. You know this generation to self-indulgence, so forth, you can make that argument. I do not know if I want to go through the whole generation and so forth. You know, I think the boomers were the first generation to make their way through life and niche cultures rather than universal culture. We lost the universal popular culture. Just as, we were losing, you know, we lost the universal news cast. Everybody used to watch one of three networks. In my view, they abused their responsibility died by being claiming to be objective, while in fact being fiercely partisan. They got what they deserve. But it is technology as much as anything else that shames that.
29:26
SM: Do you think the media though and the time the boomers were in the (19)60s, we know how important television was the first time that generation or never seen the war on [inaudible].
29:39
MB: Well, they had seen the violence attended to enforcing legal segregation in the south and part of the genius of Martin Luther King that he had a sense that when people saw this on television, you know, you have got the Birmingham rebellion in (19)63. That is the same year they could go to a half hour newscast.
30:00
SM: Do you think that-
30:06
MB: So, there is some of that, you know, illustrates the unpleasant side a side of achieving progress. I mean, if we had had that kind of you know, Jim Woolsey, he is friend of mine, wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal, I think back in the (19)90s worth looking up. That is how the present press would have reported the D Day landings.
30:27
SM: Oh my god. Yeah.
30:29
MB: And, you know, it would have been the headline would have been [inaudible] resignation. You know, you know, and there were people, you know, we- newspapers made a whole lot of things about, you know, the 1000 deaths in Iraq, 2000 deaths in Iraq. I mean, in D Day, they- I forget the figures. But you know, that 24–36-hour period, you are having multiple people killed every minute. You know, and the public did not see, you know, footage comparable to searching for private Saving Private Ryan yet. At that time, they did get a still photography, almost all newsreels were set in black and white, except for the movie maker, George Stevens did color. But it was censored. And it was by a press that basically said, we want people to think well of this country. We want the good guys to win. The good guys are us. It was a we and they press.
31:33
SM: That for that-that [inaudible] changed in the (19)60s so this-
31:37
MB: The (19)60s changes-
31:39
SM: We were the bad guy and the view of many, I know Bobby Muller dropped [inaudible]. He went off the serve and came back to love this country even after but he then he started seeing the way he was treated in the hospitals and how getting better being treated. Just something wrong here. And then the-the bottom line is that a lot of veterans realize that we are not the good guy. We are the bad guy.
32:08
MB: Well, I do not think we were the bad guys. I- in fact, I was you know opposed to this war after a while and sort of Prudential grounds, but I did not believe we were the bad guys. I mean, I am, I am not ready to have a discussion with anybody about Vietnam, who does not believe that would have been better for the Vietnamese of our side and prevail? Because I think the subsequent history makes that very clear. Because the premier ruse, and wow, these people massacred people, they were a bloody mining dictatorship, you know, the government we were supporting was not perfect, by any means. But it was not like a totalitarian dictatorship. And, yeah, you look at the Vietnamese government today, things are somewhat better in a variety of ways, get started tolerable. They want to be a trade partner with the United States. That is fine. This is, you know, 40, 50 years later. But I think that you have to say that it would have been better for the South Vietnamese if-if our side had prevailed. Now you can then go on to make prudential things about was it worthwhile to do so did we do so in the right way ahead of them better to allow these bad things to happen as we have in history allowed other bad things to happen? I mean, at the end of World War Two, we cooperated with the Soviets by repatriating Russian prisoners of war, sending them on trains, you know, they were clean with their fingers trying to get off and stuff because they knew they would be executed in Russia. They were so we colluded in this process. As a price of winning that war, could we have won the war without the Soviet Union? Not likely, or at least with very much higher casualties and horror in that difficulty? You know, and so forth. I mean, you know, Hitler had not invaded the Soviet Union. You know Britain was already saved, but what about the rest of Europe? What about all this stuff, you know? So, history gives us gives our leaders and ultimately our voters, some tragic choices to make. Churchill goes on. After this, Hitler invades the Soviet Union. And makes a statement is saying, if the devil were to come and fight Hitler, I would at least find myself able to make some favorable reference to hell, in the in the House of Commons. You know, that was, you know, June 22, 1941. That is a very, very big date in history. We have to do that. And, you know, I think in some sense, the boomers are holding their elders to an impossible standard. You have to do something that is purely good. You have to do it perfectly well. And that is not the way history works. That is not the way human societies work. That is not a standard by which our World War Two effort stands up to scrutiny.
35:04
SM: I have one person I interviewed that she actually broke down. I am sorry. But whenever I see that scene in 1975, on April 30, of the helicopter going off the roof. At the very end, I guess Ellsberg [inaudible], knowing the people that could not get on that last helicopter have ever been in last.
35:28
MB: He was going to be tortured and killed.
35:29
SM: Yeah, tortured and killed. And we knew many who had served in the South Vietnamese Army were throwing away their uniforms, hoping that they would not be identified as being on the other side.
35:39
MB: So, it is like putting those [inaudible] Red Army [inaudible], the POW is on the trains. Where we actively did that, and World War Two, we proactively put them on the trains. We could have told Stalin; we are not going to do that. Our leaders had agreed to do that. And we could have well done that agreement. We decided not to because we were not. We did not want to go to war with the Soviet Union right after World War Two, for a lot of good reasons.
36:07
SM: This person said that, right around that same time, President Ford, they tried to ask questions after the helicopter, thank you very much. Yeah, he would not comment. He walked away, he would not comment on the [inaudible].
36:22
MB: He was pretty upset.
36:26
SM: I do not know if you want to continue here-
36:27
MB: Maybe we should continue downstairs, we will be a little quieter.
36:31
SM: Okay. Say that again.
36:32
MB: The boomers held their elders to a standard of protection. You know, how can you criticize me for smoking pot when you are having a martini every night? I think the boomers continue. Many of them, particularly on the sort of liberal side have a sort of adolescent attitude that they carry far into life. We are going to criticize the old folks. And we do not have any standards, you know, we can go out and get drunk, that is fine. But the old folks have two martinis before dinner, we are going to give them a hard time. And we are going to hold them up to an impossible standard. And at least on the liberal side, and maybe you can make this argument about the conservatives as well. They hold the society up to impossible standards. As I say they do not acknowledge the necessity of making tragic choices, they do not acknowledge the imperfections of human activity and so forth and they-they make these sorts of adolescent criticisms of everybody that become kind of incoherent after a while and you know, um, you have also the-the delight childbearing. I mean, if you got back in, I think it read 1972 Richard Nixon and Wilbur Mills colluded in you know, big increases Social Security checks. The first one arrived October 3 a month before the election (19)72 they put in double colons which had to be changed, they actually heading into the highest inflation period in recent American history, they doubled [inaudible] with everybody. So, the benefits went away, it was a hell lot more than they should have started glitched when you get when you write a big bill. And the- you know, in some ways you can see that is and this is an argument Strauss and how making generations the, the GI generation gets paid off and allows the culture to be dominated by the boomers or the liberal half of the boomers and just sort of seeds cultural leadership and stewardship Johnson and Nixon did not turn out well. So, what the hell we will take our money and run and go off to the Florida retirement community or whatever. And the boomer’s kind of attitudes, including those by people who were actually older than boomers, you know, like the Gary Hart's in politics, the David Halberstam is in journalism. We were actually silent generation people by their own years. Take over institutions like the media, which then became mainstream media becomes very adversarial to the largest society critical of it. And a mainstream media which in the 1950s did not really matter much in the way of a murmur of protest against the legal segregation of the South in the way that it was enforced, often by violence and terror. Did not see fit to make much noise about that. By you know, the 19- by the 1970s, is now vigorously critical of American mores, as racist and is always ready to see racism and stuff, when in fact, the performance of the country in terms of its behavior had hugely improved. I mean, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1964,1965 were hugely effective legislation. You know, the mores of the South changed, I think, very rapidly. The public accommodation section, which is crazy grandpa Kentucky was questioning was hugely successful in the South, I think because basically white Southerners decided that if they have to serve black people in restaurants, well, they should be polite like everybody else and say, y'all come back. And what do you want, sir, ma'am, and so forth. And they just applied the sort of Southern culture of politeness, which is a cultural style that is fairly distinctive. They applied it, which they had always applied to white people, they applied it to black people, too. And, you know, what are we seeing now we are seeing migrations, for example, not very large, but perceptible of black people from Los Angeles, where most people are rude now, to Atlanta, where most people are polite.
40:54
SM: I got a whole bunch of questions here. So, they are going to go through fast and- Newt Gingrich said something in 1994. And actually, George Willis has written several times in some of his commentaries that, that the problems we have in our society today, the problems, the divorce rate, the-the drug culture, the lack of respect for authority, the beginning of the isms, the, you know, bad employees on the boomer generation, (19)60s and (19)70s. And so, the problems we have, in many respects are-
41:37
MB: What the data show is that sort of this these behaviors symbolized by people, you know, living together before getting married, which becomes popular among the elites in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. The ankle oval, book, new rules published in 1981, documents pretty thoroughly that this becomes widely applicable across the society. By 1981, the (19)70s for most Americans, the (19)70s were that the (19)60s were actually occurred in the 1970s. And what we have seen in subsequent data is, in a number of people have written about this deal, David Brooks has written about a Kay S. Hymowitz, it is in the Manhattan Institute has written about this, this sort of upper half of society by education, income, whatever, is behaving actually, according to the old rules, now. They-they may live together before they get married, they do not have children until they get married, they tend to have lower rates of divorce, they tend to, you know, be pretty stable and steady people. You know, divorce is hugely harmful to, you know, long term lifetime wealth accumulation. I mean, it is just a huge setback. And it is kind of the lower half of society, roughly, that you got these very, and of course, with huge situation when black people, you know, unmarried parenthood, serial divorce, serial marriage, which are, you know, harmful. That, you know, the children who come out of those situations have much worse outcomes than the children that come out of the traditional rule’s thing. And the, you know, divorce is, you know, a way to make the- you know, most people should be able to accumulate, most people in America do accumulate significant wealth in their lifetimes. And I think this continues to be true, despite the financial crisis and so forth, which has put a dent in the nominal wealth of very many people, but I think is not eliminated the path by which most people can assume can well accumulate significant wealth in housing and financial instruments in the course of their lifetime. All these measurements that say, well, most Americans do not have wealth, do not stratified by age, you do not want to have 25 to 30-year-old have wealth, if they do not know how to handle it, they do very poorly with it, as rich people about how they try to train their children to live intelligently with wealth and that screw up their law habits screw up their lives. Rich people spend a lot of time and effort and thought about that, because they know that it can be, you know, a screw up, you know, they can treat it like basketball players or something and you get a lot of bad outcomes there. From this sudden wealth at a young age. If you bet that the affluent people are basically, you are playing by the old rules that the non-affluent, the more vulnerable claimed by the new rules and you know, divorce kills your lifetime wealth accumulation. It takes to one household that has accumulated some wealth and distribute and creates to households with zero wealth. And dad is a [inaudible], you know, that burdens and income and so forth. It is just devastated.
44:48
SM: Sure. Overall, he made references to it, but the counterculture is very well known. There were two classic books that came out around that (19)71, (19)72 timeframe. And it was The Greening of America, by Charles Reich [crosstalk]. And then the second one was The Making of a Counterculture by Theodore Roszak. I do not know if you saw that.
45:07
MB: I am not that familiar that.
45:08
SM: He talked about the different consciousness of [crosstalk], you think of a counterculture as long hair, bell bottoms, communal type of living–
45:21
MB: I saw Charles Reich. He was a teacher at Yale when I was a Yale Law School, I did not take his class or happen to be in his course. You know, and he was a teacher. [audio cuts] Right to welfare in the Constitution, we were going to have judges that were going to say you got a right to a standard of income from the government. Pure lunacy. I remember seeing him one time there was a little branch of [inaudible] on York Street in New Haven, right here Yale Law School. And I remember seeing Charles Reich sitting there, and he was cashing a gift certificate buying a sport coat. I guess his mom had bought him a sport coat or something. No, this is the man that wants to redistribute income, but he is still getting gifts from his gifts from his family. They have an interesting counterculture, is not it?
46:13
SM: I think he is actually living in California right now.
46:15
MB: Yeah. He has been out of public eye for a long time. And that book, I think, is pure lunacy. I mean, well, it basically makes the argument that the problems of production are all solved. We are going to have all live in affluence without any effort, whatever. And now, we can just sit around and groove. I mean, what an adolescent view of life, it is the adolescent is boys’ dope, it was mother's still buying him a sport coat? It is funny that a-a lot of people like that would wear a sport coat.
46:45
SM: You have made a comment to that a lot of the boomers, particularly activists that make up five to 10 percent of that 74 million, many of them did not grow up. And even though they may be 63 years old, they still have not grown up, they may have had a family, they have not grown up, you think a lot of them have not grown up, they still have that?
47:04
MB: Well, I think there is some of that. I mean, I think the sense of being adversarial to a larger society, it comes naturally to many adolescents, because you have got adversarial to your parents after having been nurtured by them. And, you know, seeing them as part of your world is the process of separation. And so, there is something inherently inclines you towards adversarial in adolescence. And I think, you know, in some of their, you know, if you are still voting in California for these ruinous democrats that are destroying the state, enrich in the public employees, because you do not want to have any-any-any restrictions on abortion. Boy, that is a pretty adversarial way of looking at society, in my view.
47:47
SM: When did the (19)60s begin? And when did it end, in your point of view? And what was a watershed moment?
47:51
MB: Well, the (19)60s did not begin until well into the (19)60s. You know, assassination of President Kennedy, I think was, I think that was an important event in reducing competence in America. And of course, it was nobody's fault except the communists that did it. Which of course, if you read James Pearson's book makes the point about how Mrs. Kennedy and the liberals wanted to see Kennedy as having been killed by right wingers and they have constantly nurtured this and they did not like the idea that he was killed by some tacky communists, which was in fact the case. But I think you know, it. It violated the sort of intuitive sense that we had about American history that things turn out well. We-we had seen to wartime, you know, our experiences of presidents dying. We have seen President Lincoln, you see President Roosevelt age, during the course of huge war, you have the Mathew Brady photographs, Americans still know need to be looked at the pictures of Roosevelt during the war and the physical deterioration and so forth in the world. They come to a successful moment of triumph, and then they die, assassinated in Lincoln's case, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage and so forth. This at the moment of victory, roughly, and so forth. And so, there is a sense that things come out well even though the president trial leader tragic, our great leader, tragically dies, that things will come out well, and, you know, Kennedy died did not die in a moment of victory. It was not it was not that narrative did not hold it seems senseless and weird. And, you know, people might have anticipated you know, if he conducted a successful military intervention in Iraq, and then have presided as president over the moon shot and they have been assassinated after that it might have made sense to us.
49:52
SM: Yet do you consider that the watershed moment-
49:55
MB: I think that that becomes a moment where confidence in the society is significantly eroded and the goodness and rightness and the blessedness, if you will of American society since things turn out well for us, as we know that we will pictures more complex. Yeah, I think, and I think then you start getting more adversarial things you would get the elites, you know, the college elites not signing up for Vietnam, but nestling into the academy. You get the Watts riots, you know, Berkeley and the Watt riots (19)64, (19)65, you have a Harlem Riot in (19)64. All this effort to give more to students to get more blacks seems to be resulting in rioting in the streets and stuff and go back and read some of that stuff. It was truly frightening. Now there is this left-wing writer, what is his name, Rick Perlstein that does a history of Nixon and I gave it a somewhat critical-
50:47
SM: Nixonland.
50:49
MB: Yeah, but what Rick does really well, if he goes back and gets the footage of this stuff, and what was appearing on television, in 1967, and (19)68. And it gives you a sense of a country exploding and violence and growing and so forth. So, the (19)60s happen that I mean, I guess if you really had it, you know, the bad year was 1967. And Nelson [inaudible] is to say (19)68 was the worst campaign, year presidential campaign year in American history. I think there is a lot to that. And not just because Hubert Humphrey lost which Nelson supported. But yeah, he was speaking, he was speaking much more generally about that.
51:29
SM: Is there a lean line of demarcation where you see the (19)60s is over, I know you mentioned the (19)60s, or (19)70s, a lot of people-
51:38
MB: Well, it goes into the (19)70s, as he goes into the (19)70s, in the new world sense that behavior of an elite gets transferred to the whole society to a large extent. And, you know, if you go back and look at welfare dependency, crime rates, divorce rates, and stuff like abortion zooms peaks in the early (19)90s, crime peaks in the early (19)90s, late (19)80s, welfare dependency peaks about that time, some of these things are solved by changes in public policy to an important extent. But you have got these hugely negative tracks, all three of those metrics are hugely more negative than the amount after the 1930s, (19)40s and (19)50s, hugely more negative. They go on for a long time for a long generation. And without, you know, everybody just seems to think you cannot do much about it. You know, like, Gandhi had criminologists and these, so you cannot do a lot about crime when you are-when you are oppressing people, like we are oppressing black people, you just have to expect it. You know, this is part of the vibrancy of living in a city that you might get mugged. And hit over the head.
52:43
SM: And I have been, have you-you have ever been mugged?
52:45
MB: No.
52:45
SM: I got mugged in Philly. And the first day I was talking at Thomas Jefferson University, and I was going back from a dance was getting off the topic here. But when I came back, and then the next day, I went and done the work. And two people said bet you they were black, were not they? Yeah, well, they were. But you know, I did not really-
53:05
MB: Well, the uncomfortable fact was that you have, you know, unfortunately, a disproportionate number of black people commit crimes. I mean, that is just black young males, I mean, look at the prison profile and so forth, that some people were in prison, they probably should not be, we should do something about that. But you know, the numbers are there. I mean, it is just obvious. And essentially, I my theory is-is it is a function of why you also saw huge crime rates in Russia after the fall of communism, and bad behaviors, like alcoholism, accidents, and so forth. And a huge rush of crime in the US in post-apartheid South Africa. You know, both of which strike me as true, and you get this in America post success in the Civil Rights revolution. And my-my saying on this is liberated men tend to behave badly. Liberated women are just a pain in the neck. Yeah, when we are in it, men tend to behave badly. Why the black people do not commit more crimes in the south. Because these white people would kill them. They did not beat them up if they did, or if they thought they did. Now, they know some people that had not done this stuff. They thought you had a sort of terror. And you know what, terror does work to reduce crime. It is just not a measure we Americans want to employ.
54:22
SM: What is what are your thoughts? What are your thoughts on the movements that evolved at the end of the (19)60s because the civil rights movement was already well established? It was kind of a role model for all the other movements and certainly the antiwar movement as well.
54:40
MB: That is an example that people always throw back at you, you know, you are saying, are you saying the society is basically decent? What about the civil rights movement? Well, you know-
54:48
SM: Right, and the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement and of course, a lot of the women left the- those movements because of sexism and the women's was one but the question I am really asking here. Yeah, that when you look at the women's movement and organizations like National Organization for Women and [inaudible], you have got the gay and lesbian movement they evolved after Stonewall in (19)69. You have got the environmental movement that really came about Earth Day in 1970. You have got the American Indian Movement that was from (19)69 to (19)73. And we all know about Alcatraz and-and then what happened at Wounded Knee? And then you have the world Indian civil rights movement.
55:25
MB: Well, what is the question?
55:26
SM: The question is, what do you think about those movements in terms of they were supposed to be really empowered in the 1970s. That was their time, they seem to have waned.
55:38
MB: Well, I think each one has a different trajectory. You know the feminist movement gets Roe v. Wade seven to decision and the very gets, you know, you have a lot more women entering the workforce, that is an Yankelevich to that, basically women entering the workforce is a (19)70s phenomenon, which is mostly continued. You have got now in universities and graduate schools, you know, female dominance, numerically. You know, at the same time, you look at millennials, and they are less pro-abortion rights or these pro-abortion than their elders. They have seen the sonograms; abortion does not seem so wonderful and liberating to them. And again, as you know, highwoods points out the upper half strata of women do not get many abortions, very few of them do. And so, what was a huge symbolically important thing, where you had all these gray-haired feminists who are long past menopause, you know, hugely got to have a right to abortion is central to my being. That is just not the case. It seems with most of these younger women now. It is just something that is always been there. It is in the air. It is unremarkable, and actually rather unpleasant. So, they do not particularly like that. Enviro movements, they had huge policy successes in the (19)70s. That, you know, on balance, I mean, the Endangered Species Act was written in a bad way and is really a pain in the ass and the superfund act was crap. The clean air and water acts worked very well, by and large, and managed to do it. My friend, Bill Drayton, in the Carter administration invented what he called the bubble, but it is basically the cap-and-trade idea, or, you know, buying pollution allotments as a way of enforcing clean air and water act and so forth, which the Carter administration which also proceeded on a lot of the economic deregulation getting rid of the New Deal policies that were intended to and did hold up costs. So, in transportation, communication, we squeezed huge amounts across the society, but the environmental movement had a lot of successes there. And, you know, you know, today's enviros will not believe it when you say so and cannot bear to have it set. But our you know; our air and water standards and stuff are hugely cleaner than they were in 1970. I remember going to Los Angeles 1969 could not see the mountains almost any day. Now, you see the mountains almost every day. But I mean, that is just, you know, particulate emission, but well, smog, you know, the stuff is much better. So, they had a lot of success. Over time, I think that, you know, I think they have now become a vested interest. These people executives have $300,000 jobs they are protecting, they send out direct mail that always direct mail always takes the form, the sky is falling, everything will be worse than ever, unless you send in money today. So, we have got crackpot hoaxes, like global warming, which in my opinion, is more or less that where they are bending and cheating and lying about the science, and so forth. Part of this is that a lot of these people have a statist agenda, they want to run everybody's life completely and you have, you know, some of these other environmental causes, you know, we cannot get oil from Arctic National Wildlife, that is a complete crack. I mean, the idea that you are protecting some beautiful resource, I mean, I think of the North Slope, I have seen what that is like you are talking about, you know, prospecting the oil footprint, oil exploration footprint, the size of Dulles Airport, in an area the size of the state of Connecticut. They have got a pretty good record of environmental protection and so forth, and a pretty good culture in the North Slope. That is just stupid. You know why they do that to raise money. They show pictures of the beautiful Brooks Range and the caribou, and they rake in money and they know that the oil companies will always the state of Alaska will always press for that because it is absolutely asinine not to do it and make a profit bias. And so that there will always have this they will be able to bring in the money till they retire, pay off their kids’ tuition, keep that $300,000 rolling in. I think it is one of the most cynical operations the campaign against oil drilling. And why have any political classes been carried just feathering their own nests?
1:00:04
SM: But would you agree, though, that the movement of the (19)70s that we are all unique and fairly strong fighting are different for me, because they were very visible had become somewhat invisible. They become more singular.
1:00:20
MB: Well, enviro–
1:00:21
SM: They do not work together.
1:00:22
MB: No of course they do not work together. I mean, the feminist is now kind of an antique movement, because life is so different from what they were objecting to, and you read this stuff, and some of them, I guess, are very lesbian and do not like man, I do not know much about that, you know. Antiwar movement. Well, the antiwar tilt is still a very important factor in the Democratic Party read the debates on the Gulf War as recent in 1991, on the Iraq War resolution 2002. And you hear people arguing against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, that their arguments make much more sense in terms of Vietnam, than they do in terms of the actual situations we faced in the Gulf War with Iraq. In my judgment, or at least the arguments of a lot of that continued, they have huge influence in the Democratic Party and on public policy there by the environment. As I said, I think it would become a vested interest lobby, more in feathering their own nests, than they are in really improving the environment. And in some cases, in promoting status controls and environment. Gay Rights Movements takes a long time to be successful but has had huge positive changes from their point of view, in public opinion over the last 15 years. I mean, the country's flipped totally on some case, serving openly in the military. This is an issue on which there are huge differences between this over 65 and the under 30s. And, you know, it is one of those issues, you know, the marijuana movement, where now, you know, in 1972, it looked like legalizing marijuana might be the wave of the future, California had a referendum, 33 percent voted for it. And I thought, well, you know, if marijuana you have all these under 30s, who are marijuana users grow up and still be for marijuana, then we are going to eventually see that 33 percent grow to 50 percent or something like that. And that did not happen. And so, one of the interesting questions on these cultural issues is, will the liberal attitudes that young people tend to have on these issues continuously grow old or not? And the answer is on some of them they have and some of them have not. My hunch is on the gay rights issues, they will continue to have these liberal attitudes as they grow older, it is beginning to look that way-
1:02:41
SM: Native American rights, you just do not hear about it anymore.
1:02:43
MB: You know, inherently tragic, you know, I mean, credit, the problem was, what is their solution? Well, tribal autonomy. Well, the tribal governments are not very good. We see, I think the best solution to Aboriginal peoples in the United States is Oklahoma and Alaska. Oklahoma, no reservations, integration. You get along, you are proud of your Indian glide, you make it a payment for something, or other. Alaska the Native Claims Act, Alaska Native Claims Act and Ted Stevens and others put together with which provides certain incomes to people. And what it is enabled them to do, I think, is it, it gives the individuals a choice of where they want to live on the continuum between the Aboriginal lifestyle and the mainstream lifestyle. The core problem with, you know, the autonomy for the reservation and political, political elections and reservations as you get (19)51, (19)49 elections in which the (19)51 steal for four years, and they were thrown out. And then the (19)49 becomes (19)51. And they may steal for four years. And they do not cover and effectively. And it does not give people it does not give people a range of choices of where they want to live on the continuum between the Aboriginal lifestyle and mainstream lifestyle, it tends to cabin in the end. I think, the Aboriginal lifestyle, or some variant there on a dependence lifestyle, which-which people do not do very well. I mean, look at the data. You know, it is tragic. And you have these problems in other countries, too, with how you deal with Aboriginal populations and people with those traditions in a free society. Those are difficult problems to handle. But I think Alaska and Oklahoma have done better than we have done in the reservation cultures. And, you know, the Eisenhower administration that the American Indian would criticize the Eisenhower administration for wanting to, you know, mainstream people. This was oppression, just as in Australia, there is a big move against big protests that were against the policies they had tried to mainstream Aborigines. I think That thrust of policy is the wrong thrust. I think the right thrust is not to cabin people into the Aboriginal lifestyle, but to give a continuum where people have choices, and they can partake of that lifestyle or not. You provide as the Alaska Native Claims Act does some income support for people to do that, they have the mineral rights and so forth. And in 12 native corporations, there is a pooling of the revenue so that there will not be huge windfalls for one over the other like the North Slope. But that is, that is a much better policy solution for Aboriginal rights. And so, I think, you know, the American Indian Movement was a dead-end, I am going to put you under some of those people, because were violent and stuff like that, which is pretty awful.
1:05:45
SM: I know, we are running out of time here. And but just real quick responses to these and then the boomer generation, many of them and still do think they were the most unique generation in American history, because there was this attitude, at least amongst the activists that they were going to change the world bring peace to the world, and racism, sexism, homophobia, there was a spirit of-
1:06:07
MB: Yeah, and a civil rights and revolution happens before they are adults.
1:06:10
SM: Right. But there was a feeling of empowerment. And again, some that are 63 years old still feel that because they are working old age, and they think they can change that too. So, what just a quick response to that. The second part of the question-
1:06:27
MB: It is pretty adolescent stuff, is not it?
1:06:29
SM: Yeah.
1:06:29
MB: That is the response–
1:06:31
SM: Okay. How important were the beats, some people felt that the (19)60s really began with a beat in the (19)50s that Kerouac, Ginsburg, Baldwin, Snyder, fairly Getty, those writer, Leroy Jones, those writers were basically the precursors to the anti-authoritarian. You know, I am not going to be like IMB or Titan mentality that through their writings, a kind of an independence, I am going to do it my way or the highway kind of mentality.
1:06:58
MB: I do not think they were probably very important. I do not think they were very widely read. I do not think mine are important. I mean, it is like, you know, the SDS port here and statement here in 1960 some importance too but I think this was not what inspired masses and masses of people to do things, I think, you know, the personal situations that people encounter, because the draft and things like that have much more effect then reading jack Kerouac are performing across the country.
1:07:28
SM: I interviewed Noam Chomsky and I had an hour with him. And then very difficult took me almost a year to see him. But I had a great time with him. And in one of his first books, which you probably read The American Pwer and the New Mandarins. Dr. Martin Duberman, and other well-known historian states, and Noam Chomsky, in his first books quoted this, about the generation, you recognize the anarchist spirit that lies at the heart of the rebellion of the young. he says Chomsky not only recognizes that but admires it. Your thoughts.
1:08:06
MB: So, you get a celebration of adolescence. And, you know, I found out mom and dad are imperfect and affects their real skunks. Am I not clever? And I am going to be a good person, the whole world, make the whole world better, and everything will be perfect. Now that is about that. What are we talking age 13, 14, 15. It is pretty adolescent stuff. I mean, I think ultimately, you know, if you want to, if you want to govern, if you want to be a responsible leader, if you want to exert positive forces, to contribute in some way to society, through your work, community surface elements, scenery, activities, or whatever else, it is better to start acting. It is better to become an adult than to remain an adolescent–
1:08:51
SM: You got to write an article on it. Yet, I think it is important to because I think a lot of boomers are confused, and I am not even going to go there. But I think a lot of them-
1:09:04
MB: When you are a grandparent, it is a little It is like watching, you know, Mick Jagger up on the stage being a rebellious 19-year-old and he is 66 years old, and-
1:09:11
SM: I think he is 70.
1:09:13
MB: Well, he has got a lot of, well he is actually quite a smart man, but he has got a lot of miles on the odometer, you know? I mean, it is kind of ludicrous, is not that, you know, when we go to these baby boomers, you go to these baby boomer rock concerts, they have a lot of Wolf Trap and stuff like that. And people they are all they are of a certain age. You know, we got these niche cultures like on the satellite radio, you know, got each decade different. You can get your decade and you can find your six different kinds of country music. There is, you know, you have got niches and stuff. So, these people go and watch, you know, 65-year-old watching 65-year-old sing teenage songs. [chuckles] I guess it is sort of wonderful that we have a society that is affluent enough where people get to have a chance like this and in an enjoyment dentistry of remembrance of what it was like to be young and-
1:10:03
SM: A lot of the band members are dead and they have replaced them entirely-
1:10:05
MB: Yeah, on the trajectory of life. Yeah, well, of course, it is a high. It is a high mortality occupation and given their social lives and their private plane traveling plans.
1:10:16
SM: You just you. These are quotes that came from Noam Chomsky, power for its own sake is unjustified power, unless justified is inherently illegitimate. And this is what he was talking about when we talked about the Vietnam War.
1:10:34
MB: I do not think that kind of generality gets you very far in terms of an intelligent critique of public policy. I mean, I think they are-they are serious prudential, there are serious arguments to be had about prudentially whether it was wise for the United States to intervene as it did in Vietnam. And whether, if you thought such an adventure, as well as what should have been done, but I do not think that that sort of generality is sort of, if the guy does not do what I like, he is illegitimate. I think that is kind of the that is the academy thing. Everything is legitimate except my personal preferences. Well, that does not tell us anything, except that you are ready to put people you know, you are ready to run 1984 if you get the chance. Instead, they can just run campus speech codes, and send people to re-education classes and stuff. But–
1:11:24
SM: Do you think that what Phyllis Schlafly said, she said, I interviewed her at the [inaudible] conference, and she said to me that she is still flying how? Yes, he is strong as ever. If she is very, she is not-
1:11:38
MB: She is a really petite woman. She has got a terrific body. She is great.
1:11:39
SM: She is. She has not lost anything up here. And she is sharp, but she gets tired very fast now. So yeah.
1:11:49
MB: Well into her 80s.
1:11:50
SM: Four I think 84 or 85. But she said the troublemakers of the (19)60s now run today's universities. And she and then she was said she was making a reference to the people that run them probably student life people as well as the women's studies programs, the gay studies, Asian studies, Native American studies, Black studies, she was referring to the studies program, do you think that is-
1:12:16
MB: Oh, yeah, I think it is run by the student radical. They are, you know, the descendants. Now the student radicals? I think it is becoming, you know, and I think they have become the most intolerant institutions in our society. Where do you have speech codes in our society? Well, corporate HR departments will tell you, you are not supposed to call people ethnic names and stuff on the workplace and things like that. But the real speech codes that are enforced against people that have the Roth, politically incorrect ideas are on campus, these supposedly havens of free thought, are in fact, the most intolerant part of the society. Your corporate employer does not care if you are Republican or Democrat. universities do.
1:12:58
SM: Oh, yeah, there has been actually, there has been stories of people actually being fired.
1:13:04
MB: Oh, yeah. That happened is that well was one of the things that is happened is that a lot of people like the people here at a lot of people here at AI have just fled the university for more congenial environment, and one where they will not be disfavored. So, you have got people like Chomsky sitting with the powers that legitimate unless it agrees with me have their own little niches of power, you know, there is different studies departments. You know, my sense is that they probably produce some good scholarship here and there. I mean, you know, just made to see Henry Louis Gates in this whole controversy last summer, is my understanding that he has produced some pretty good scholarship and- and has done some worthy work. I think a lot of those people are, do not produce much this worthwhile. You know, that, you know, a lot of it is kind of a scam. But there, I am sure are people in all those things that have produced some scholarship, that is, that is, that is worth serious consideration. You know, it tends to be one sided and so forth. I mean, the stuff I have read of Gates, which is not anything like a large sampling of his work, suggests that he is a fairly clear eyed and non-propagandistic sort of guy that is trying to understand a very different past and to enter sympathetically into the minds of people that are as to how they were behaving, including, you know, some people whose behavior we currently, all of us consider repugnant. That is, you know, that is an interesting thing to do. I think that, you know, a lot of the departments have just become garbage though, have not they? I mean, you have got areas you know, a lot of the English departments you know, this deconstruction stuff, because that is all crap. I mean, I remember a friend of mines daughter was at Wesleyan. She said, you know, these literature crisis, you go there, and they denounce dead white males all day or all our she says I want to read some Shakespeare some Jane Austen. Okay, well, you know, a student that wants to read Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Yeah, that is a pretty worthy motive. And then to be encountered these, these harridans, screaming about the dominance of dead white males and so forth. Boy, that is a pretty lousy educational experience. And it is hard to believe people like that are going to produce any good scholarship.
1:15:35
SM: I think the only got four more points that I have been one of the commentaries, because I have worked in higher ed about 35 years, is that I think the biggest battle today in higher education, the battles have been going on between conservatives and liberals for a long time is between liberals and liberals in the liberal, that can become a friend of a conservative, a liberal that can bring in conservative speakers and understand that it is important that all points of view are listened to and heard, and preparing students for the world they are going to face manage on diversity.
1:16:08
MB: My sense is that is not the case that a lot of university venues and you know, in a sense, it is almost worse, at the knot I suspected is worse at many of the non-elite places.
1:16:19
SM: State universities.
1:16:20
MB: Well, you have got a lot of places where I think you have got some not very smart people left wingers in control. And, you know, if you read the fire, the foundation for individual rights in education, you know, the speech codes and stuff they encounter at some of these colleges you never heard of, are pretty hair raising. And you have to say there is a large amount of stupidity involved. I mean, I used to think when I was growing up those academics were generally smarter than the rest of us. And I have come to think they are- they are not as smart as people in a lot of, you know, the top part of the law profession or something, certainly medical, hard sciences. They are a lot smarter than these left-wing academics, most of them.
1:17:01
MB: I think you and James Fallows agree on the point that you brought up earlier about the elite education back in the Harvard's and the Yale's because, because he felt that the Vietnam War was a class war, because he says so beautifully in his What Did You Do in the War, Daddy, that the voice of Chelsea, the lower income voice from Boston when often fought the war, yet the rich kids who went off to Harvard, not only-
1:17:32
MB: He did not talk quite right about Chelsea, because people from the lowest demographic do not get drafted. But that is, well-
1:17:38
SM: He mentions that. But he talks about the fact that not only they invaded the war, as opposed to protesting the draft, the annoying that they evaded the draft as opposed to protesting. So, he calls it a kind of a class war. Do you really think that Vietnam was more of a class war?
1:17:55
MB: Well, I think I discussed that earlier. Yeah.
1:17:58
SM: Yeah, what one of the things? This is, these are two very important questions that I have tried to raise to every person I have interviewed with starting with Senator McCarthy in 1996. And this may not mean anything to you, but it is something that I have been raising, and that is the fact that students at our campus came up with a question when we took a group to see Senator Muskie in 1995 in his office, they had they these students had not been born in 1968. And so, they saw (19)68 in the (19)60s through their classes, as a time of disruption coming close to a second Civil War, no one getting along with each other, riots in the streets, but (19)68 defined at our two assassinations with the Chicago convention with police and students fighting each other and oppress poles.
1:18:46
MB: We call it the worst eleven years in American history. For exactly those kinds of reasons.
1:18:51
SM: The question that they came up with, they wanted to ask him because he was the democratic vice-presidential candidate is due to all the divisions that were happening in America that time do you feel that the boomer generation, I know that it is very general do You think the boomer generation is going to go with the grave like the Civil War generation, not truly healing from the divisions that they had when they were young, but they carry these into adulthood whether it be for or against the war?
1:19:19
MB: Not fully healing is my answer. Yeah, you know, I think, you know, we saw this period between (19)95 and (20)05, where you have very static reason, political alignment, voting behavior, in large part to focus on to baby boom generation president. So, the two halves are the different parts of it. And his personal characteristics reinforced their identification, you know, I mean, Kennedy was an Irish American, but he looked and acted like a British Lord, or at least most Americans regard him that way. He went against type. Clinton went with type and Bush went with type the liberal baby in the conservative baby but-
1:20:01
SM: What were those types?
1:20:04
MB: Clinton's you know, your positive way of looking at it is articulate in this the negative way a slippery immoral behavior and so forth. George W. Bush's positive way to look at its steadfastness, negative way to look at it stubbornness, the idea of a sort of moralism there is a right and wrong and the ultra-left eyes want to say, oh no, everything is relative nice and clear right or wrong, you know, we let us just talk about it for a while. And Bush is saying now some things are right or wrong and I mean, I think Bush is, right you can argue about which things are right and wrong and where you ought to go to shades of gray, but I think there are, you know, there are some real rights and wrongs you know, George Orwell, you know, thought so, too. And totalitarianism was just wrong. And, you know, so yeah, I think the boomers will continue as I that is my thing. The good news is the baby boomers will die out. The bad news is I will die about the same time.
1:21:11
SM: Do you think the wall Vietnam Memorial, what does it mean to you? Does that help you personally to know that you think is Jan Scruggs says in his book to heal a nation, it was meant to be a nonpolitical entity to help the families and those of those who died and answer why you are having to memorialize them. And it is not to be a political statement. But he also says, we hope it heals the nation.
1:21:36
MB: Well, I think it is interesting, you get five, you know, lots of people go over there and look at it. But the here is the interesting thing, to me is that the final product is a bifurcation. I mean, the complaint was made against that it was non heroic treated, treated soldiers as victims and not as heroes. And so, you get the, you know, the lifelike statues of the GI attendant with it, which is, which, if not heroic, at least, says that they are doers, not victims. And I think one of the problems in America has, you know, the call for change this to some extent, I said, Americans are seeing their military as heroes not victims, as or at least as doers, not victims. I think one of the things that I find unpleasant about valid statement about the class war, which is, you know, reasonably good description, I put it somewhat differently. But he has seen-he has seen people served in the military as victims, and I think that is selling them short. And you know, and he is saying that people who are clever enough, like himself and me, to avoid being victims, so out of the somewhat ashamed of ourselves, which I agree with, and but, you know, perhaps what we ought to be ashamed of, is not having avoided victim status, but have had it been avoided making a positive contribution.
1:23:09
SM: I know that in the symposium that they were involved, and then I am pleased before Senator Webb. And certainly, Bobby Mahler and General Wheeler and the whole group is that that it was when we talk about the generation gap between parents and their kids. But really, the severe problem is between the generation itself prior to having some served in Vietnam sitting next is somebody who graduate from Harvard when I become a lawyer. Put them in a war together, that is where the divisions come from together, that sort of
1:23:41
MB: depends on which subjects you focus on. But yeah, if you bring that up, yeah.
1:23:47
SM: Why did we lose Vietnam? In your opinion? Why do we lose that war?
1:23:54
MB: I think we have poor military strategy. I think we hadou know, I think that I think President Johnson had great military strategy, he did not elicit a winning military strategy out of his military as he should have been read Elliot Cohen and Supreme Command. I think that is good work on that. I think President Nixon had a potentially winning strategy. I mean, read, Lewis thoroughly said good war, that was undercut by Watergate in history, Henry Christian argued by Watergate and by the election of a democratic congress that refused to vote any aid to South Vietnam in 1975. So, I am not sure I agree with whether I agree or not with thoroughly status that Abram’s strategy was essentially a successful strategy. But I think that is a pretty strong argument. So, the answer, to some extent is a failure of leadership in America to produce the result. I mean, it was what George Bush failed at in 2005, (20)04 or (20)05 and (20)06 interactions conceded out in 2007 and (20)08.
1:25:01
SM: Are you supportive of Dr. King's speech in 1967, where he went against the Vietnam War, he was criticized heavily by his own–
1:25:09
MB: I just observed it.
1:25:10
SM: Do you think that is important, schemed of things?
1:25:16
MB: Somewhat, I do not think it was. I really do not know. I did not have strong. I thought it was, you know, my reaction to time was it is not really your issue.
1:25:28
SM: Yeah.
1:25:30
MB: It is interesting. I have been reading about it. I read something about Eisenhower was on Eisenhower and civil rights, and he has King and as a 28-year-old. And this guy, research these documents, his stuff, and it will be fascinating King’s, comments were really quite wise. And he really, he had, he really was a gifted man.
1:25:49
SM: We had James Farmer on our campus. It is totally visually impaired at the time, but he was still strong and very speaker. And he said, the Dr. King that we saw in the church and the Dr. King that we saw at rallies was not the real Dr. King. The real Dr. King was the man who stayed in the room. During when we were talking about the issues, and he was very quiet. He was a quiet man. And he would go get it out of Martin, what do you think? And then he would open up people and have to vote against neutral for a while-
1:26:24
MB: Interesting, the comments he made, you know, he is in the presence of President Eisenhower all these things, and he is 28 years old, and he was during Montgomary, Alabama. And he does very well. It was fascinating, frankly-
1:26:38
SM: I think we are almost done here.
1:26:39
MB: Got to retail and branch refuge was probably terrific. Anyway, yeah, I have got to go.
1:26:44
SM: Yeah, the very last question is, what do you think of lasting legacy will be on this generation will make your best history books are written 50 years from now, or when maybe when the last boomer passed away?
1:27:06
MB: A generation that did not fully live up to its responsibilities.
1:27:14
SM: And those responsibilities would have been?
1:27:24
MB: Lots of different things. And you are asking me to write the book. Right.
1:27:24
MB: And I used to work for you I just leave it at that.
1:27:32
SM: The very last thing is the issue of trust. One of the things that seems to define this generation is they do not trust because they saw leaders that lie so many of them lied to them from Watergate to Eisenhower lying about U-2 on.
1:27:46
MB: I think that is, I think that is an overbreeding for a long moment in history. I think that, you know, already talked to you about the decline in confidence. And the fact that the American that was so confident and believing in its institutions from the 1940s to the mid (19)60s was not unusual America. We had had great success. And we had two great successes that had not really been anticipated, say, circa 1940, which is success in the World War, which most Americans did not want to get into. And, no, it was a pretty terrible war, and the success of post-world economic prosperity, which almost no one anticipated, and so those huge successes that seemed to be produced by men born in the 1880s, and 1890s.
1:28:37
SM: Very good. That would be okay. Thank you. Let us-
1:28:40
MB: We had this country that had the narrative, the Lincoln Roosevelt narrative, where everything turns out well, and even the tragic death of the president comes from moments of great victory.
1:28:55
SM: Actually, one more-
1:28:57
MB: Photographers always say one more.
1:29:01
SM: Very good.
1:29:02
MB: Yeah, that moment of history. And I think, I think that was something.
1:29:05
SM: That was one of the things you know, you learn in political science class, the first thing you learn is that not trusting your government is actually healthy for democracy. So, if you are saying a generation does not trust, then-
1:29:19
MB: Yeah, you have these people, Nixon and Johnson, that were so ex- for Johnson and Nixon that were so experienced and turned out to be great disappointment. So, I think that, you know, the idea that in fact, the idea of not trusting experts, but we are not trusting people in power you know. I think that that is, you know, that is a long, long, decade long feeling rather than something that persists throughout time.
1:29:47
SM: I have been to the store to try to find your book-
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Michael Barone
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Barone, Michael ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Historians; Journalists; Barone, Michael--Interviews
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Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the <em>Washington Examiner</em>, a historian, and a journalist. Barone was a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, which is a reference work on Congress and state politics. He received a Bachelor's degree from Harvard College and a Law degree from Yale Law School.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2010-06-29
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.20
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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89:54
-
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Format
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Title
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McKiernan Interviews
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-07-29
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Rosalyn Baxandall, 1939-2015
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Rosalyn Baxandall (1939 - 2015) was a feminist historian, activist, author and educator. She was one of the leading figures of the feminist movement in New York during the late 1960s. Baxandall received her Bachelor's degree in French at University of Wisconsin and her Master of Social Work at Columbia University."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":6531,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"10":2,"11":4,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial"}">Rosalyn Baxandall (1939 - 2015) was a feminist historian, activist, author and educator. She was one of the leading figures of the feminist movement in New York during the late 1960s. Baxandall received her Bachelor's degree in French at the University of Wisconsin and her Master of Social Work at Columbia University.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
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MicroCassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Quakers; Sexism; Activism; Women's Liberation; Sex, Drugs; Rock n' Roll; Senator Muskie; Healing; Conservatives; Freedom; Counterculture; Woodstock; Summer of Love; March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; Black Power; Weathermen; Students for a Democratic Society."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Quakers; Sexism; Activism; Women's Liberation; Sex, Drugs; Rock n' Roll; Senator Muskie; Healing; Conservatives; Freedom; Counterculture; Woodstock; Summer of Love; March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; Black Power; Weathermen; Students for a Democratic Society.</span>
Duration
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111:24
Subject LCSH
Feminists; Historians; Authors; Political activists--United States; Baxandall, Rosalyn, 1939-2015--Interviews
Transcription
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Rosalind Baxandall
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Shah Islam
Date of interview: 29 July 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
0:04
SM: Are you ready?
0:05
RB: Yes.
0:06
SM: [inaudible] I will continue to check this too. Who were your role models when you were growing up, who were the teachers or parents or leaders that helped you become the person that you are today? What inspired you even before you went to college?
0:23
RB: Okay, well, in some ways, my grandmother who had talked to me about marching and suffragette parades, my mother's mother. And also, she inspired me because her husband died when she was very young, leaving her with three young children, and she first took in sewing. And then she got a GED. And then she became a lawyer. And the fact that she was female, and a lawyer, and did not have a husband supporting her was inspirational to me. And she also used to go on very exotic trips. I mean, they seemed exotic to me, they would not. The world is smaller now. Like to Argentina. She would go on these trips alone. And so, she seemed extremely adventurous… to me. And then… other role mo— I mean, most of the role models were in my family. My father was a role model since he had been a communist and labor organizer and then changed his life and became a doctor.
2:15
SM: So, you had the inspirations—
[crosstalk 2:17]
SM: —really,
RB: Within my family.
2:18
SM: Right.
2:19
RB: I would say they were really within my family. Rather than people outside. Not my teachers, particularly. When I got to college, my teachers were inspirations.
2:32
SM: Now, where did you go to school and the teachers—
2:36
RB: When I went to scho— The University of Wisconsin.
2:37
SM: Great school.
2:41
RB: I had many inspirational teachers, now let me— In American history, I have this man who taught us through using documents, and I cannot even believe that I cannot think of his name now. Anyway— William Appleman Williams. He was a real inspiration. My French teacher who I had a job working for. [inaudible] She was inspirational. I used to talk to her a lot. She had had an affair with Camus. And so it was really—
[crosstalk 3:17]
RB: —interesting that
SM: [inaudible] Really, affair?
RB: Yeah. Oh yeah.
SM: Ha-ha, oh my God!
3:19
RB: I mean yeah. She had been a lover of Camus. And I mean, it is written about.
3:24
SM: Wow.
3:25
RB: So, she knew Camus and Sartre.
3:28
SM: Wow.
3:29
RB: And I majored in French, and— Simone de Beauvoir was a real… was somebody that I looked up to.
3:40
SM: She wrote The Second Sex—
3:41
RB: —Second Sex.
3:42
SM: Yeah.
3:43
RB: And I had first seen The Second Sex in my parents’ house, because I thought it was a sex book. There was a man and a woman on the cover.
3:53
SM: Right.
3:55
RB: Not dressed, so— and it was called The Second Sex. So I thought it was a sex book, and I was very curious about it. And read it. And I read it, like a guide to life. And I have my original book at home and every other word is underlined.
4:14
SM: Hard to find first editions of that book.
4:16
RB: Yeah, and I do not know if it was the first edition—
4:18
SM: They are reprinting it now. Just came out reprinted.
4:19
RB: Oh I know, a new… a new translation.
4:22
SM: Oh wow.
4:23
RB: So that was very inspirational to me.
4:25
SM: Mhm. What did… what inspired you to become a feminist? Were you part of the new left antiwar movement—
[crosstalk 4:31]
RB: Yes. I was.
SM: —when you were younger, or−
4:33
RB: Yeah, I was part of the new left. I mean, I was not a major part. I worked on a magazine called Yet Report. I translated things from the French. I went on active— the antiwar movements. I was also, I worked for mobilization for youth, and I was active in Welfare Rights. Even in high school. I went to Philadelphia, with the Quakers and worked in slums on weekends helping people clean. And then I remember going to a night court, which was really an incredible experience. This was in Philadelphia.
5:21
SM: Mhm.
5:22
RB: Then I went, in hi— this was still in high school, up to Connecticut, where they had nuclear submarines. And we did civil resistance in front of these submarines.
5:42
SM: I think that is where the Berrigans went one time I think—
5:44
RB: Yeah, well it was a, it was a−
SM: Yeah.
RB: …place to go.
SM: Yeah.
5:47
RB: And so I did that in high school, too. So I was already… active. But if— none of my friends did this in high school, I was very different than anyone else. I mean, no one I knew in high school was political.
6:03
SM: Where did you go— what state, did you go to school in New York? Or−
6:06
RB: In New York.
[crosstalk 6:07]
RB: Yeah.
SM: Right.
6:08
RB: In New York. Yeah. I mean, people that I knew were political. I mean, it was the late (19)50s. They were not political.
6:15
SM: One other thing, I have interviewed Susan Brown Miller, and I have interviewed quite a few people. And what— The difference between mainstream feminism and radical feminism, correct me if I am wrong, the radical feminists were more of the new left feminine—
6:31
RB: The New Left feminists.
6:32
SM: But—
RB: I was definitely a New Left—
6:34
SM: Betty Friedan is the mainstream that was—
RB: —stream. Yes
6:37
SM: Ms. Magazine may be more of the—
RB: —mainstream—
SM: —mainstream. [inaudible] Friedan—
6:42
RB: Right. We wanted to change the whole of society, not integrate into it. We did not want better jobs in the society, we really wanted to change the society. So, we were part of the New Left.
6:57
SM: Right.
6:58
RB: And it was just that we found out in the New Left, that we needed a women's movement. It was almost by accident.
7:08
SM: Did you f— Did you feel like a lot of the women that I have interviewed, that the sexism that was so prevalent within the antiwar movement, the civil rights movement, and most recently, I have heard even in the gay and lesbian movement, and the Native American movement, and because I have interviewed people that it was ramped, and a lot of the women in those movements said, to get away from those, and join the women's movement.
[crosstalk 7:31]
RB: Right.
SM: Do you agree with that?
7:32
RB: And that… that was in order to have you know, I— I mean, I can remember that my ex-husband, who was active in the new left, his friends, sometimes when I talk, they would answer him.
[crosstalk 7:50]
SM: Wow—
RB: As if he had said what I had said.
7:52
SM: They will not even recognize you—
7:53
RB: It was that you were almost invisible, in meetings and things.
8:00
SM: Was that something that you were involved in the— was it Mobe? Do— were you involved in Mobe?
8:04
RB: I was involved in Mobe.
8:05
SM: Did you see these new left activists; they just treat women and like, go… go Xerox! And—
[crosstalk 8:12]
RB: Right—
SM: and that kind of stuff?
RB: Right.
8:14
RB: And also, sweep the floor, you know, not only go Xerox. And then… since we were the ones going toward the door and talking to people a lot, they would have to get information from us, and then they would give the talks.
8:30
SM: Oh my God.
8:31
RB: So, I mean, we did a lot of the labor and so on. We got very little from it.
8:39
SM: What is amazing in the studies that I have done of some of the activism, at least at the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in (19)64, Bettina Aptheker was able to stand up on that car and speak.
8:49
RB: She was able, but she says that she was one of the guys.
8:53
SM: Okay. I know that to offs—
8:56
RB: At that time, she felt like one of the guys, and she did not even think of herself as a woman.
9:01
SM: Then there is Mario Savio’s girlfriend at the time who he ended up marrying, she was also—Goldberg or−
9:06
RB: Goldberg, yeah.
9:08
SM: Yeah, there were 2 Goldbergs, [inaudible] they were… they spoke too—
9:12
RB: Right. And in the film about Berkeley women talk about being—
9:16
SM: Right.
9:17
RB: —invisible.
9:18
SM: It is amazing.
9:20
RB: And even in Wisconsin that was true. Men always wrote the things, it was just assumed.
9:27
SM: I am going to get back to books here obviously you are a scholar and a writer yourself and you have already mentioned The Second Sex but what were the— the books that really turned you on as a young person that inspired you? Wow, again, you— you already read The Second Sex and— but were there other books, like the— was The Feminine Mystique real important to you? Was—
9:49
RB: No, The Feminine Mystique, when I read The Feminine Mystique, I really thought— I know that it influenced some people, but I mean I was interested in it, but it did not influence me because it was about… over educated women who were not… were not living up to their potential, when there were so many women that did not even have opportunities to live up to their potentials. Especially at the time that I read it. I mean, the books that influenced me more was Fanshen, about the Chinese Revolution, that influenced me enormously.
10:32
SM: What year did that come out?
10:34
RB: What? Fanshen… must have come out… they have an anniversary of it. I think it came out in around… It came out in the late (19)60s. And in the book, the women get together and do consciousness raising, like we did. And they speak bitterness… about their experiences, both with men, and with the oppressive Chinese government to recall their pain. And that had a big influence to me about how people could change the whole of society and make a revolution.
11:11
SM: Do you like the term boomers? I say, I have been asking this now for the last 30 people because—
11:17
RB: I do not like the term, I do not like the term baby boomers, although that gets-
11:20
SM: Because you see what happens. You got the… you have got the greatest generation that Brokaw talks about which is the World War II generation then you have this group for five years called the Silent Generation, which is… they were not very silent. They were the people that were the leaders that were [inaudible] in (19)40 and (19)46—
11:35
RB: Right. They were in people like Ginsberg—
[crosstalk 11:38]
RB: —and people
SM: Yeah!
11:40
SM: Tom Hayden and—
RB: Yeah!—
SM: —even Ronnie Davis—
RB: Yeah!
11:42
SM: Richie Havens had said I am born in ’41, they said, but I am a boomer. I am not, you know, and the— Todd Gitlin told me he says, you know, kid, I will not even talk to you if you keep saying boomer I will not even—
[crosstalk 11:52]
RB: Right. It is not−
SM: —talk to you.
RB: I do not [inaudible]—
SM: You know, it was… it was about a period.
11:57
RB: It is about a period and ‘boomer’, first of all, a boomer now… it just has to do with consumerism, not with activism—
12:05
SM: You see— it is also that, from what I am learning more and more is that the first 10 years of boomers, those born between (19)46 and (19)56, yes, they were all influenced.
12:18
RB: Right.
SM: But when you start getting into the (19)57—
RB: No−
SM: —to (19)64—
RB: No−
12:21
SM: They were ten years old! How can they—
[crosstalk 12:22]
RB: Right−
SM:—you know—
12:23
RB: −they were not inf—, you know
SM: Yeah, so−
RB: Maybe they were influenced by other things.
SM: When they get—
RB: Like the media and things.
12:29
SM: When you look at your… the generation that you are linked to any… anybody born I think (19)38 on, so to speak, would you… would you say it is more like the Vie— is there a term you like to use the Vietnam generation, the Woodstock generation of the.. the protest generation that, uh, you know—
12:46
RB: The (19)60s generation or something? Or the movement? Yeah, no way.
12:50
SM: Yeah, ‘because that is kind of more of the—
[crosstalk 12:51]
RB: Right−
SM: —definitive generation—
RB: Movement generation−
12:53
RB: But not boomers. I do not like boomers, ‘because it just seems like consumerism.
12:58
SM: One of the questions… I interviewed Phyllis Schlafly, and she said, and David Horowitz said the same thing—
13:04
RB: Uh huh.
SM: [inaudible] ramparts.
13:06
RB: Yeah, I-I… went out with him. So, I know—
13:09
SM: Oh you know him well?
13:10
RB: Yeah. I mean, in another era.
13:11
SM: Yeah. Well, Dav— well David's a brilliant guy.
[crosstalk 13:13]
RB: Right, he is—
SM: You know, and I—
13:15
RB: And he wrote… very important books—
13:17
SM: Oh.
RB: —early on
13:18
SM: I have them. I have all these—
13:19
RB: Yes!
13:20
SM: —books. And I have been wanting to— he wrote at Berkeley and I got—
13:23
RB: Uh huh.
SM: —a first edition of it. But he will not even talk about those now. Now that is like that is—
13:26
RB: Right. Yeah.
13:29
SM: But one thing you have to admit about that—
13:30
RB: I met his parents; I was at his parents’ house.
13:33
SM: —so the passion he had back then for the left is the same passion he has for the right. So he is pretty consistent in his passion. But what I am getting at here is-
13:41
RB: He has better rewards with the right.
13:43
SM: Yeah. For money—
13:44
RB: For money, right!
13:47
SM: That the people who were the troublemakers of the (19)60s are now running today's universities, and they are running the departments and the studies department—
13:55
RB: Right, that is true.
SM: —the women's studies, Black Studies, Asian American Studies—
[crosstalk 13:58]
RB: Yeah, American studies.
SM: —Native American Studies—
RB: Right. Yeah. True.
SM: —gay and lesbian studies and environmental studies.
14:03
RB: Mhm.
SM: Do you agree with that?
14:04
RB: I think that is one arena we have been very active in.
14:09
SM: So, you do not take that as a negative you take—
14:11
RB: No!
SM: —you take that as a—
14:12
SM: That… that leads me into how had professors changed in their teaching styles since the (19)60s? What did the (19)60s and the (19)70s do to the whole new wave of teaching?
14:24
RB: Well, I mean, the content of the teaching changed. I mean, we… taught much more about social movements, rather— we taught both what was happening at the bottom as well as what was happening at the top. We did not just teach elite history. We taught peoples history as well. And… the way we taught is that we cared about our student’s experience.
15:03
SM: When do you think that began… did that begin on actually some of the professors that were teaching the boomers?
15:09
RB: Um, some of our professors I mean, like William Appleman Williams taught the original documents and us to analyze the documents. He did not just have secondhand sources, and that was very important—primary sources, go to the primary sources.
15:29
SM: Right.
RB: And so, he had a big influence. In the women's movement— for a while when I was teaching Women's Studies. We… we taught a great d— we put people in circles, and talked about our own experiences as well, and that we were the experts on our own experience. It was not other people that will be experts.
16:05
SM: Right.
RB: And that has held me in good stead because I wrote a book with another woman about the suburbs. And the reason we wrote the book is because the books that our students were reading lived in the suburbs said this had nothing to do with their lives in the suburbs now.
16:26
SM: Yeah, I think the… I guess… Again, I have interviewed conservatives and liberals, I am making sure you get all points of view here, and Michelle Easton from the Clare Boothe Institute. I do not know if you have heard−
16:38
RB: Uh huh, that is great.
16:39
SM: And the concern they expressed, and this is not me, I might… I am not… I just get interviewing. That is all I am. No, but… is that… that many of the new laughter of the activism that the new left… the activists in the (19)60s, wanted their point of view heard, because they felt it was not being heard, and they had to fight for it to be heard. And they were kind of shutting down the other points of view, whether it be Richard Nixon speaking on the podium, or you know, whatever. Yeah, and then they come to power within the universities, and they are doing the same thing that they accused others of doing back then of not allowing a cons— a smart conservative point of view. Because Phyllis Schlafly said to me, I bet you my… I bet you have not included any of the women's studies programs, or I bet you some of the conservative speakers— Michelle Easton says to me, I bet you they do not include Ann Coulter, because they do not consider it an intellect or Michelle Malkin, or this new congresswoman—
17:34
RB: I think, as a matter of fact, we include them far more than they include us. Because we do believe in democracy, and a balance. And I am always so pleased when the students are conservative, and that we have different points of view in the classroom. And I have debates in my classroom, and make students take different points of view. Because I think you learn a lot that way.
18:06
SM: See, then that… see that… I know that for a fact, that I have been in university for 30 years, but I hear the other side. And I have been in a university where it was of— only two… two or three tenured faculty members are free to say they are conservative, because the rest of them were all liberal for fear their jobs. But it is… that-that has come up, that feeling within the university. And certainly, when we had Ann Coulter come to campus there has been some sort of reaction to her point of view as not being smart enough to [inaudible]−
18:37
RB: And I tell the students look, I want to tell you, this is my… this is where I am coming from, this is my point of view. But I want you to have, you know, I want us to argue.
18:48
SM: So, your teaching point of view is also what Hillary Clinton said in… in her biography that she learned that she was a Goldwater girl. And she learned about the other side because she did… she was going to be Goldwater and her friend was going to be for Johnson. But their teacher in high school said you have to take the other point of view. So, you learn about everything you can about Lyndon Johnson, and you debate for him, and she will debate for Goldwater.
19:15
RB: I make black students… debate from the slavery point of view. First, they are a little… uptight. I mean, because it is really important to have other points of view. And I constantly have debates in my class.
19:33
SM: Well, that is important, [inaudible].
19:35
RB: You know, and take sides. They have to know the other side. And they learn a lot by listening to it, and thinking of how to counteract that argument. It is really good.
19:44
SM: It can change people too, because—
19:47
RB: Right!
19:47
SM: —Hillary Clinton became a—
19:49
RB: Yes, right.
19:50
SM: —democrat when she was a diehard Republican.
19:52
RB: Right.
19:52
SM: She was a Goldwater girl!
19:51
RB: Right.
19:51
SM: So… anyway, I am trying to read my writing here. I am not going to—
19:57
RB: Is the light bad?
19:58
SM: Oh no, I just… I had to… I should use my glasses here because, if you bear with me, I am going to… put my glasses—
20:03
RB: Oh, I understand, I would need my glasses to read.
20:07
SM: But I cannot [inaudible]… I have a problem to my fam— nob— nobody-nobody in my family can read my writings. So let us do it. Bear with me here, to boomers correct me if I am wrong, grew up with a very naïve… but they were very naïve, and they learned what the meaning of fear stood for. The idea of ‘be quiet’, ‘obey orders’, ‘do not question authority’. Fear, and being quiet, and being naive was the norm in the (19)50s, to many of the boomers that were born after the war. The (19)60s and (19)70s was just the opposite for all three. There were lots of injustices, many people spoke up to challenge what I believe was wrong. And they did not… they were told not to challenge authority, but students challenged everything. And this basically is because of some of the things that took place in their lives. The McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, the concept of fear, the Cold War, the concept of fear, the worry about the bomb, the concept of fear, speaking up and you could lose your job, that was very common in the (19)50s. It was written in white collar. So, you are right, Mills talked about it. Civil— and of course, the Civil Rights and Women's Rights and all the rights in that movement, it kind of developed, which challenged that kind of mentality in the (19)60s, because— they would be questioning what was wrong with President Johnson, Nixon, and Kennedy in terms of their leadership and speaking up, or they might not have spoken up so much for Eisenhower. Your thoughts about these, the dichotomy between these two extreme periods of when that front wave New Left, people born in the (19)40s, though, say, the mid (19)50s—these qualities of fear, being quiet, and also being naive?
21:53
RB: Well to deal with the fear, I grew up… when I grew up we had FBI agents outside our house, and were told not to talk to them. So— and my father’s friends went to jail. But my father did tell me that I should be proud of those people in jail. So, I did not, I mean… I knew that there were consequences for speaking up. And I grew up with the fear. And as a matter of fact, I think people, the little older generation, like myself, who saw McCarthyism, and saw conservatism, and then saw change, were less naive. Because they saw that it could change back also. And when it did change back, they had the earlier experience, as well, and they were not as naïve, because we had seen both periods. And people who had only grown up in the (19)60s, and seeing this quick change, just expected that to be forever.
23:19
SM: Like the ones today they are—
23:21
RB: Right. And then when things got really conservative, again, they were not able to deal with it. But we had seen that that is what happens in history. And as a historian, you see, I mean, that there are shifts, things change back. And people have to change, and sure we were… we were naive. And it was good that we were naïve in some ways, because we tried things that people did not think we could do. And if we had not been naive, we would not have done it. We would have been too cautious.
24:03
SM: Right.
24:04
RB: And so you have to be a little gutsy and blind to try these things.
24:10
SM: You know it is amazing, when you reflect years later, and this is just my observation, I have heard from other people, that they were naive because parents, you know, the parents were… they were not upset with their parents, but it was the way things were in the (19)50s you know, that kind of thing. But then if you reflect on it, it is not really criticism of your parents, it is a criticism of television, what you saw, the things that you use— wait a minute, there were no black people on TV in the (19)50s, Amos and Andy was the only thing on in the early (19)50s and they made fun of— slapstick. And then Nat King Cole goes on for six weeks and that was it until the early (19)60s when I Spy and Flip Wilson and Diane Carrol on The Nurse Show came on TV so— you see— wait there were no blacks! There were no other people on there. And-and everything seen from Walt Disney was all about the cowboys and Indians! [inaudible] cowboys and Indians! Indians are always the bad people. The white hat, so you start seeing that maybe we were not as naive as we thought, you know, as we age, you can start reflecting on things that are wrong, even without somebody telling you.
25:18
RB: Right. And also, it helped in a way that we believed in democracy, because we then tried to get a better. If we had been totally cynical— my students nowadays are so cynical, they think nothing can change, everything is corrupt! We believe things could change.
25:36
SM: Yeah, yes.
25:37
RB: I mean, we believed we could make a difference. We bought that, which was great. If we had not been naïve—
25:44
SM: Do you think, though, that there is even some fear? I find that the people that run today's universities are boomers, or, you know, first gen— generation Xers who really did not get along with boomers.
25:57
RB: Right.
25:58
SM: Generation X’s, I do not think… like them. We had poor programs on it, not across the board.
26:02
RB: Yeah.
26:03
SM: So, you get the people that are into these universities are the boomers that experience what you and I experienced, and also the generation Xers who had a problem with boomers to begin with. And they see things, but they are afraid of a return to what was, particularly with the term activism. I sense that this is me. And I spoke up at the university about this, that volunteerism is fine, because 95 percent of students are volunteering, and they at the end, they are doing great jobs, and it has never been higher. However, the term activism is a term I sense they fear. They do not like it. Am I wrong in perceiving that—
[crosstalk 26:39]
RB: No, I think they do not like it, no.
SM: —because it brings back the memories of what was, and it could come again.
26:44
RB: Right. They do not like it. And also, you know, they have seen… like I had my students read Thoreau and they were very surprised that I had them read it. And I said, why? And their idea of activism, and these were feminist students, were right to lifers, and people on the right. They did not have any idea of activism of the left. That is not what they have seen. I mean, they have seen people bombing. I mean, they have seen the Oklahoma bomber, they have seen the World Trade Center bomber. They think of that, as activism.
27:29
SM: Oh, wow.
27:30
RB: So, their activism is terrorism and the right. And that is what they equate with activism. People who are against the law.
27:38
SM: How would they think about the tea party group?
27:41
RB: Well— I know! That— they— I have not—
27:45
SM: Had a chance—
RB: Yeah, to talk to them about that [laughter]
27:49
SM: That… that is amazing. Because what happened is, when I have read books, I think some people think of the negatives, they think activism is off to the left. Well, activism does not have any political—
28:02
RB: At all!
SM: —control. There is left, right and anything in between!
28:06
RB: Exactly! And so therefore, my students, I have students who went for abortions, and they were trying to be stopped by life— right to lifers. They think of that, as people breaking the law, people setting clinics on fire, they think about as activism.
28:20
SM: Let me turn this one, and I can… this is a 30 minute. This is a 45. Dealing with two of these here.
28:29
RB: Okay.
28:30
SM: Bear with me. I have stopped it—
28:33
SM: [inaudible] when I finished the interviews. What are the major accomplishments of the second wave? In terms of what have been the major accomplishments in the women's movement? And secondly, what are the major failures?
28:46
RB: The major accomplishments, I really think? I mean, obviously, there were changes in laws and, you know, now girls do athletics. We have an equal rights amendment. But I think more important the way people dress, the way people… young girls dream, think, their expectations. It is so all pervasive. The changes that people do not even know that it is there. It is like the air that we breathe. Girls grow up now, ex— with great expectations. They do not think of themselves as second class citizens. They think that they can do what men can do, and maybe better, they see they are the best in their class. They are called on by their teachers. They see role models all over. And I think it is so pervasive that we cannot even see it. And I mean, obviously, you know, there is a change now it is going back, people can get abortions, there is… people are less prudish. I mean, the music changed…the way people… the way people, take for granted that girls wear pants! We had a fight for girls wearing pants… to school. I mean, all of these basic kinds of things, the fact that girls do not wear girdles, make up. Just such basic changes and freedoms. Girls do not have to wait at home when a boy asks them out, they can ask them too. It is this… basic everyday life changes. Aside from the laws and their… now girls are in all sorts of jobs that they would not have been−
31:05
SM: How about—
RB: −play differently.
31:08
SM: How about— was the failure of the—
31:11
RB: And this is a big failure in that we did not, at least the radical part of the women's movement did not create lasting organizations. And so, they are not around now. Now is around. But we had such loose anarchistic structures that we did not last in that way.
31:36
SM: Yeah, one of the things that has come in some of the interviews, and it is in my belief, because I worked in the university for 33 years. And that is, that what you saw in the early— in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, where if there was an anti-war movie, you said that you saw all the movements, with their placards and signs. It seems like the movements today are in their own world, the women's movements in their world, the gay rights movements in their world, the environmental movements over here, the Native American movement is West—
32:07
RB: Although there would probably be some crossover. Some, but not—
32:08
SM: Yeah, it seems like they do not work together, that there is no collaboration. It is all— as some people said, it is a bunch of special interests and—
32:15
RB: Right. And also, people make their living that way. It is not like it was before.
32:21
SM: Right.
32:21
RB: I mean, they have these organizations. But there, they each have an interest in surviving. And not looking after the whole.
32:34
SM: One, One person, well-known female leader. And she is a liberal, said that, when I asked her about the National Organization for Women, what she thought about it, if she loves the organization and thought it was very important. But she said, if you walk into the national headquarters now… now they have literature, for she says, abortions, AIDS, and the pill. And she said, that is what they stand for now- There is no—
33:02
RB: No jobs?
33:03
SM: No, no. She said, if you walk into their office—
33:06
RB: Really?
33:06
SM: —That is all the brochures you see in these three areas. And they— you do not see anything about the laws they are working on, the-the— all the other things. And so, I am wondering your thoughts on that? It is just your thoughts.
33:21
RB: Well, I think that people characterize the women's movement that way and forget that they did other things. For example, one of the things that I was most active in was daycare centers. And you do not hear a lot about the women's movement creating daycare centers and insisting on daycare, because people have a stereotype of the women's movement as not caring about children.
33:47
SM: Right.
33:48
RB: And that stereotype, women were supposed to care about themselves and no other things. And that was not what I saw in the women's movement at all. You know, and I do not see a women's movement around today. And there is a little of a women's movement around that. I know that works on the morning after pill. So, you are right on that, but not much else.
34:17
SM: The daycare centers very important. I think that is, that is a historic accomplishment from the women's movement. But if you are talking about weaknesses, I have a niece that just had a baby and I still think that corporations and businesses are still insensitive to the needs of women raising children who are still working. She said in most places, there is no privacy. There is no— you know, if they are, if they have to breastfeed their child, there is no priv— go into the lady’s room, no! Where is there a—
34:46
RB: For executives there are but there is not for the common worker. See I read this article.
34:50
SM: Yeah.
34:50
RB: Executives could breastfeed, and they make places for them. But for the common article— women, there was nothing.
34:57
SM: That should be a major cause—
34:59
RB: Well of course it should be—
35:03
SM: —and also there is the… the thing about taking care of a child too, which is they get, I think, two months or three months off of, you know? And then something about the husband should also be—
35:13
RB: Fraternity leave—
35:15
SM: Yeah.
35:15
RB: —so the husbands get a head start.
35:15
SM: Yes. So, the— you know, I am a firm believer of six months.
35:20
RB: Right. Oh yes!
SM: Have either—
35:21
RB: But other countries have two years. Sweden, Denmark, France. We are the most backward country in all of the—
35:28
SM: And why is that? Why—
35:30
RB: Because we have a very bad welfare st— state. I mean, we— it is all left up to the individual. I mean, we have the most backward healthcare system of all the so-called advanced countries too. It is part of our welfare system.
35:46
SM: You know, the idea—
35:48
RB: We are very backwards and unfortunately, I think in the movement, we were so against the government that we became against systems, and did not, we were so anti-government that we did not think of how the government can help us, as well.
35:05
SM: Right.
35:05
RB: It was a big failure in the movement. It is both things. I mean, you could be against the government. But also, we have to look at what the state can do for us.
36:18
SM: Right.
36:19
RB: Especially now. And then people started buying into all that Reaganism and the minimum state, you know, and that just really irks people who are not wealthy. I mean, it is just welfare for the rich.
36:33
SM: We know what Reagan did— the AIDS crisis.
36:37
RB: Right!
36:37
SM: And in any of the interviews I have had of some gay and lesbian, especially gay men, who were major figures. They start crying when they talk about what he did not do in the (19)80s.
36:49
RB: Oh yeah. Provincetown is the gay capital of the world, right?
36:53
SM: It is?
36:54
RB: About six miles from here.
36:56
SM: Oh, I did not know that.
36:58
RB: They call it Viagra Falls.
[laughter]
37:00
RB: And, it is, I mean, it is 80 percent gay.
37:02
SM: Oh my God.
37:03
RB: Yeah. It was one of the beginning of people helping each other because there was not government help.
37:10
SM: Amazing. Why did the ERA fail? Well, my first boss at High University was really working hard for it, at… in Ohio, and I can remember her having the radio on when the vote was taking place, and it did not pass in Ohio. And she worked two years on it and when she went home, she was devastated. Your thoughts on why the ERA did not pass?
37:32
RB: I really think… it was a case where the right was in power and had the media and scared working women, who thought oh, wow! I do not want to enlist in the war. And it was all scare tactics. And the people on the left and people I knew, sort of ignored it.
38:01
SM: Yeah, Nixon was, I think, in power at the time.
38:05
RB: Yeah, and they just scared women who felt they would not be protected.
38:13
SM: Yeah.
38:13
RB: And, and then I do not think that the radical part of the movement like myself, we did not work on it at all.
38:23
SM: Some people think that Phyliss Schlafly single handedly defeated it.
38:27
RB: She did very well. I do not know about single handedly, but the mood of the country had changed.
38:33
SM: I got a question here that I will read, and that is the mothers of the baby boomers, I think my mom here, raised most of the 74 million kids from (19)46 to (19)64. Or as we have talked about those from (19)40 to (19)65. How can some of the feminists say that most women of the era were unfulfilled? How do we know this? And is not it important to know that someone was home when you arrived home from school? That is what happens when you— I have talked with even liberal, left-wing baby boomers, and they love the fact their mom was home in the (19)50s when they got home from school. And a lot of kids today are missing that because they do not see a father or mother home they just come home after work. And Phyliss Schlafly talked about she-she-she said you know all this business about being unfulfilled as a female you know, I could have gone on, and I could have been long gone on and become a senator or even a bigger name politician, but my husband did not want me to and so I listened to my husband, and I did not.
39:38
RB: She was not home. She was always out doing speeches.
39:42
SM: I know but, just— just that concept. Well, if-if you I think Sally Roche for good— for full name.
39:51
RB: Yeah, Wagner.
39:51
SM: Yeah, she-she-she made medicine that if you really talked to a lot of the mothers of the (19)50s. They will probably say that they were not fulfilled, if you had a chance to talk to them, they never spoke about it. Just your thoughts on that?
40:04
RB: I do know. I mean, my mother had resentment. She definitely had resentment in that she would have— there are some people that would like to stay home. My mother was one, who was much better at career than she was at raising children. My father was the more gentle person, and would be better home. But she was discontent. And she communicated her discontent to us, all girls. I mean, and she did put her husband first. But it was almost absurd the way she put him first, I mean, and we put in first we take turns of the table sitting next to my father. He was— the best foods would always go to my father. The best of everything. And we always knew, we said, thank God, we did not have a brother, he would have been so favored. We were so happy it was all girls, because a boy would have been favored. And my mother did communicate her discontent.
41:31
SM: When you— you cannot have—
41:33
RB: My father treated her well, but she was discontent from society’s expectation.
41:38
SM: Well, Sara Evans wrote a great book, you know—
41:42
RB: Yes, I think—
41:43
SM: —And I think it is one of the best books ever written and—
41:44
RB: It is very good.
41:45
SM: —if everybody could read the first chapter in the introduction, you would get a wide awakening because of women in professional careers, as opposed to women who are housewives, and she breaks it down. And of course, World War II, and then coming back and the whole thing there. So, and I, my, my mom was a very successful secretary, she was unbelievable, but she just stopped everything, and was raising kids. And everybody on the street that I grew up in, the mothers were home, and the fathers are off work and we never saw our dads! it was always there—
42:16
RB: Uh huh, right!
42:17
SM: So then, then all of a sudden, these changes happen in the (19)60s, mid (19)60s, basically.
42:24
RB: Yeah.
42:24
SM: The second wave move— women's movement has been all inclusive with respect to women in— no, has the second wave women's movement been all-inclusive with respect to women of color, and women with different sexual orientation? And I preface this by saying, do black women identify more with being black first and/or being a woman second?
42:49
RB: It depends on the women, some identify, like Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president, she identified as a woman and a black and could not break it down. But some identify more with women, some identified much more… with race. And we all came from the civil rights movement, so it is not that we were not concerned, we had concern. But we also came from a civil rights movement, that at that point, that the women's movement started, was into black power.
43:26
SM: Right.
43:26
RB: And did not want women as… did not want white women as part of it. They thought we should do our own thing. So, our own thing was women.
43:37
SM: Right.
43:37
RB: And we made some overtures. But it was not enough. And we also made the mistake often, of talking for all women. When we were not all, you know, we were a certain kind of woman. Although, there were like, very, varied women in the group. I gave you the name of Carol Hanisch, she is from a poor rural family.
44:04
SM: I may be interviewing her she— she just responded back in—
44:07
RB: In Iowa. I mean, I, they were varied. People just talked about certain women. But there were lots of women from different backgrounds.
44:15
SM: Let me change this tape.
44:21
RB: [inaudible]
44:21
SM: Oh, you already talked to her?
44:23
RB: I emailed her, she said, you think I should do this? I said, I do think you should do it—
44:27
SM: Oh I really— I need to make sure that women's point of view is in this project.
44:32
RB: Right, and also, you know, she was very active. She really, her idea was Miss America contest when she did all sorts of things. And she was an AP, and she was also in the South during the civil rights movement as a UPI reporter.
44:46
SM: Oh wow.
44:46
RB: But, she is from a poor family in Iowa. But people just think that it was all upper middle-class women. It was not. But that has— what has been written about.
44:58
SM: You know Kaycee Hayden came from— I am trying to get ahold of, you know, Casey—
45:04
RB: Yeah, I know her.
45:06
SM: Well, Casey says she is going to do it but then she is hesitating because she— and she has not done interviews in years.
45:09
RB: Oh I know. That would be great—
45:11
SM: And but she is… she has agreed to do it. But then she hesitates, as I get close to it so [inaudible]—
45:18
RB: That would be good if she did.
45:19
SM: We will kind of see what happens here. I also bring up here, lesbian females, you know whether they identify more as lesbians or as women first? I do not know—
45:31
RB: I do not know. I mean, it depends. It really depends on… there is a big variety. And the thing is that I do think that lesbian women identify more with women than they do with gay men. Because there is a real division in that movement.
45:47
SM: Oh, yeah. And I have been told about the sexism in that movement—
45:49
RB: Oh, yes. It is incredible.
45:51
SM: As a matter of fact, there was a period when they will not even talk to the men.
45:54
RB: Right.
45:54
SM: Which is unreal. And actually, there is some things today going on that I—
45:57
RB: Right, still, they, I mean, so that there is real divisions, and there are some that feel closer. I mean, [inaudible]. She is a woman that— who writes a lot, and she was much closer to the women's movement.
46:10
SM: See, I had three other Latino women, Native American women, certainly Asian American women, and we know ever, certainly, we know about the first two here, but Asian American women, you do not hear anything about them in the (19)60s.
46:24
RB: And there were Asian American women, in-in our book, we write a little about them, they had a little newspaper in-in California, there were some Asian Americans.
46:32
SM: Well, I am trying to interview Gary Okihiro who—
46:34
RB: That would be good, yes.
46:36
SM: We brought to our campus and I forget the other similar person. And I am interviewing Kim Phuc. But because Kim, I know Kim from the Vietnam Memorial, but I— I think it is important— the boat people, we have to talk about the boat people, but the boat people are really (19)75, and they became, they were boomers from another country, and then they grew up and they have been so successful—
47:01
RB: It is unreal, yeah.
47:03
SM: I actually am— close students— I have been most close— affiliated with other Asian American students my whole life. I do not know what it is. Because I bet, they have advised organizations on most of my Facebook friends are former students. They know I care about Vietnam—
[crosstalk 47:17]
RB: Uh huh, that is pro— right.
SM: —and most of them are Vietnamese.
47:22
SM: Okay, where did the (19)60s begin, in your opinion, and when did it end? And what is the watershed moment to you?
47:29
RB: Okay, I think the (19)60s began in 1954.
47:37
SM: Okay.
47:39
RB: With the civil rights movement, and sort of the burning movement of all the (19)60s. And then… I think it ended in the late… in the mid to late (19)70s. [inaudible] late seventies.
48:00
SM: Was there an—
48:01
RB: Then the economy changed, there was an oil crisis, the government changed. It really became different
48:09
SM: Say around, Jimmy Carter’s period?
48:10
RB: Yes, right. It was around Jimmy Carter's period.
48:13
SM: Some people in the [inaudible] 1975 because that is when the helicopters went off the–
48:17
RB: Right.
48:17
SM: And in Vietnam, but a lot happened in, in Jimmy Carter's here, too.
48:23
RB: Right.
48:23
SM: Was there a watershed moment?
48:25
RB: I do not think it is a watershed moment. I think it is gradual.
48:30
SM: So there is no— is there any one event you would—
48:32
RB: Well, I mean, the Supreme Court decision started things that were in the works in 1954. And the water— I do not, I cannot see an end. Because there is… trickles, still.
48:46
SM: The legal love of laws that have been passed in the lines of boomers. Now when we are talk— I am still using the term, I cannot—
48:55
RB: Right, that is okay.
48:56
SM: But it is from (19)40, (19)40 on–
48:58
RB: Right, right.
48:59
SM: The laws that were passed by the Supreme Court during this timeframe, they had the greatest impact not only on boomers, male and female of all colors and sexual orientation, but certainly women. What do you think are the most important for women? We know Brown versus Board of Education—
49:18
RB: Well, the Equal Rights Amendment, Title 9 for athletics for women was very important.
49:24
SM: That was in the (19)80s was not it… I think, yeah… yeah.
49:26
RB: Yeah, Title 9 was the (19)80s. Equal Rights Amendment was before that. The EEOC was very important to the Equal Opportunities Act.
49:37
SM: Well now what would that state?
49:39
RB: That stated that… Equal Opportunities Act, it had a board of discrimination and it added women as well as blacks…
49:49
SM: Okay.
49:49
RB: –to the Equal Right Amendment. And it also said, that since it had the idea of equity as well as equality… you could not have equality if there were no women in the job. So, you have to have an idea of equity. For example, there are no women truck drivers almost. But women— nurses have more training and more responsibility than truck drivers. So, if you look at equity, they should be paid as well. So, you have to look as equity as well as equality.
50:41
SM: Now do not forget Roe v. Wade.
50:43
RB: Yes.
50:43
SM: Yeah—
50:44
RB: And of course,1973, that was so basic. I was very active in the first abortion speak and–
50:53
SM: How important were the beats, in your opinion, in shaping the attitudes of not only the new left, but— actually activists of all—
51:03
RB: They were very important to me; they were very important to me. I mean, I, in high school, go to the village, I looked up to them. Even though women were not the key in the themes, it seemed like a big breakthrough.
51:26
SM: Ann Walden was the youngest of that group. She was born in 1946. When she was very close to Ginsburg—
51:34
RB: Uh huh, really?
51:34
SM: —there seemed to be a relationship between those two that was very strong. And they had the center—
51:41
RB: Well Susan Suntodd was somebody looked up to—
51:42
SM: Right, right.
51:43
RB: —and she was involved in that movement. Beats and existentialists were influences. I mean, I read. I read Ginsburg's poetry aloud. I went to readings of his—
52:02
SM: That was one of the— I was at one of his chants. At Ohio State.
52:07
RB: Yeah, oh, no, it was very moving, and a real breakthrough.
52:10
SM: Yeah, the banning of [inaudible] I believe was 1955—
52:17
RB: It was late— yeah, it was early.
52:19
SM: That was kind of a historic happening as well. And what was it about them that they challenged authority where they were like, very unique. They did not care what people thought of them .
52:28
RB: They challenged authority. They were also— they were against war. They were against bomb testing, war, all of those things. They— for me they dressed in black when the popular culture colors at that time were fuchsia and chartreuse. And they had freedoms, I mean, not only sexual freedoms, but marijuana. I mean, they— that was very, I mean, sex, drugs and rock and roll were very important.
53:15
SM: One person I interviewed out in California who was part of the counterculture out there, is it Neal Cassady?
53:22
RB: Yeah.
53:22
SM: He said Neal Cassady is the Beat. He is— you had the Ginsburg's, and you have your Snyder—
[crosstalk 53:29]
RB: Roman [inaudible]
53:30
SM: —[inaudible] all these others, but something about him, attracted all the others. And so people look to him as like the model Beat. you agree with that?
53:42
RB: No, I looked at Neal Cassady as a model too.
53:45
SM: I have a question here on healing. This is a question that I have asked— actually asked everyone, even Senator McCarthy when I first started this so long ago. It is a question of healing as a generation. In 1985, I took students to see Senator Muskie, six months before he passed away, he was not well, he had just gotten out of the hospital, and Gaylord Nelson had been able to organize this meeting with him. It was one of our leaderships. So, we took 14 students there and one of the questions they came up with it was based on videos they have— they have observed in the (19)60s. And the question they wanted to ask was, thinking that he would respond about 1968 in the summer, based on all the divisions that took place in America, in the 1960s, and (19)70s, including the divisions between black and white, male and female, gay and straight, the riots and burnings within the cities, the assassinations during the (19)60s, the extreme divisions and those who supported the war, those who were against the war or those who supported the troops and against the troops. Do you think the boomer generation, like the Civil War generation, is going to go to its grave… not healing? And then they waited for him to respond. I will tell you, his response. Do you think… do you think that the boomer generation as a whole has an issue on healing because of this extreme divisions? I know you— many do not think about it, but some do! I am one of them. The divisions have— just were, so intense. And there was so much happening, that, you know, a lot of people like closure in their lives, but I am not sure if closure is possible. Just your thoughts on the concept of healing?
55:30
RB: I do not know about— I do not know— you know, I do not know about— I mean, I think… that… as far as anti-feminists, I do not feel much healing. But I can feel a lot of healing for people who went to Vietnam, I never was against the troops themselves. And I do not think we were, you know, many of us, so… And people that were for the war, they continue to be for these wars now, you know. I do not feel much sympathy with them.
56:18
SM: Somebody said, it might be better to say [inaudible]
56:22
RB: Yeah.
56:22
SM: I think I am fine–
56:26
RB: Yeah, I do not see–
56:28
SM: I am going to use this tape here. Some somebody said that it would be better if you simply just paraphrase this question, say those who supported the war, those who were against the war, which means those who went to war and those who did not, and that— and will that can ever heal? And the reason why the question came up is, what happens to the anti-war people when they go to the war for the first time, and they are with their kids? And they say, Dad, Mom, what did you do in the war? You know, that there is any guilt that they did not serve. I think that was really getting at when, when 58,000 plus died?
57:06
RB: Well, I mean, some of the people even if they did not serve, some of them protested against it. But then they were ones that did nothing. I mean, I think if you look at the wall, I do not feel it. My grandchildren now could be— asked me about it, I can tell them about protesting against this war that was killing people, and wars that are existing now.
57:34
SM: So, in a sense, what you are saying is that even the men who served in this war, they did their purpose, and we had our purpose—
57:42
RB: Purpose.
57:42
SM: —because it was genuine and real, and it was for good…
57:45
RB: Right, exactly.
57:45
SM: –it was not for bad. So, I am not going to criticize the young man.
57:51
RB: Criticizing them, is the people that sent them to war, and did not serve.
57:55
SM: Right. And then the people that protested the war— James [inaudible] does a great job talking about, there is difference between those who protested the war and those who evaded the draft.
58:05
RB: Right.
58:05
SM: And he is guilty. He feels guilty, but he does not, he does not [inaudible]. Because they did, because those people evaded the threat never protested the war. So–
58:13
RB: Right well, some had evaded the draft. I knew people that evaded the draft and protest the war. The–
58:21
SM: The— Senator Muskie answered the question in this way, he said that he never even responded about 1916. We thought he was going to talk about all the students in the [inaudible] each other—
58:32
RB: Right, yeah.
58:33
SM: He did not even mention it. He said we have not healed since the Civil War, because we have the same problem. We have the issue of race, and it has not— said it is still here.
58:41
RB: And it is, when you look at the states that voted for Obama in the states that did not it is a Civil War.
58:46
SM: And you know something when people say that they criticize Obama and then in the next breath, they say, “And I am not criticizing him because he is black.” If I hear that one more time I am going to jump out the window. Because I know some people, you know, I am not saying they are racist, but it is like, “my best friends are black.” That saying— I do not know… you do not have to, you do not have to say it!—
59:10
RB: You do not need to say it! Right.
59:13
SM: That is what Glenn Beck says. Do you think also the word that the— this particular generation is a generation that does not trust? And is that good?
59:23
RB: No—
59:23
SM: One of the characteristics of the generation is not a very trusting generation.
59:27
RB: I think it is good not to trust. You know, there is a lot in especially big government and government not to trust and questioning authority is very useful.
59:40
SM: That—
59:40
RB: We want our students to question. We want them to ask questions and not just assume that authorities are correct, since they are not most of the time.
59:51
SM: In a sense, you are saying that then this is healthy for democracy–
59:55
RB: It is.
59:55
SM: –because we are challenging the system.
59:57
RB: Right, and we need more challenging of the system.
1:00:02
SM: Very good. One of my interviewees said that now he has become a special— now— that, oh now has become a special interest group. I cannot read my own handwriting. That concentrates more on the irony, I already— I think I have already asked that question, so… strengths and weaknesses. Okay. What do you consider some of the strengths and weaknesses of the boomer generation? And I know you cannot, you cannot talk about a whole generation of people but you can talk about people you know.
1:00:30
RB: I think the strength of the people I know was that they were very daring… that they organized with other people… and protested for what they believed and stood up for what they believed, and some of them suffered for it. Some of them benefited. And the weaknesses are… that we did not have the staying power to change with changing times. And we also did not know our enemy.
1:01:30
SM: Has the enemy been the same for—
1:01:33
RB: No, the enemy has been very different. I mean, we had good times in the (19)60s, good economic times, liberal governments. And when it changed to more conservative times, we did not know how to deal with them. They knew how to deal with it, but we did not. They divided us.
1:01:53
SM: Yes, that is—
1:01:55
RB: They had spies in our organizations, we, you know, we were trusting people, we did not know any of this.
1:02:02
SM: This leads to a question here that, what was it like? And I am basically giving this question to you, what is it like being a female in America during the following timeframes, and maybe you have probably— your experience is comparable to other females of the time. And I am only saying the, because when we are looking at the boomers now, you know, we are talking right up to today so—
1:02:27
RB: That it was the most invigorating, marvelous, fun time.
1:02:31
SM: Let me break this down—
1:02:33
RB: I loved it.
1:02:34
SM: —what was it like from (19)46 to 1964 women that were—
1:02:39
RB: That was much harder. That was much harder. It was like, continual repression. Feeling a combination between oppressed and invisible.
1:02:53
SM: How about 1961 when President Kennedy came into 1970.
1:02:58
RB: That was joyous times. Fun was so important. It was so much fun to live in. It was, the atmosphere was anything is possible. Lots of experimentation, new freedoms, adventures, incredible friendships, Re- learning, and learning things.
1:03:40
SM: How about, how did the (19)70s differ from the (19)60s, say from 1971 to Reagan–
1:03:47
RB: (19)70s just started changing. I mean, America was not a great nation, and it began to be not a great nation anymore. We stopped producing anything. And we, it was no longer the same kind of times. Starting in late to mid (19)70s.
1:04:12
SM: Would you say that that period, right up to about (19)73, (19)74 is really part of the (19)60s because, yeah.
1:04:19
RB: Yes, that was part of the (19)60s, it was late (19)60s.
1:04:21
SM: How about 1981 to 1990, which was actually the period of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, the first.
1:04:28
RB: That became much harder. I mean, it came… I mean, the sixties had ended and you had to make a new life and realize that the movement was not there anymore, although some friendships continued and…
1:04:52
SM: Do you agr— Go ahead.
1:04:53
RB: …and some protests continued.
1:04:57
SM: Yeah, I know the anti-apartheid movement was about the only one that— the only movement that, that— that was early (19)80s, (19)83 to (19)84.
1:05:04
RB: Yes early (19)80s.
1:05:07
SM: Do you feel that the criticism oftentimes of people that grew up in the (19)60s generation, which is all of them, but basically is that their idealism died as they got older, that they are no different than any other generation as time goes on. They become parents, they get a job. There is always this scattering of people that stay the way they were, but the majority of them just moved on with their lives. And, and when they said, when they were young, that they were going to change the world. And we are going to end war, great peace, and racism, sexism, homophobia, and make the world a better place to live that, that was just young people talking and dreaming and hoping but in reality, as life goes on, they have responsibilities. And, and security does mean a lot to them. Because they got to put bread on the table. Just your thoughts on that.
1:05:57
RM: I think that many, many people from the (19)60s that I know, are still active, and not active in the same way. Because the world has changed. And whenever I have a student who is an activist, it turns out that someone else is an activist in their family, and many I mean, my son's activist, I mean, they— it is not— they do change, and they do go on and their lifestyles change. But some of their idealism lives and they are still protesting in their way.
1:06:47
SM: You know, it is interesting—
1:06:48
RB: Or teaching, and passing it on to their students.
1:06:51
SM: As I, as I have gotten older, because I am in my early (19)60s, now. It has gotten stronger in me, not… not weaker, because I am more confident in who I am, what I am all about, and I know who I am as a human being, and that is who I am. And so—
1:07:09
RB: No one I know almost has— the only person that I know, personally, that has gotten conservative is David [inaudible]. But most… most of the people have not. True their lives have changed, they have jobs and things, but they have not gotten conservative.
1:07:24
SM: Think his friend [inaudible], another one. They were both-
1:07:27
RB: Oh yeah, Peter, I did not know Peter.
1:07:29
SM: Yeah, yeah.
1:07:29
RB: I did not know Peter.
1:07:30
SM: Yeah, I think he was—
1:07:31
RB: Yeah, I did not know Peter.
1:07:32
SM: —[inaudible] too.
1:07:32
RB: But I did not know.
1:07:35
SM: You already talked about the—
1:07:39
RB: Yeah.
1:07:39
SM: Alright, where is it [inaudible]. Anyway, I am moving around here.
1:07:44
RB: Right that is okay.
1:07:46
SM: And, I think you have already talked about your books, both prominent writers. Legal decisions, we were doing pretty good. If you were in a packed house, of 500 female college students today. And one asked you named the three or four events in your personal life that made you who you are today. Now, this is a little takeout, from the first question, but it is a little more specific, with all of your strengths and imperfections that we all have as human beings, what are they? And I asked this to Peter Kyer and Peter Kyer said, you know, I cannot answer that. You know, I got to think for a while. Then, he— then he thought about, jeez, yeah it was— I had a maid when I grew up, who was an African American maid, and she was very important. And then he went on to talk about the experience about the maid. And then he was writing a book on it. He was writing a book on the maid. And then he said, he talks about, well, then, then I had this person that did this for me. And then I know that I went to— I just happen to be at this particular event at this time. So, he has really just really went to town on it. Other— now you have already mentioned a lot of things that influenced you—
1:09:00
RB: Yeah, I do not—
1:09:01
SM: But are there specific events?
1:09:02
RB: Specific events… I do remember, that I could not go— my birthday party had it be called off because the Rosenbergs were being executed. And that had an enormous impact on me, not only because as a kid, I was angry that my birthday party had to end. And but I then we went to this demonstration. I was a kid about the Rosenberg—
1:09:45
SM: I do not think they were guilty.
1:09:47
RB: Well she certainly was not.
1:09:49
SM: Yeah.
1:09:50
RB: Even if, you know, the bombs he did was not even a secret. But anyway, the thing is that all around the world, they protested this. And, I mean, I saw that there were events that were much huge-er than me, like my birthday party. This execution, which was a world event, right? So, it sorts of put in perspective, the personal and political. There were these events outside that determined people's lives. Plus, it scared me that my parents could be killed. You know? Not that I even knew they were communists at that time, but I knew there was something a little different about them.
1:10:42
SM: Were you aware of the Hollywood 10? At that time, too? And their testimonies before the-
1:10:47
RB: Not totally, but my parents knew some of those people. So, I mean —
1:10:51
SM: And, and the people that lost their lives?
1:10:53
RB: Yes, I knew—
1:10:54
SM: Committed suicide because—
1:10:56
RB: Right, I knew a little about that. Yeah.
1:10:59
SM: Was there a generation gap in your family at all, but if any- were your, were your with you and your parents, in any way—
1:11:04
RB: Yeah, there was a generation gap. I mean, you know, they did not like the music I listened to or the sloppy the way they thought I was dressing, no there was definitely a generation gap.
1:11:18
SM: Now, what is interesting, I interviewed a very powerful Vietnam veteran about a month ago in Washington, Jack Wheeler was the guy who raised the funds for the Vietnam Memorial. And, and there was a symposium in 1980 with James Fallows, Phil Caputo. Really top people— Bobby Muller. And basically, they talked, they said- was talked about the generation gap. And one of them— oh and James Webb was not a senator. And I think they brought up the fact that the generation gap to them was not between parents, and their sons and daughters. It was we- it was within the generation, that the generation gap was those who served and those who chose not to serve. And James Webb, if I make sure I get his quote correct because he is a pretty tough cookie. He said that… he thinks that the boomer generation, which is being praised for being a generation that served, really is the generation that did not. By people who protested and did not go to war when people in World War II and World War I, and it was it was a rite of passage, one of the services— to serve your nation. You know we had so many, that did not serve either in a variety of ways. So that was what he thought generation gap was. Do you think you agree with that concept, or–
1:12:44
RB: I did not have that much experience with that. Yeah.
1:12:51
SM: Yeah.
1:12:51
RB: But that is, it is very different for people. So—
1:12:57
SM: Yeah, especially if there was a rite of passage that many of them have gone through.
1:13:03
RB: Right they think— people serve for many different reasons. I mean, I have this black friend that, you know, it is just a way out of his life.
1:13:11
SM: Yeah, I—
1:13:12
RB: Not like he was so gung-ho war, or saw it as a passage. You know, I do not know, he made two girls pregnant. He, you know, did not know what he was doing and it was just like kids that serve today.
1:13:26
SM: So, some go in there for a career too and some did that.
1:13:30
RB: Want to get their school paid for I have students all the time that tell me they want to enlist to get—
1:13:35
SM: One of the criticisms of the military back then is that they did that to young people that did not have any money. And as a result, they end up dead in Vietnam. There was a con job so to speak. What are, what are some of the slogans of the women's movement? I have been asking a question about slogans. And I said, there were three slogans that I personally feel kind of define the boomer generation. One of them is Malcolm X by saying and “by any means necessary”, which is symbolic of the more radical revolutionary toward violence type of mentality.
1:14:09
RB: The Women's Movement was pretty anti violence.
1:14:11
SM: The second one was the hippie mentality, which Peter max it was, I am a poster you do your thing. I will do mine. If by chance we should get together that will be beautiful.
1:14:21
RB: Yeah, no, but for movement build that is not good.
1:14:23
SM: Yeah, and the third one was the one Bobby Kennedy was quoted. He took it from the writer from the 19th century. And the summons sees things as they are and ask why I see things that never were asked why not, which is a more of an activist mentality—
1:14:38
RB: Uh huh, right, yes, that one makes more sense
1:14:40
SM: —of seeking justice [inaudible]. So those three I thought, but I did not know if there was any other—
1:14:45
RB: The woman’s movement, the personal as political. That what you think of is personal. Like if you are being beaten. It is not personal, it is political. And having an abortion, birth control, they are not only personal issues, they are political issues as well. So that was a very important one, the personal is political.
1:15:12
SM: The last two periods that I did not talk about was the period 1991 to 2000, which was the end of the George Bush period and the Bill Clinton era. What is— what is that, for women and for you, for example just—
1:15:25
RB: Pretty bleak. Pretty bleak.
1:15:29
SM: Any progress there in any way?
1:15:33
RB: Not too much.
1:15:35
SM: And then, of course, the years—
1:15:36
RB: No, I would say it was the opposite of progress. It was going backwards. They have changed abortion to make it harder to get abortions, there are fewer abortions. People do not give abortions anymore. I mean, it has gotten backwards.
1:15:52
SM: And the year—
1:15:53
RB: [inaudible] starting to get a little better.
1:15:54
SM: The year 2001 to 2010 with George Bush the second and for Barack Obama on this—
1:16:00
RB: Well with Barack Obama there is at least there is hope. We do not know where it is going to lead, but at least there was hope.
1:16:08
SM: We are in obviously, in another war with George Bush with Iraq and Afghanistan.
1:16:13
RB: Right, we are.
1:16:14
SM: And certainly, Obama's going to gung-ho.
1:16:16
RB: He is.
1:16:17
SM: So, I do not know where that will lead.
1:16:25
SM: I would like your reaction to the following people.
1:16:29
RB: Okay.
1:16:29
SM: Terms, and what these events mean to you personally.
1:16:33
RB: Okay
1:16:33
SM: And we have still got at least 15 minutes here. Kent State, Jackson State, what does that mean to you?
1:16:40
RB: It meant a lot to me, Kent State, Jackson State. First of all, Jackson State people do not know about as much as Kent State. And it was a more working-class college. It was not an elite college. So it was very important. And then Jackson State, which was much more ignored, was equally important. And even though they came at the end, they were exceedingly important, and the fact that it was getting more violent. And people getting were more frustrated on both sides was very important.
1:17:22
SM: What does the wall mean to you? The Vietnam Memorial.
1:17:26
RB: It was a very important commemoration when I have gone there and seen all those names. And I do not know people that died in Vietnam, but it was just— it was a very moving, important Memorial. Just to have some kind of commemoration of the damages.
1:17:52
SM: Have you ever met Diane Carlson Evans? The Women’s Memorial?
1:17:55
RB: No, no.
1:17:55
SM: You ought to meet her someday.
1:17:56
RB: Yeah, I know.
1:17:57
SM: Got to bring her to your class. What a- she went before Congress to fight for the women’s memorial—
1:18:00
RB: No, I know she did, I know she did.
1:18:03
SM: And because she saw the eight names that were on the wall, but with a three-man statue, she fought for that woman statue. She did a good job. It is interesting when I asked a powerful Vietnam vet that the question about what I mean I heard that Diane really had to fight to get that Memorial built. What kind of— was there any sexism within the Vietnam veteran community? And he immediately responded, he said, no, we supported Diane from the get go. And of course, I have heard otherwise, but not from him. And it was basic as that, well look at the wall, Maya Lin designed the wall, she was a female. Who designed the woman's memorial? Glenna Goodacre. And then there was a man that designed the three man statues so two of the three main standards are women. And so, so there is our case. What does Watergate mean to you?
1:18:58
RB: Watergate, was really an opening that- first of all, it was televised. And people really got to understand what this dirty Nixon government was doing. And it was the beginning of unraveling that people could really see and feel. I mean, this new unraveling it is, it is almost like the Pentagon Papers. It has, has not created a ripple.
1:19:37
SM: Yeah, starting. But just the term counterculture.
1:19:41
RB: Yeah.
1:19:41
SM: What do you think of that. Were you- I wonder how do you—
1:19:44
RB: I define myself as part of the counterculture-
1:19:47
SM: And what is the counterculture to you?
1:19:49
RB: I like the counterculture; it was not the mainstream culture. It was not having the same goals of conquering people's— treating people very differently, wanting to live life in the moment. And it was caring for the earth–
1:20:21
SM: How About hippies and yippies. Hippies—
1:20:24
RB: Yeah, I like the hippies. You know, when I felt like a hippie myself, I lived on the Lower East Side. Liked the hippie culture. It was an alternative to the admin culture.
1:20:37
SM: How about the yippies which was Hoffman and Ruban—
1:20:40
RB: Yeah, well, I knew them. I was not as— I mean, I knew them personally. And I mean, they did things like burn money. I mean, they showed contempt for values that I felt should be made to quest- to people to question.
1:21:03
SM: How about Woodstock and Summer of Love, two separate incidents. One in (19)69, and one is (19)67.
1:21:05
RB: I did not go to Woodstock. I could have, but… I mean, it was a memorable occasion. Music was good.
1:21:20
SM: A lot of people forget the summer solstice of (19)68.
1:21:23
RB: Right.
1:21:23
SM: Yeah, that is, I— nobody talks about it. But that was big, too.
1:21:28
RB: Right?
1:21:28
SM: The year 1968. What does that mean to you?
1:21:31
RB: 1968? It meant the international movement. And it meant the beginning of the women's movement. There was a movement in Mexico, there was a movement in Germany.
1:21:47
SM: Yes.
1:21:47
RB: It was a worldwide—
1:21:50
SM: France.
1:21:51
RB: —New Left. Yeah, France. New Left. It was a worldwide— New Left was an international group which was very important.
1:22:01
SM: The 1963 march on Washington.
1:22:05
RB: That was incredibly important as well, in that racism could not be denied any longer. Thousands of people were daring to dream that it might be different. And mobilizing. And even though it was not the radical part of the civil rights movement, it was people from all over the United States. Unions, different people, maids, chauffeurs so many different people coming together.
1:22:49
SM: How about the incident on Wall Street with hard hats, beating up hippies with long hair. That was pretty similar. Like–
1:22:58
RB: Yeah, that was— showed the enormous class differences. The press was pushing.
1:23:08
SM: Some people say that was what was the silent majority were those hard hats. Because that was what Nixon was always talking about , the silent majority.
1:23:21
RB: I do not think they were the silent majority. But anyway, you know, they had their point. And they blame the wrong enemy.
1:23:28
SM: You brought up black power and black power was really prevalent on college campus, late (19)60s, early (19)70s. And Kent state, you cannot even hardly find an African American student, because it is more all white students. I am actually interviewing the president of Kansas State Student Government in three weeks. And he was an African American. But there was a— if you read James’s Michener’s book, I can state there were no African American students there. And if there were, they were asked to leave, because at that time— I was on Ohio State's campus in the early (19)70s. And black students went more towards what was happening in America and not toward Vietnam. There was that split, and the Afros and everything was pretty strong there. So black power, your thoughts on black power, and its intimidation factor number one and Black Panthers and the concept of what they were all about in terms of—
1:24:23
RB: Well, in a way, black power was a lot like separatism that had been, you know, there since Booker T. Washington, and saying, look, we can do it alone. And in the women's movement in some way. We were inspired by black power, because women's power, we had our own movement. We did not have men in the movement. And it inspired us to do our thing on our own and that we did not need men to be leaders anymore. We could be the leaders. So, there were lots of correspondences between black power and the women's movement.
1:25:12
SM: What did you think of the- when… did you think Black Panthers were violent? Number one, even though they had the food program and number two, SDS went from being an antiwar group to a violent group. Yeah, well, the weatherman-
1:25:27
RB: I am actually very against the weatherman. And they were the most macho people too. And anti-women and kind of ways and guns and macho. And it was the most anti female thing. And I did not like that transition at all.
1:25:44
SM: I mentioned that even in the American Indian Movement from (19)69 to (19)73 that was so strong that the hopes that Alcatraz, when they took over Alcatraz, and then the violence at Wounded Knee showed again, the violence does not win. Right. So, you had you had Wounded Knee for Native Americans. you had the weatherman for SDS, you had the Black Panthers, right? People have Huey Newton or Bobby Seale says we were not violent. We were there— we had guns to protect ourselves because police had guns, but then then also the Young Lords, which was the Latina, Puerto Rican group, they kind of copied the Black Panthers, so—
1:26:18
RB: But they also had breakfast programs and other things, as you say that people forget.
1:26:22
SM: Right. Right. What did you think of Earth Day?
1:26:28
RB: Earth Day, I remember going to Earth Day and my son knew more people on the demonstration for the first time than I did.
1:26:36
SM: You were in Washington for the big one?
1:26:37
RB: I was in New York City.
1:26:39
SM: Okay.
1:26:39
RB: Was it June 13th? One— and I remember my son went with me and he was saying hi to everyone and knew everyone. And I thought that was just great, that he knew more people than I did.
1:26:49
SM: Let me change the tape.
1:26:58
SM: Like at least—
1:26:59
RB: And the hippies had some of the Earth kind of things and preserving the Earth in them as well. I mean, I began having gardens and sewing things and caring about the earth and the water supply and mulching as a hippie. So, Earth Day seemed a continuation of those concerns.
1:27:25
SM: Yeah, I think the environmental movement is very strong today. Of course, there is a lot of enemies of it.
1:27:29
RB: Yeah. But it is stronger.
1:27:30
SM: It is, it is very strong.
1:27:31
RB: And it will get stronger with things like BP.
1:27:35
SM: Oh, my gosh, yes.
1:27:36
SM: The Free Speech Movement, (19)64. Just your thoughts on it? Because it was really the preamble to all the foul–
1:27:44
RB: In California.
1:27:45
SM: Yeah.
1:27:46
RB: Because, I mean, I was writing about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and, in the Wobblies, the IWW. They had to have free speech movements, and they call them free speech movements, in order to be heard. So, in order to even raise money, with people in the south, you had to have a Free Speech Movement, to even talk about the war, and to talk about the civil rights movement. So, it had to come first. And free speech is always part of a movement.
1:28:22
SM: But I always admire— I wish I had met Mario Savio; he was not a well man. He died in his fifties.
1:28:27
RB: Right.
1:28:27
SM: And I do not know if you saw him [inaudible] I mean, there is a new book by Dr. Cohen at NYU—
1:28:33
RB: Right, yeah, NYU.
1:28:35
SM: I am interviewing in September—
1:28:37
RB: Right, my son [inaudible]
1:28:38
SM: —Strictly an hour and a half. Nothing but the free speech movement. And but one of the things that stands out, and I want you to comment on it, that he… that Mario Savio, whether you liked his style of speaking or where he, you know, came I think he originally came from New York—
1:28:56
RB: He did come from New York.
1:28:57
SM: Yeah. And the fact that you got to admire this guy, because he-he got it, that the university was about ideas. And he talks about the recent, you know, stopping about literature being handed out, you are denying ideas on a university campus. And so, he did what Clark Kerr talked about in the uses of the university, the noun, not the knowledge factory was like the corporate factory. And so, he was challenging that kind of a system—
1:29:30
RB: [crosstalk] Right and he was saying—
1:29:31
SM: The corporate mentality—
1:29:32
RB: —we cannot be cogs in a wheel
1:29:33
SM: Yeah.
1:29:33
RB: We have to change. You know, we are not little cogs. We have to open our minds. And that is supposedly what learning is about, and you cannot learn unless you have many ideas.
1:29:47
SM: See that is what worries me about the lessons that were learned from the Free Speech Movement and everything right up through probably today is that is when I interviewed Arthur Chickering, who gave me an hour and a half of his time on the phone, the great educator, rural education identity that we had to read for my graduate program. I asked him, is there any last comments you would like to make when I ended the interview. He says, yes. I am disappointed in today's universities for one reason the corporations are taking over.
1:30:13
RB: Yes, they are.
1:30:14
SM: And this is from a conservative educator—
1:30:17
RB: Yeah, but it is true, yeah.
1:30:19
SM: And that was exactly what Mario was saying. And that was [inaudible]
1:30:22
RB: Things have gotten so much worse!
1:30:24
SM: Scholarships are all based on raising funds. Everything is raising, you know, buildings are named just raising funds, scholarships, it is everything. And even in activities in—
1:30:35
RB: Even the kind of funding that is given, the people's work.
1:30:40
SM: Yeah, it has got to show that it is—
1:30:42
RB: That was what we were protesting against now the university is much worse. And also, the idea of public schools. We do not even have- we used to have free public schools. Now, even though state universities are so expensive—
1:30:57
SM: [inaudible] yeah.
1:30:58
RB: It has gone up 18 times since I have taught.
1:31:01
SM: Yeah, yeah. And I do not know what is going to happen to Berkeley. Because—
1:31:06
RB: No—
1:31:06
SM: I know some students that have left, they were not coming back. They were going to, they were going to another, they were leaving, they were leaving Berkeley!
1:31:13
RB: Right, I know, they are ruining, they are really making things— also, it is what is happening in our country now, where the differences between the rich and the poor are getting greater and greater. The gaps between the rich—
1:31:26
SM: Yeah and the middle class is going to go into the poor, and the- so 2 percent and the 98 percent—
1:31:29
RB: Right, and it is really what is happening, and therefore. for public education, they do not care.
1:31:36
SM Just a few more here, Freedom Summer.
1:31:40
RB: It was very important in— that was very important, not only for the work that was done, you know, educating black people in freedom schools, but the white people changed so much. Seeing the roles of the blacks and black leaders like Fannie Lou Hamer, and that there were people who were sharecroppers who had no education but could teach you a whole lot. And it gave people a new sense of class. And what you could learn from the people.
1:32:22
SM: Sergeant Shriver in the Peace Corps, and I— and I say Sergeant Shriver, he has got Alzheimer's now just like—
1:32:28
SM: Yeah, that is what I hear.
1:32:30
SM: And he is not long for this world, unfortunately.
1:32:34
RB: But the person from Pennsylvania who started the Peace Corps, he was president of my college at first.
1:32:38
SM: I have interviewed two pe— Harris Wofford!
1:32:39
RB: Harris Wofford. He was—
1:32:40
SM: I know Harris Wofford.
1:32:41
RB: —He was president of Old Westbury.
1:32:43
SM: Yeah. And well, I know him well in fact—
1:32:45
RB: I do not know him well. But he was president of Old Westbury when I first came.
1:32:50
SM: Yeah, well, he was from, from California. He was my first speaker at Thomas Jefferson University. Then I went over to his law office before he worked for Governor Scranton and I, seeking an hour of his time, and I invited him four times to come and speak at our school once during the Rodney King crisis when he was senator. And, and I interviewed him in his backyard, before we moved to Washington, where this book, and he— his wife, was just Claire was everything to him. And he has never been the same since he last-
1:33:22
RB: Were, well, he was president of a college so I—
1:33:26
SM: But just your thoughts on Sergeant Shriver and the Peace Corps-
1:33:28
RB: I think the Peace Corps was another very important idea, especially… We live in a world economy. And it is very important that people to see what America does to the rest of the world and how what we can learn from them, and they from us. And it was very meaningful for people who went I know, people that were in the Peace Corps, and it changed them enormously.
1:33:54
SM: What are your thoughts? When you look at the Presidents since 1946, which includes, one of the things I learned very early, when I was four or five, I learned all my presidents. I learned them the least.
1:34:05
RB: Most of the presidents have been very dismal. The good ones stand out. As a historian that is what I think.
1:34:11
SM: Well, when you think of when you think of Truman, and Eisenhower, and certainly Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and then you have Ford.
1:34:23
RB: Ford, yeah.
1:34:24
SM: Carter, Reagan, George Bush the first, Bill Clinton, George Bush the second, and now Obama, when you think of these people, these are the presidents that have been alive when boomers have been alive. And if you are talking about even FDR, for those that were born in the early (19)40s. Any of those events do you admire for their issue, for their work on behalf of women when they were in positions of leadership?
1:34:51
RB: Eleanor Roosevelt, not— not Roosevelt, and under Johnson, very good legislation was passed. I mean, the Peace Corps and those things did affect women. And the War on Poverty did affect women. Not specifically, he did not appoint that many women or have feminist consciousness, but some of his programs were really important for women. Johnson above them all.
1:35:19
SM: What were some of those programs?
1:35:21
RB: Well, I said the War on Poverty, the Peace Corps… Equal Rights Amendment passed under him, ERA.
1:35:37
SM: You mentioned also Eleanor Roosevelt and I have not talked about her at all, hardly in any of my interviews, but—
1:35:43
RB: Human Rights, she was the one to talk about human rights and she is very important. And as a wife of a president, she was very active in her role.
1:35:53
SM: She lived until—
1:35:54
RB: Aside from being gay, you know—
1:35:55
SM: She lived until (19)62, 1962.
1:35:58
RB: Right, she was very active in the UN.
1:36:03
SM: So, she was too— she— would you say she was a person—
1:36:05
RB: She was someone you could— I looked up to her.
1:36:08
SM: The women's movement is also often identified as a United States effort. But when I interviewed Charlotte Bunch–
1:36:16
RB: Oh, she—
1:36:16
SM: She talked about the international aspects, was Eleanor Roosevelt, a key figure in the international women's issues in the UN?
1:36:24
RB: She was in the UN
1:36:27
SM: Right.
1:36:27
RB: In UN, in Human Rights.
1:36:28
SM: Just a few more names, I do not tell you—
1:36:30
RB: Okay, that 1s alright.
1:36:31
SM: Okay I am going to— at least they are all— because— just your thoughts on Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.
1:36:37
SM: Um, Tom Hayden is still doing very good work. Now. I get this newsletter that he does. And he is one person who has changed with changing time and continued to be important. I mean, I really liked his Newark project… in Newark. He was not very good to Casey Hayden, or he was not good to other girlfriends, but on the whole, I think he is a very positive role. And he continues to be an activist.
1:37:14
SM: He has written and brand-new book now on the movement.
1:37:18
RB: Right, yeah, so, he continues, I mean, he is someone who is lasting.
1:37:22
SM: Jane Fonda.
1:38:25
RB: Jane Fonda. I mean, she popularized, really, fitness and protest for a while, and she certainly was hated. By the right. They made her a major enemy.
1:37:40
SM: And they still do.
1:37:43
RB: And as you know, a founder and an actress she played an important media role.
1:37:49
SM: I am interviewing Jeremy or Jerry Alinsky tomorrow, who wrote a book—
1:37:52
RB: Oh, right. Yeah, right.
1:37:53
SM: [inaudible] on Jane Fonda about Miss— Danny Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Just your thoughts on both of them.
1:38:03
RB: They made protesting very much fun. And they, they had this yippies. I mean, I did not think of it is irresponsible, but some people good. I mean, they wanted people to feel that you could have a hell of a good time and still protest, and be very creative and inventive.
1:38:36
SM: How About the Black Panthers. And I said just like I cannot just say Black Panthers because they had like seven or eight major personalities and just if any of these people stand out— Stokely Carmichael was obviously when was—
1:38:50
RB: He is international.
1:38:51
SM: Yeah, he challenged Dr. King—
1:38:51
RB: [inaudible] Yes, right.
1:38:53
SM: —your time has passed and so Stokely Carmichael, of course, Bobby Seale, and Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver and Kathleen Cleaver and H. Rhett. Brown.
1:39:03
RB: They are all very different. Kathleen Cleaver, I was reading a book the other day; she did the introduction. She is a lawyer now. I mean, they are very, I mean, Huey Newton turned out to be a criminal. I mean, they are— they are all very different. Bobby Rush beat Obama—
1:39:20
SM: Oh, that is right— that is right.
1:39:22
RB: You know, they are very, very different people all of them.
1:39:27
SM: And the one that was murdered in Chicago. Yeah.
1:39:29
RB: Yeah. What is his name? The Chicago brown women. The Chicago branch was one of the best branches of the, of the Black Panthers. They are the ones that had a big breakfast program.
1:39:40
SM: And then there is the— Angela Davis who was not a Black Panther.
1:39:34
RB: She was sort of a media… communist, media star.
1:39:51
SM: Anything about her?
1:39:53
RB: I mean, intellectually, she, I mean, I used something that she wrote in my class about slave narratives. She wrote something about Douglass.
1:40:12
SM: How about Tommy Smith and John Carlos, they were in the 1968 Olympics. They raised their fists.
1:40:17
RB: Yeah, right, I do not, you know–
1:40:18
SM: They are black power.
1:40:19
RB: Yeah, right.
1:40:20
SM: Not Black Panthers.
1:40:21
RB: Right.
1:40:23
SM: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.
1:40:27
RB: You know, very useful event. I wish the new papers had as much impact as he did. That is a very brave individual.
1:40:37
SM: How about Dr. Benjamin Spock?
1:40:40
RB: I mean, my father was a friend of his.
1:40:43
SM: Really?
1:40:43
RB: Yeah. My father was a friend of his, he thanks him. My father, in his book. My father helped make him more left.
1:40:51
SM: Your— your father wrote a book?
1:40:53
RB: No, Ben Spock’s Book.
1:40:56
SM: Oh, I have Ben Spock’s book—
1:40:58
RB: Yeah I believe he thanked my father, Lewis Fraad, for helping him.
1:41:03
SM: How about Timothy Leary?
1:41:07
RB: LSD. I do not know, guess he escaped from prison too. No.
1:41:13
SM: Yeah. The weathermen got him.
1:41:16
RB: Yeah well, LSD, you know.
1:41:20
SM: George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy.
1:41:22
RB: I did not relate to them that much.
1:41:25
SM: Neither one of them?
1:41:27
RB: Neither of them, nope.
1:41:28
SM: What about LBJ and Hubert Humphrey?
1:41:31
RB: Oh, LBJ, in retrospect, as a historian, I think was very important to Senate leader and president, but I did not at the time.
1:41:40
SM: What about Nixon and Agnew?
1:41:42
RB: Well they were major enemies–
1:41:45
SM: And…
RB: But they look good in comparison to Bush, and smart.
1:41:49
SM: George Wallace.
1:41:51
RB: At least he changed.
1:41:54
SM: Barry Goldwater and William Buckley, because those are major.
1:41:57
RB: Yeah, they were at least thinkers. They are much better than the right wingers that are around today, like Sarah Palin's much more intelligent and thoughtful.
1:42:07
SM: But the— Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan.
1:42:11
RB: I think more of Betty Friedan than I do of Gloria Steinem. I mean, she is a media figure. There is nothing that she has written or said that I think is very worthwhile, but she certainly is a figure that people look to.
1:42:23
SM: About Bella Abzug.
1:42:25
RB: I admired her a lot.
1:42:27
SM: [crosstalk] A lot of people do not realize he was waiting before she was a congressman.
1:42:29
RB: —She was very gutsy—
1:42:30
RB: Very gutsy person.
1:42:32
SM: She risked her life going down South.
1:42:34
RB: Oh I know. She was an amazing person. She-she- I helped her start a daycare center. She wanted one in her campaign headquarters.
1:42:47
SM: Wow. Muhammad Ali and Jackie Robinson—
1:42:50
RB: I looked up to Mohammed Ali and Jackie Robinson and I think it is odd that my students do not know who either of them are
1:42:56
SM: That is amazing.
1:42:57
RB: Black students, have never heard of Jackie Robinson.
1:43:00
SM: See another one that is now up there is Curt Flood because Curt Flood was [inaudible] now more is being written. There is a couple of biographies coming on, on him. And they are going to do a section in the Cooperstown on him.
1:43:11
RB: Oh, really?
1:43:12
SM: Yeah. Because he has, he has not, he has not given any [inaudible] again.
1:43:17
RB: Yeah no.
1:53:17
SM: They bought him— actually, Muhammad Ali, is… I cannot think of— anything else here?
1:43:22
RB: I did not even like boxing, but I watched Muhammad Ali.
1:43:27
SM: Yeah, he was, he was something else. As far as, as far as musicians of the period and the music was very important politically, it was in tune with the times, but how important was music in your life in terms of not only just relaxing you and laying back and enjoying it—
1:43:43
RB: Like as protests, it was. It was.
1:43:44
SM: —but in terms of stimulation, who were the artists that really stimulated you?
1:43:47
RB: I mean even though there was sexist artist, the beat and things like the Rolling Stones influenced me and I went to the concerts and Dylan. I mean, I was influenced by male rock and roll. Even if the words were saying something different to me than the rhythms.
1:44:09
SM: Were you into Folk, as much as Ryan.
1:44:10
RB: I was into folk music.
1:44:13
SM: About the Motown sound.
1:44:15
RB: I liked Motown; I still adore Motown.
1:44:16
SM: Is there one album that you have that stands out but like me people?
1:44:24
RB: Maybe, I like Janis Joplin. I like Janis Joplin a lot. And she inspired me and feminist kind of ways.
1:44:35
SM: Too bad she passed away really quick, very bad drug situation. And down to my last three questions, what role did women play in ending the war in Vietnam, because the group or groups of personalities, the role of women in building the women's Vietnam memorial. We all know about Diane Car— Carlson Evans, who was involved in that. But the reason I bring this up is because when I interviewed John Wheeler in Washington, DC who raised funds and he has, he wrote a book, Touched With Fire. He says the three most important things that happened as a result of the Vietnam War was the— that women were, were antiwar or involved in the antiwar movement. And it was really inspirational. So, it was right during the women's movement. So—
1:45:23
RB: It was during the women’s movement. And we were very involved in the antiwar movement, as involved as men.
1:45:29
SM: Do you feel that one of the things is lacking today and students understanding— they think in terms of power and empowerment, we had Tom Hayden on our campus about six years ago. And Tom, Tom talked—[third speaker interrupts]—we were talking about women—
1:45:53
RB: In Vietnam now. I think we were the troops in the movement. We I mean, I know people like Leslie Kagan that were ahead of mold and devoted their lives to the antiwar movement.
1:46:05
SM: Are there— you said you went to some of them? Protests—
1:46:10
RB: Pentagon loans.
1:46:11
SM: Were you there at the (19)67, the raising—
1:46:15
RB: Yes, the raising of the— I was there. I was even in the front lines.
1:46:18
SM: And Norman Mailer was there.
1:46:20
RB: Yes, I know.
1:46:21
SM: And as was— Dr. Spock was there too.
1:46:24
RB: Spock was there yet. My father was in jail. Yeah.
1:46:28
SM: What was that like? A lot of people will laugh, their going to levitate the Pentagon in (19)67. What is the… what was that feeling like being there?
1:46:37
RB: The feeling was, that we have the power to, we have the power. And you do not take it literally, to rock the Pentagon. To make it air.
1:46:51
SM: Were you there at the time that the guy burned himself? Underneath McNamara?
1:46:53
RB: Oh, no, I was not there.
1:46:55
SM: What do you think of McNamara and Kissinger?
1:47:01
RB: I think they are war criminals.
1:47:06
SM: Yeah, so what I was getting at here is that when Tom Hayden was on our campus, he asked our student government if they had, if they were empowered, and they said, oh, yeah, we determine budgets, we give out money. And Tom said, we control the money that goes, no, I am not talking about power. I am talking about power. They did not have a- they did not know any difference between it. And I do know that I brought up in a student affair once meeting of the word empowerment and that scared, you know, just saying power. What is it about the difference between the word empowerment as opposed to power, I mean?
1:47:40
RB: Empowerment is sort of a spiritual state of mind. And it is an individual thing, of empowerment. It means like, you can feel empowered, you can change the color of your hair and feel differently and feel empowered. But it has nothing to do with power and who rules.
1:48:05
SM: Yet, Tom—
1:48:05
RB: It is an individual kind of… thing. I feel empowered.
1:48:11
SM: See he told me at dinner, he says, I hope the students in the audience are not like the students at dinner with me. He was dead serious. And no, they were not that was, that— those students went off to student government, and— and then the students that were at the program stayed about an hour afterwards and Tom started talking to them. That is the Tom, that, yeah, those are the ones that ask the questions. My very last question, legacy. What do you—two-part question—what do you think the legacy of the women's movement will— do you think there will be a third wave? You know, there was the first wave. I even took my dad before he passed away to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s home after her father died.
1:48:56
RB: Oh, wow that is wonderful.
1:48:57
SM: And I— one of my famous, favorite shots is walking up the back stairs with my dad looking up at me. And we were— and I have gone to Elizabeth Cady Stanton house three times now since my dad died, and again brings tears to my eyes, it was a great memory of being with him that day at the house. But getting back to this, will there be a third wave in the women’s movement? And what is the legacy of the second wave?
1:49:24
RB: I hope so. And the legacy of the second way is, as I said, the way people think, dream, act, imagine, live their lives. And I would hope that there is going to be a third wave.
1:49:44
SM: Do you think that— when— you are a scholar and you write books, and scholars often know that the best history books are written 50 years after an event like the best World War II books—
1:49:51
RB: Oh yeah definitely.
1:49:52
SM: 50 years after the (19)60s and (19)70s, I will say 50 years from 1980 when Reagan came to power, what do you think the history books are going to say about that time and the generation that grew up after World War II?
1:50:11
RB: I think people are going to admire it a great deal and see the enormous changes that were made, and that it was a real triumph of democracy, from below.
1:50:25
SM: And those media people today, whether it be Newt Gingrich or George Orwell, in his writings, or Mike Huckabee, on his TV show or some of the commentators on Fox when they say that a lot of problems in America today are due to those times in the (19)60s and (19)70s, when love was rampant, drugs were rampant, divorces were rampant–
1:50:52
RB: Well, those people are divorced more than most people in the sixties, that is all I can say.
1:50:56
SM: Yeah, you know, do you have any— was there a question that— that I did not ask you that you thought I was going to ask?
1:51:07
RB: Cannot think of it at the moment.
1:51:08
SM: Was there any final comments or–
1:51:09
RB: No, that, you know, I think a legacy of change and democracy is only going to ask, and I hope to see it again in my lifetime.
1:51:22
SM: Good. Well, thank you. I am going to—
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Rosalind Baxandall
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Baxandall, Rosalyn, 1939-2015 ; McKiernan, Stephen
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Feminists; Historians; Authors; Political activists--United States; Baxandall, Rosalyn, 1939-2015--Interviews
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Rosalyn Baxandall (1939 - 2015) was a feminist historian, activist, author and educator. She was one of the leading figures of the feminist movement in New York during the late 1960s. Baxandall received her Bachelor's degree in French at University of Wisconsin and her Master of Social Work at Columbia University.
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2010-07-29
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.21a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.21b
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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111:24
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McKiernan Interviews
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-06-12
Interviewer
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Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
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Daniel Bell, 1919-2011
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Daniel Bell (1919 - 2011) was an American sociologist, writer, editor, and academic, best known for his contributions to the study of post-industrialism. He received his Bachelor's degree at City College of New York and his Ph.D. at Columbia University. Bell became a professor of Sociology at Harvard University, where he remained until 1990."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">Daniel Bell (1919 - 2011) was an American sociologist, writer, editor, and academic, best known for his contributions to the study of post-industrialism. He received his Bachelor's degree at City College of New York and his Ph.D. at Columbia University. Bell became a professor of Sociology at Harvard University, where he remained until 1990.</span>
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Binghamton University Libraries
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audio/mp4
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1 Microcassette
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Interview Format
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Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"The End of Ideology; Baby boom generation; Karl Marx; Anti-War Movement; Sociology; Non-Violent Protest; Wounded Knee Massacre; American Indian Movement; Arguing the World; The Pentagon Papers"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":2,"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">The End of Ideology; Baby boom generation; Karl Marx; Anti-War Movement; Sociology; Non-Violent Protest; Wounded Knee Massacre; American Indian Movement; Arguing the World; The Pentagon Papers</span>
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90:13
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Sociologists; Authors; Editors; College teachers; Bell, Daniel, 1919-2011--Interviews
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Daniel Bell
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 12 June 2010
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:01):
All right. I will continue to look at it too, to make sure it is not... Yeah. As a former journalist, some of these I am going to read and then I am just going to prompt you to. As a former journalist and great professor at several prestigious universities, what would you say about the students of the boomer generation? Actually, the students you had in the classroom for many years, those were the students that were born, and propped, and going to college between 1964 until 1981 because the boomer generation is defined as those that were born between 1946 and (19)64. Do you feel positive about that generation as a sociologist and as a person who experienced them in the classroom? Do you feel negative qualities starting? Did they stand out in comparison to your students post boomer, those that were in college in the mid to late (19)80s and beyond? And maybe those before? Any thoughts you have on students from that generation?
DB (00:01:11):
I think the question is too broad. There is a range of students in every generation. And there is a difference to those who come to me as a teacher and those who simply stay away. So, it is difficult for me to talk about a generation.
SM (00:01:42):
How about instead of talking about the generation as a whole, how about the students that you experienced? The ones that came to you, the ones that sought your advice, counsel, or you were kind of a mentor to, and they were your mentees? Did you find them very inquisitive? Were they fairly well-read?
DB (00:02:21):
Excuse me. When you think about particular students rather than generation or range of students... And when I think of a particular set of students, they were all extremely bright, very inquisitive, and somebody eager to challenge me, which I like very much. There is no fun or excitement in simply teaching students when there is an attitude to them, but I like students with whom I can argue with and who can argue with me. And sometimes they argue from the left, sometimes from the right. It varies with the class. And the other thing is that I have always liked teaching with a colleague. At Columbia, I taught several seminars with Lionel Trilling on literature and society. At Harvard, I have taught several seminars with Hilary Putnam, who was a philosopher.
SM (00:03:48):
Yes-yes.
DB (00:03:53):
And in one sense, we argued well with one another, as well as with the students. So that there was not any sense that we're setting forth knowledge on high. We were interested in what sort of problems when raising. What we have always started to do is to make distinctions, which override some of the clichés. For example, when I was teaching with Hilary Putnam, we would say that some issues are constitutive and some are intrinsic. People often confuse it too. Sex, for example, is intrinsic because it is based on hormones. Whereas, gender is constructed. It is based on cultural norms and such. And when people talk about sex and gender without making those distinctions, they are confusing people. So, our effort has always been to try to cut through many of the clichés of any of the arbitrary statements, to try to really sort out the actual differences. Sometimes, for example, issues are reductive, meaning that they go from psychology, to biology, to chemistry. Sometimes they are what we call emergent. Maybe they are expanding what they tried to cover. We used to say, for example, what is the most important prefix in the English language? And the answer would be, most important prefix is re. Which you sometimes rearrange. So that you are always reorganizing what you are doing. And therefore, you are making distinctions, which allow people to sort out what is it you are trying to do.
SM (00:06:09):
What is interesting, just looking at your background and you talk about how important Sydney Hook was. You did not actually have him as a teacher, but he was like, you saw him and what kind of teacher he was with his students, and when he taught in college. And one of the things about the boomers, oftentimes they will say is that the teachers were available to them. We could talk to our teachers, we could talk to our professors. Our professors really encouraged us to go out and listen to people, and different points of view, and had different experience in colleges. And if we were not pushed, maybe we would not have gone and had them. So, there was a closeness. There seemed to be a closeness during the time that the boomers were in college. Closer ties with their faculty members. And again, you liked the students had challenged that. Again, you cannot talk about an entire generation. But the experiences from that period, from say (19)64 to the beginning of when Ronald Reagan became president, that was the time when boomers were in college. And there seems to be not that closeness anymore on college campuses like there was in the past.
DB (00:07:27):
Depends upon the school. A student from Berkeley, I would say, "Who was your teaching in college?" He said, "Oh, I do not know?" He took all elective courses. So, there would be several hundred students in a course. So, I said, "What is the point of taking such a course?" "Well, we had to."
SM (00:07:49):
Yes.
DB (00:07:49):
I think these large elective courses are nonsense because you might as well simply have a recording. And so we play it. It is where there is a possibility of being able to interact with students in seminars and such. And one thing about Sydney Hook as a teacher, as one learned, he was always willing to take opposite points of view just to be able to challenge a student. Was not necessarily his point of view per se, but seemingly he would take an opposite point of view. One of my best students, for example, always acknowledged that fact. Was a man, David Ignatius. I do not know if you know the name?
SM (00:08:45):
That name does ring a bell. Yes.
DB (00:08:46):
Well, David Ignatius is a columnist in the Washington Post.
SM (00:08:49):
Okay.
DB (00:08:50):
And he was the editor for a while in Paris of the Tribune, owned by the Times. And he would always say, "What I appreciate most about you at seminars, is you made me change my mind. Not that you want to per se, but I was interested in the problem and you began challenging me on this to define it, to organize it. Why are you interested, etc." And he says, "Finally, I changed my mind." He has written about that. He has written several columns about that.
SM (00:09:27):
He was a student here. He is a boomer probably too, probably during that timeframe. Again, a teacher is very important in the development of student. We always say at orientation and for years, it is very important to find that teacher or a few teachers that will be there for you, you can talk to for advice and counsel. And not only on courses you take, but certainly if any issues come up. Sydney Hook seems to be that the type of person. I remember, I have some quotes in there, I put them in the email that I sent you. I have a question on Sydney Hook toward the end of my... But that is a very interesting point of view that students need to hear the other side, and try to wonder and understand the other side. Do you see that was happening back then in colleges, that a lot of teachers wanted people to hear both sides? Some people today say that it is not the same on college campuses.
DB (00:10:39):
Again, I cannot generalize on that. I find any generalization rather awkward because the thing I constantly deal with students is to say, you have to make relevant distinctions. What distinctions are you making? So you know what belongs there and what belongs there. And therefore, if you know what distinctions you are making or why you are making them, then you can begin to decide what is relevant, what is not relevant. And so that...
SM (00:11:24):
You are the author of so many classic books, including the End of Ideology. In just a few words, and it is a broad question again, but what was the main theme of the book? It did look at the (19)50s, when boomers were in elementary school. So, when you are talking about that, the book came out in (19)61, I believe. (19)60, (19)61 and boomers were just going into junior high school at the time. So, you are basically writing about the (19)50s and the late forties. And the change that is happening in our society to the service economy. And could you in your own words, say why you wrote the book, why you felt it was important to write it, and the basic theme?
DB (00:12:18):
Well, I think the title sums it up. Namely, that ideologies have been fabricated or fixed, instead of usages of concepts. And therefore, the subtopic of the book, if I am not mistaken, is on the exhaustion of ideas in the 1950s.
SM (00:12:40):
Yes. Yep.
DB (00:12:43):
So that in one sense, the main target was Marxism used as an ideology. Not the law of Marxism was that, and we were wrong. But those who use Marxism as an ideology, in a sense, would be the target of the book.
SM (00:13:03):
It's interesting because during the 1960s, as you remember, many of the... Particularly after 1965, (19)66, (19)67 and it was very evident on Columbia's campus in (19)68 with Mark Rudd, that a lot of the students were reading that kind of book. They were reading Miles. Somebody told me people only carried Miles's book just to impress people. They had not really read it. But in terms of, I interviewed Mark Rudd, and Mark Rudd said, "Well, Marx was very important. Many members of the new left were reading that." That way of [inaudible] was very important. Revolutionaries were very important. So, the ending of what you were saying was going on the (19)50s, some of the people in the new left, student leaders of the anti-war movement, were bringing those ideas back. Any thoughts on that?
DB (00:14:00):
Well, in (19)68, add along and count with Mark Rudd because we have been supporting David Truman with the stipulation that they should not call on the police. Because the police would simply go in and break heads. And I was saying to Mark Rudd, what you are doing is trying to play Truman's game. It came out later, as Mark Rudd himself said, one of the issues was the question of the gymnasium on the Harlem side. And he had never been there. He did not know anything about it. He was using these things simply as tools, props. And that was the main thing I disliked about him. That you were not really arguing a problem. You were not really saying, I believe this. I believe that. But you were using them as a tool. And he was using ideology as a tool because he had a language to impress people, but he never understood what the language itself was. And I would say to him at one point, "Who's Bruno Bauer?" He said, "I do not know." I said, "But you're talking about Marx and not know Bruno Bauer? That Bruno Bauer is one of the people that Marx talks about in the Communist manifesto and one of the chief people between Feuerbach and himself. Do you know who Feuerbach was?" "No, who was it?" And so, there was a complete ignorance there of actualities of ideas.
SM (00:16:02):
Did you change your opinion of him at all over the years as he's...
DB (00:16:07):
I have no sense of what he was or what he became. The person who I thought most had been in the new left for a while was Paul Berman.
SM (00:16:17):
Oh, Paul Berman. Yeah. He wrote a book on Vietnam, I remember.
DB (00:16:20):
Yeah. He has written several books. He has written one book now recently on Islam and on in the Ideology of Islam. But Paul Berman was a young man who had got to think through, he was a good friend one time of Rudd. But after (19)68, he began moving towards the amicus because they were opposing ideas with which he was unfamiliar and he had to encounter. So I think that Paul Berman was the best person to come out of that movement. And Rudd, probably the worst.
SM (00:16:55):
Are there any people within that movement, because Mark was just one person, but when you think of the anti-war movement, several people come to mind that were... Tom Hayden or Rennie Davis, David Harris. Of course, Dave Dellinger, William Kunstler, the lawyer. Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin. A lot of different... In fact, Rubin was over at Berkeley for a while and Abbie Hoffman seems to be everywhere. Is there anything in any of those people that you admire? Because they are at the cap, the top of the cap, the top of the pyramid in terms of the names of that era.
DB (00:17:50):
Well, Hayden had been in the University of Michigan and he came to see me. And clearly in his own mind he was saying, have to choose between C. Wright Mills and Daniel Bell. And he chose C. Wright Mills. Recently, there is a book which has come out by Ki Ochs and Arthur Filleg on Gerth and Mills, which is a devastating book. Reputation and Scholarship, how Mills manipulated Gerth and tried to get credit for the work on Max Weber. But they never knew that. And I have in my book collection of essays are the, which I think one of my favorite books is the... It is a book of essays dealing with technology, and religion, and such. And there is an essay there called From Vulgar Marxism to Vulgar Sociology. And mostly about Mills. And there he was thrashing away with these large scale generalizations and you never knew... Well, how things are going right now. There is a power elite. So, there is no change in the power elite from the beginning of the republic to the end. And he said, but you're talking about power, not about politics, which is the distinctions between people and such. No, I had no respect for Rudd because he wanted to go out and swing at people and have them swing at him. Because he thought, "I am going to be a tough guy and we will get into a fight." Well, you want to get into a fight, get into a fight. But that is not a way of making distinctions or understanding issues.
SM (00:19:50):
I sense that when you are saying these things and you make very relevant points, and that is knowledge is power. And we say this to students all the time, that if you are going to understand your opponent, you need to read about what the opponent stands for. Do not just attack them based on emotion, but have knowledge with power. Do you think that when you look at the movements that came about after the anti-war movement... The civil rights movement was already taking place, obviously, and it was a role model for the other movements that followed. But the anti-war movement itself... Point I was trying to make here. I am trying to get it right. I lost my train of thought here. The anti-war. Yeah. What were your thoughts on the anti-war movement itself and the people that participated in it? Do you think they were genuine? I know you cannot, again, because you cannot generalize, but when you look at the anti-war movement, you see different segments. You see the religious segment, which was the Catholic. Daniel and Philip Berrigan, the anti-nuclear group. Then you had the students. And then you had people like Benjamin Spock, the doctor. And you had these people coming from all different angles and all different walks of life, and violence was something they all opposed until the Weatherman, the Black Panthers, groups like that came around. Did you admire at least some segments of the anti-war movement, these other movements before they were-
DB (00:21:41):
I admired most of them because I thought it was genuine. I started out in some sense supporting the government and then turning against it. A group of us wrote a long letter to Lyndon Johnson, as we had contact with a lawyer who worked for Johnson. And he encouraged us the write to Johnson, and he would get Johnson to write a reply, which he did. But we were saying that it is the wrong war, so to speak. Sorry, I am being carried out in the wrong way quite often. So that the man, for example, who had been the senator and now became the head of the new school, had-
SM (00:22:39):
Kerry. Yeah.
DB (00:22:43):
... Sent me to kill people. I knew a bit about the Vietnam War, in a personal sense. My son-in-law was in a Coast Guard in Ensign, and he was patrolling the boats. He was patrolling the rivers. And he would write letters to me or he would come home and talk.
DB (00:23:03):
... and he would write letters to me or he would come home and talk. He would say, "We are doing it all wrong." So, I had great respect for many of the people there because their feelings were quite sincere. But no respect for people like Mark Rudd who are manipulative, who are using this as a manipulative issue. There is a man who is been a very good friend of mine, Max Lerner, and he wrote a book with a dreadful title called Ideas Are Weapons. Well, ideas are not weapons, ideas are ideas and you debate ideas. But to say, "Ideas are weapons," is to denigrate ideas and to devalue them. I told Max... he is a wonderful writer, very good columnist for New York Post-
SM (00:24:01):
Is he?
DB (00:24:02):
... taught at Brandeis. I said, "Ideas are not weapons. It is the wrong way to think about it. If they are weapons, you should be using it to smash people, rather than to debate with people." But he thought, and maybe he was right in one sense, if you have a good title, you keep it.
SM (00:24:29):
That is what book publishers like sometimes titles that would get you to sell your book. Obviously, going beyond Mark Rudd, there was certainly Bernadine Dohrn, another person from the Weathermen, and Bill Ayers who was in the news a lot because he was in front of Bill Clinton. Just your thoughts, when you think about... and even as a historian or as a sociologist teaching classes, my golly, you look at the Civil Rights Movement, you look at the anti-war movement, you look at non-violent protests, you look at the Gandhi philosophy of non-violence. Then all of a sudden in the late (19)60s, because the anti-war movement is getting frustrated, you see a segment trying to turn to violence through the Weathermen. There is always the question, people do not understand whether the Black Panthers were violent or not. But there is the scene of Stokely Carmichael challenging Dr. King, basically telling him, "Your time has passed. Non-violent protest does not work." We had the experience of the students at Cornell walking around with guns, although I do not think they had any intention of using them, they just wanted to use them as a symbol. Then in the American Indian movement, you had Wounded Knee where you went from Attica in 1969 to Wounded Knee in 1973, which was about violence. Seems like violence never wins, does it? As a sociologist, I think you have even said some things about violence is just totally bad. I mean, it only brings enemies rather than supporters.
DB (00:26:09):
Nonviolence can work only in a society which respects people's ideas. Obviously, nonviolence cannot work in Nazi Germany. They can just go in and smash you. But nonviolence works when people respect ideas and say, "Well, if you're willing to take the stand and be nonviolent, well, then I will respect that." I think that in this country, nonviolent worked. Nazi Germany, it would not. In the Soviet Union, it would not.
SM (00:26:50):
They would be dead if they did that.
DB (00:27:10):
The thing which I just dislike most the is that the New Left was taking to the university as the focus of their attacks. Any great university and for a while, Columbia was a great university, respects different points of view. And you cannot destroy a university. But someone like Mark Rudd was ready to destroy the university. Not everyone in that Weatherman group, some of have been students of mine and I knew them very well. They would say to me later on, "You know, you made as read a book, which really shook us up and we would argue about it." I would say, "Yes, I know." This was Dostoyevsky's book, The Demons. Had different titles, but the real title was The Possessed. Well, then The Demons, because it is about his group, followers of Akunin, who created violence. I do not know if you know the book?
SM (00:28:29):
No, I do not. I-
DB (00:28:32):
Well, it is one of the great books of its kind. New translation, it is called The Demons. It's one of Dostoyevsky's great books along with Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov. Because it is about a revolutionary group and what happens in the revolutionary group. And they identify very strongly with this and it shook them up.
SM (00:29:06):
You talk about Marco, what did you think of Mario Savio and Bettina Aptheker, and I think Goldberg led that group that were the student leaders of... Ian Rossman... the student leaders of the student protest movement at Berkeley, the Free Speech Movement. Because they said it was all about ideas, the university should be about ideas, not about corporate takeover of the university. In the very same time, Clark Kerr, then the president, talked about the knowledge factory. Of course, that upsets students because many of the students of that era did not want to be their mom and dad who just never questioned authority, they just put a hat on, like an IBM mentality hat.
DB (00:29:55):
I came out to Berkeley, I met with [inaudible], (19)64, (19)65 because Clark Kerr wanted me to come the head of the Institute on Labor Relations. So he invited me to come out to Berkeley, talk with him about it, I did. Of course now I was crossing the campus with Marty Lipset. [inaudible].
SM (00:30:18):
Oh, yes-yes.
DB (00:30:20):
A man came running across the campus, said, "Hey, Lipset. We are off of the July Days, we're going on to October." I said, "Who is that?" He said, "Oh, it is that crazy nut, Mario Savio." They had an image of the Russian Revolution. The July Days were the ones when after all, they tried to turn against Kerensky.
SM (00:30:40):
So, the Free Speech Movement was a-
DB (00:30:57):
I do not know if you have seen the film Arguing the World?
SM (00:30:59):
No. Well, maybe I have. But was that a documentary?
DB (00:31:05):
Well, in a way, yes. I strongly urge you to see the film. It's about four of us from City College and our past live [inaudible]. It is about Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, and myself-
SM (00:31:27):
Kristol?
DB (00:31:27):
... coming out of City College and moving out into the larger society.
SM (00:31:31):
And that was Seymour Lipset too, right?
DB (00:31:35):
Lipset was not in this one.
SM (00:31:35):
So, it was Howe...
DB (00:31:37):
Howe, Kristol, Glazer, and myself.
SM (00:31:39):
Okay.
DB (00:31:40):
There is a text of that that had been put up by the University of Chicago Press, edited by Joseph Dorman who did the film. So you may want to get a copy of the book called Arguing the World. This gives you the debate between the four of us and our friends from City College starting out in (19)38, (19)39 and moving up to the 1970s. Well, it is published by University of Chicago Press, the text of it, and the film itself is very strong in many ways. You can probably call PBS.
SM (00:32:30):
I can get. You can get anything on the computer if you need access to something. I-
DB (00:32:40):
The film called Arguing the World and directed by Joseph Dorman, D-O-R-M-A-N. I said, then there's a text of it elaborated, probably find the University of Chicago Press. I would say it would be a rather crucial book for you.
SM (00:32:57):
I may have... I have so many books. I am amazed that... In fact, I have just been here and I have bought a few books up at Harvard Square. I mean, they have great used bookstores around here. But obviously the Mario Savio and the group at Berkeley in (19)64, (19)65 were not the same as the SDSers and the ones we were talking about at Columbia. But they were the precursors, they were the forerunners for all the movements that followed. They just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement out there just recently, too. Do you have any high regard for them in terms of the... Because there is quite a few names, the names, because there is like 20 of them that were student leaders. They have gone on in all different directions, some very successful in life. Mario Savio did not live very long. He's passed on. He was not very well for many, many years. There is a new book out on him, too, by Dr. Cohen, I think it is out of NYU.
DB (00:34:07):
I do not already know the Berkeley people at all. However, there is a long section on Berkeley in this film because of the fact that Glazer was teaching there. There is a woman who comes out attacking Glazer, and it turns out Sam become a member of the city council.
SM (00:34:30):
Oh my gosh.
DB (00:34:34):
Excuse me.
SM (00:34:34):
Yep. I have a couple quotes here that I want you to respond to from your book, The End of Ideology. Here is one quote... Oh, there's three of them and you can respond as a group. Quote number one: "We have seen the exhaustion of the 19th century ideologies of Marxism as intellectual movements that explain the truth." Well, you have already even referenced to that a little bit. Number two: "Many intellectuals have begun to fear the masses or any form of social action." I find that because when you look at the masses and social action, that is a lot of what the (19)60s was about. Then the third one, and I love this one and I hope I can somehow remember this forever. It was a quote, I think it came either you or [inaudible], "The difference between capitalism and communism: capitalism is system where man exploits a man and communism is vice versa." Now I hope I can remember that because that is a classic. When I read that, I said, "That is something, Steve, you ought to remember." But I wanted your thoughts here because when you look about the masses, whether the elite phrase of the masses or whatever, when you think of the Vietnam War and you think of the movements, they were about masses of people. The Montgomery Boycott with was about a mass of African Americans who said that, "We're not going to ride the buses." The 1963 March on Washington was a mass gathering where Dr. King gave his famous speech. You had the Black Panthers, you had these other groups, the Young Lords, the American Indian Movement, the National Organization for Women, the anti-war movement, the Earth Day group, the gay lesbian groups from Stonewall, and of course, the Black Panthers. These were all masses. These are masses of people. So, if what you are saying here is that many intellectuals have begun to fear the masses or any form of social action. How do you respond to that? Because that is what the (19)60s are really all about, and early (19)70s.
DB (00:36:52):
Well, different periods of time having the keyword. Nobody, today uses the word masses. At one time you had a magazine called The New Masses, which was the communist magazine, edited by Mike Gold and Joseph Freeman. Ortega y Gasset had a book about the masses, the famous Spanish [inaudible]. It is a word which has now gone out of relevance, partly because it never had a defined meaning, who were the masses. In some ways, Ortega's book, and he was after one of the most important philosophers of the (19)20s and such, were the scientists, which was is strange. But the word masses has gone out of fashion. Today you have race, gender, and equality. If you look through a period of the (19)50s and (19)60s, I do not think you will ever find the word gender. It was not a term that was used then. But now, gender became an important word to define the women's movement. You did not have a woman's movement then. Most of the movements in the (19)50s and (19)60s were led by men and you had very few women. In fact, the women were complaining they had to do the dirty work, cleaning up and such. Today, gender became a key word. The question is always when and where are keywords used and why. As I say, gender becomes important because it symbolizes the nature of the women's movement and women's rights. Nobody in that period of time, let us say of Mark Rudd, would ever think of gender. It was not within the framework they are thinking. So, masses disappears. And one of my books has a long essay on nature of masses, maybe in The End of Ideology or some other books.
SM (00:39:12):
This is another very important quote that... I have a lot of your quotes here, but... "A society is most vigorous..." This is very important, and I wish people would read this today. We maybe could get along better. "A society is most vigorous and appealing when both partisans and critics are legitimate voices in the permanent dialogue that is the testing of ideas and experiences. One can be a critic of one's country without being the enemy of its promises." That is prophetic. In my view, if the people that were either leading the country during the Vietnam War, the divisions over civil rights, if they sat down and discussed these two quotes and just the importance of opposing points of view... They are important in your eyes, are not they?
DB (00:40:05):
I would say this, that certain statements are derivative of their time and relevant to their time and certain statements transcend that. The one you have given me now, I would say transcends the nature of time. It is a permanent situation in any society where there are differences of opinion. I cannot think of any society, unless it is a totalitarian society, where you do not have differences of opinion. So, if you have differences of opinion, you have to respect the differences. I think one of the important things about this society is that it goes back in the very beginning of society, one of the things I used to say, I am not sure I could pinpoint where I said it exactly, is that until World War II, we never had a state in this country, we had government. You had states in Europe. Because these were unitary elements, were pulled alongside together. We only began to have a state where we got involved in war where you had to pull a pieces of society together. You had a government, and a government is different between a government and the state. Hegel used the word state, but not government, you see? I do not think if you ever go back and look at the writings of John Quincy Adams or Thomas Jefferson, they ever used the word state. They never thought of the United States as a state, even though the various states, the 13 states that made up a union. But it was not a state in Hegelian sense of unitary focus. We had a government, not a state. We began to have a state during World War II when we had to pull the society together and organize an army. We never had much of a standing army. A state has a large standing army. We never had a large standing army until World War II. Even afterwards, we still never had a large standing army.
SM (00:42:30):
Then, of course, we fought the Civil War and constantly, it was all about the union. It was the union, South and North. But we preserved the union.
DB (00:42:40):
It was a war between states.
SM (00:42:47):
Yes.
DB (00:42:48):
There was not gestalt, you see?
SM (00:42:55):
Yeah. Again, you had mentioned Mr. Berman, but are there any other people that you truly respected. We are talking about here, about, one can be a critic of one's country without being the enemy, I think there were many people did not understand that in the (19)60s and early (19)70s. Because you had even Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, two different Presidents, but very distrustful, opposing points of view of their policies.
DB (00:43:24):
But people forget that are not domestic issues, they are both fairly alike. Then Johnson built The Great Society, which was Medicare and extensive social security. Nixon tried to do that with Pat Moynihan as his advisor. But both got trapped by foreign policy. Therefore, the domestic agenda was pretty much eclipsed or simply laid low. But we forget that there is a domestic agenda in both cases, even with Nixon. Of course, with Pat Moynihan there as Nixon's advisor, there was an emphasis on the family and strengthening the family. I mean, the whole point of Pat Moynihan advice of Nixon is, one of the problems is that the Blacks in this country never had much of a family. They had been slaves or they dispersed. Therefore... I was on six to eight government commissions. The most important one was on technology and automation. Robert Robert Stovall and I directed most of the reports, one called Technology and American Economy. People do not know, do not remember or do not think about it, that one most important situation in increasing productivity in this country, particularly in late 1930s, 1940s, which was chemical fertilizers. Chemical fertilizer increased the productivity on the land. Before World War II, one of the bad, major social issues in this country was sharecroppers. People did not even know the word sharecropper, but these were people like the Blacks who lived on the land and with the chemical fertilizers, they were not needed. So they moved up North, they went to Watts in Los Angeles or to Harlem or Chicago. People say, "Look at all those Blacks that are unemployed." Well, they were never employed. There were sharecroppers on the land. Chemical fertilizers increased productivity enormously and pushed the Blacks off the land and moved them up... and pushed the Blacks off to land and moved them up north. Black became an issue in the north because of this. Great people understand, I know this, you see, because the Blacks had never been there, except in Harlem, had never been there in large numbers before. But the chemical fertilizers pushed them off the land. And what also happened is that the chemical fertilizers polluted many of the lakes and rivers.
SM (00:46:28):
That is right.
DB (00:46:29):
And created a social cost, which regular people had understood, because it was not there before, but the pollution in the lakes and rivers came from the chemical fertilizers, which increased [inaudible] society. So, you have the double edge of it.
SM (00:46:47):
It is amazing. Of course, the Hudson River is one of those rivers that was... Now, it is getting back to normal. I think they have been trying to work on it for years. Let make sure I switch the side here. I cannot even see how far we have got to go here. Yeah, I am going to... Make sure it's working okay. All right. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end?
DB (00:47:26):
I have never liked the idea of dating particular periods of time as if there were unitary elements. They were not. It is part of our nature of a journalistic society where you have to have a label or something. So, you talk about the (19)60s, the (19)70s, the (19)80s. So many things were happening in each of them. There were so many cross currents. So, to talk about the (19)60s, as if there is something unitary about it, it is never made much sense. So, I cannot respond to the question, because I do not understand it as a question.
SM (00:48:03):
That applies to all the decades. Even people when they say that the (19)80s was Reagan. There is more than Reagan then.
DB (00:48:13):
Well, any period of time has many cross currents, so that, it seems to me, it makes no sense we have to talk about these (19)60s, and these (19)70s, and the (19)80s. What happened between 1975 and 1980. Do you know?
SM (00:48:29):
Between (19)75 and (19)80? Yeah, that was the year of the disco.
DB (00:48:35):
I am trying to show you that, what if you were breaking the thing down? What happened between 1975 and 1980, suddenly you find yourself a little wobbly.
SM (00:48:43):
Yeah, I know that the Iran hostage crisis was in (19)79 and that ruined Carter. Carter had problems with gasoline and all that other stuff. I could write them down, but you got to think a little bit.
DB (00:49:01):
I was an advisor to Carter. There's a book which came out recently about the Carter administration and the famous malaise speech of his. And Chris [inaudible], and we were both in the White House with dinner with Mr. Carter, and I respected Carter. People forget that Carter originally was an engineer. He claims a graduate of the Naval Academy, meaning he was a peanut farmer, but he was an engineer, and he had a very good rational mind, but he was caught by the circumstances, particularly by the Iran hostage situation.
SM (00:49:41):
Yeah. When you think of, again, the presidents that were in charge, supposedly, when the Boomers have been in line, that includes anybody from Harry Truman to Obama, do you pin any of them as greater than the others in terms of what they have done for [inaudible]?
DB (00:50:03):
Depends upon what issue you are thinking about. There are many different issues and many different circumstances. After all, Lyndon Johnson is defined very largely by the Vietnam War, which is true in the sense of, this was a major concern. But at the same time, they were building the Great Society Program, which people then tend to diminish or forget, and forget the people who served him. My friend Charles Haar at Harvard Law School, was very much in charge of the Cities Program and the Metropolitan Program. And they were very important people and who were very-very good, but they were diminished by the attention to the Vietnam War.
SM (00:51:06):
You wrote in your book... What is the basic theme of your book, the coming of the post-industrial society? And as an added note, are you the person that really came up with that term? It was Professor Bell. We never thought of that term until Professor Bell wrote about it in his book.
DB (00:51:31):
Well, no term ever comes cleanly out. David Riesman used the term at one point, much earlier, but it was never picked up, never done. There was a man in France who did a book on post-industrial society. But I was talking about two different things. One was the move away from manufacturing to services. The services were not simply the McDonald's hamburger kind of thing, but research services, there is other forms of service to the economy, and the word post-industrial was simply to indicate we are going beyond that. But the more important dimension of it was the development of the theoretical knowledge and the reliance on theoretical knowledge, and that many of the things we think about, we derive with theoretical knowledge. Let me give you an example. You know what a laser is?
SM (00:52:36):
Mm-hmm.
DB (00:52:37):
What is a laser?
SM (00:52:39):
Well, a laser a sends a beam. It is a beam of light.
DB (00:52:45):
Well, how is it different from other beams of light?
SM (00:52:48):
How is it different from other... I would think there would be intensity that you could control.
DB (00:52:54):
No.
SM (00:52:55):
No?
DB (00:52:57):
The laser goes back to a paper by Einstein in 1904, 1905, that light is not just a wave, but light is a quanta, a pulse. Laser is an acronym. Do you know what the laser means?
SM (00:53:10):
Mm-mm.
DB (00:53:12):
Light amplified by simulation of the emission of radiation, L-A-S-E-R. [inaudible] Charles Townes at Columbia in 1939. It's a different way of focusing light through the emission of radiation. So, it changes the plutonium view of light as a wave. And you have to know the theoretical foundations. That is Einstein to Charles Townes. And the word laser is an acronym. Light amplified by the simulation of the emission of radiation, L-A-S E-R.
SM (00:53:51):
When Clark Kerr gave that famous speech about the knowledge factory, you're talking about the post-industrial society, that is an important part of it, isn't it? The university is a knowledge factory and that is what-
DB (00:54:02):
Well, I do not like the word factory.
SM (00:54:05):
He wrote that in the uses of the university.
DB (00:54:07):
I know, but it's not a factory. A factory is organized about particular things. The thing about knowledge is, it is very diffused. You never know where it is going to come from, where it's going to go. So, I say the paper by Einstein in 1904 is a foundation of the laser along with many other things. But it went from Einstein to Charles Townes who was then a physics professor at Columbia who created the laser. And with a laser, you can send a beam to the moon. You can also do an operation on the eye. It is the use of light in a different way by the simulation of the emission of radiation, L-A-S-E-R.
SM (00:54:51):
That is what you mean by the codification of theoretical knowledge.
DB (00:54:55):
Yes. Exactly. Exactly.
SM (00:54:58):
You also said something very profound too in this book. And again, I have only read a couple chapters, that the growing tension between equality and meritocracy is something a social and ethical issue of the century. Now, that is pretty prophetic as well, because there's obviously been that... The whole, Dr. King, the (19)50s and the (19)60s short equality, not only African-Americans, people of color, women's, gay and lesbian in a double thing-
DB (00:55:32):
Well, people do not know who it was who invented the word meritocracy and what it meant. Actually, it was a word invented by a man named Michael Young, who was an Englishman who had been, at a one point, the head of the Labor Party research department. And he used the word meritocracy. In one sense, Jefferson used the same term without calling it meritocracy, namely, opportunities of men of talent to arise rather than birth. Before that, your status in society was based upon birth. And you inherited a piece of land, you inherited if a factory, you inherited a practice as a dentist. But Jefferson said, we want to have this open to men of talent, not just birth. Michael Young, when he did the book on the meritocracy, and he used the term... first one to use the term meritocracy, however, pointed out that there was a negative sense of meritocracy. And to some extent, I have understood that. His notice of the negative sense was, you longer had excuses to be where you were. You had no meritocracy. If you were in a low position in society, you were there because you had no merit. And therefore, meritocracy kept people down as well as moving people up. So, the idea of... When I was [inaudible] phrase a just meritocracy. I have always used the phrase, a just meritocracy, never meritocracy by myself. Because meritocracy also pushes people down. You have no excuses to be where you are, because you have no merit. But Michael Young was a very stimulating person, extraordinary man.
SM (00:57:38):
When was he alive? Or when was his heyday, so to speak?
DB (00:57:43):
Well, his main contribution came after World War-War II when he wrote most of the Labor Party documents. I spent the year with Michael Young in the Center for Advanced Studies.
SM (00:58:00):
Oh, in Princeton?
DB (00:58:01):
No, in Palo Alto in 1958, (19)59. And I wrote an... a collection of Michael Young's essays published by [inaudible]. And I wrote the introduction to that. And people right now no longer know Michael Young. He became Lord Young of Darlington and there's a Young Foundation in England.
SM (00:58:38):
There were two books that came out in the late (19)60s that were very popular with the young people. And they kind of explained the Counter Culture, and the different kinds of consciousness that was going on, the changes that were happening. As a sociology, I do not know if you ever assigned them to your students, but what were your thoughts of the Greening of America by Charles Reich? And the second one was The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak. Those were very major books. I will add though, that Erick Erickson also wrote several books on protests and descent around that time, and so did Kenneth Keniston. So, when you think of that period, say from (19)67 to (19)73, (19)74, those are major, major writers?
DB (00:59:27):
Well, the two books you mentioned are forgotten, and rightly so. They are very slim books and very thin books. They were coining phrases, not really making an argument, particularly the Reich book. Whereas Erickson and Keniston, they were more serious people, particularly Erickson, of course. There's also a man in Harvard named Murray who invented The Thematic Apperception Test. But the Greening of America, it is a phrase, it is a title. It is not a theme or an argument. And The Making of a Counter Culture, well, where is the Counter Culture now?
SM (01:00:16):
I know in graduate school it was required reading. We had to read it. It had different levels of consciousness. And Dr. Roszak, I guess has just retired from University of California, Hayward. And he just wrote an update to it, as people are becoming senior citizens, The Making of a Counter Culture, where are they now kind of a book. But to you, they are not major at all?
DB (01:00:45):
No.
SM (01:00:48):
As a group of 75 million Boomers, how do Boomers fit into your definition of the post-industrial society?
DB (01:00:58):
Well, I find that too loose a generalization. Among 75 million, there must be about 70 million different opinions. So, I cannot respond to a question so loose as that.
SM (01:01:14):
Do you think that, this is a question I have asked everybody though, that because there were so many divisions in America and during that timeframe because of the Vietnam War, those who supported the troops, those who were against the troops, supported the war, against the war, divisions between Black and white. I was on college campus when those divisions were intense, certainly that the other divisions that were happening in America at that time. Do you think that this has permanently affected the generation, the Civil War generation, that they will go to their graves with not coming to terms with some of the divisions that they experienced in their lives? And I preface this by saying that we asked this question to Senator Edmund Muskie when we took a group of students to Washington DC in 1995, because the students who were not alive in the (19)60s wanted to find out if he had his thoughts on what they had read in their classes, that the nation was on the verge of the second civil war, that all the things that they had seen in 1968 at the Democratic Convention, and the assassinations, and the president resigning, and riots and burnings and everything, wanted to know if that would have had a permanent effect on the generation which was their parents.
DB (01:02:40):
Well, again, I think of the whole statement, two set of loose terms, the verge or the verge [inaudible] the case and civil war between whom and whom? Again, these are phrases, not ideas.
SM (01:02:59):
But the healing though, that is really with respect to those who served in the war, the Vietnam veterans and those who protested the war, some of them may have issues as they move on.
DB (01:03:15):
Well, there is one woman who changed so much of this. You know who that would be?
SM (01:03:22):
One woman who changed...
DB (01:03:24):
All these perceptions.
SM (01:03:28):
No.
DB (01:03:29):
Her name is Maya Lin.
SM (01:03:31):
Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. The wall.
DB (01:03:36):
Suddenly you have a very different feeling about the war when you see all those names on the wall. When she first proposed the wall, Bill Buckley said, "This is dreadful. We do not want this modernist stuff. Why do not we have a traditional thing?" So, most people do not realize, if you go look at the wall, that next to is a man on a horse, a traditional statue, which supposed to symbolize, you see, the Vietnam War, which nobody even looks at.
SM (01:04:05):
You are talking about the Three Man Statue?
DB (01:04:07):
Hmm?
SM (01:04:08):
The Three Man Statue, you are talking about?
DB (01:04:10):
I do not remember what it is.
SM (01:04:11):
Yeah.
DB (01:04:12):
But Maya Lin's wall suddenly became the symbol, and suddenly gave a sense of appreciation of the names of these people.
SM (01:04:28):
You find it interesting it took the Vietnam veterans to take the lead on the monument issue, because there had been no World War II Memorial, there had been no Korean War Memorial. There really had not been a World War I Memorial. And now, there is the World War II, there's the Korean... They have kind of taken a lead in that area.
DB (01:04:47):
And the Roosevelt Memorial.
SM (01:04:48):
Yes, the Roosevelt, and now the Martin Luther King.
DB (01:04:50):
Quite late.
SM (01:04:51):
Yes. And then the MLK Memorial, which is being built right now. Jan Scruggs wrote the book To Heal a Nation. That was his book.
DB (01:05:01):
Who?
SM (01:05:02):
Jan Scruggs, the founder of the Vietnam Memorial. And the goal of his effort to get the wall built was to heal the veterans and their families, and to pay respect to those, but in some sense, to also help the nation heal from the war. And I will respond that Edmund Muskie, he did not even mention 1968 in his response. His response was, we have not healed since the Civil War and in the area of race. And then he went on to talk about that for the next 15 minutes. And then he said, and by the way, we almost lost an entire generation of Americans when 430,000 men died. The effect that this had on future generations of America, it was devastating.
DB (01:06:01):
I am beginning to fade.
SM (01:06:03):
Okay, I got, all right, maybe three more questions?
DB (01:06:07):
Well, go ahead.
SM (01:06:11):
See if I can cut this down. I guess maybe what I will do, instead of asking these specific questions, I will just mention some of the personalities of the period and just give you... Because you had strong feelings toward Mark Rudd and others. And I to usually end my interviews by as listing about 20, 25 names, people just give a quick response to them, in terms of that period. For the following people, just your thoughts on the following people mean to you. Tom Hayden?
DB (01:06:55):
A crooked man. Look at the film Argue in the World. There's interviews with-with Hayden there, you will see what I mean.
SM (01:07:05):
How about Jane Fonda?
DB (01:07:08):
Rather forlorn personality.
SM (01:07:11):
Rennie Davis.
DB (01:07:14):
No one will ever know that name again.
SM (01:07:17):
Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.
DB (01:07:21):
Two clowns.
SM (01:07:23):
Timothy Leary.
DB (01:07:27):
Worse than that. A man who would destroy himself.
SM (01:07:36):
Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.
DB (01:07:39):
Decent man, was unfairly roughed up by the Nixon administration.
SM (01:07:49):
Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern.
DB (01:07:53):
Decent men, particularly McCarthy. McGovern, I support McGovern when he ran, because my colleague, Irving Kristol, supported Nixon, but both decent men, but not major figures.
SM (01:08:11):
How about John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy?
DB (01:08:17):
John Kennedy was a personal force, but never had sufficient weight of ideas. But we never had a chance to find out. Robert Kennedy, such a mixture of things. He worked for Nixon. One time was pretty much on the right and on the left. You never knew, in a sense, what the man was about. And he died too soon.
SM (01:08:50):
How about Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.
DB (01:08:54):
Well, Nixon was a very clever man, very shrewd man in his way. Spiro Agnew was a complete crook.... way, could describe as a complete crook.
SM (01:09:04):
LBJ and Hubert Humphrey.
DB (01:09:08):
LBJ was a very good man. Could have been a great man, but was trapped by the Vietnam War. Hubert Humphrey was a very nice man, but not an intellectual. He wanted to be an intellectual, but never was. And that was his problem.
SM (01:09:28):
Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
DB (01:09:31):
Well, Gerald Ford was a decent man and he played a decent role when he was in the White House. I think Jimmy Carter was very much underrated. And his work after he left office, and going around the world and such, been very important work.
SM (01:09:51):
How about George Bush Number 1 and Ronald Reagan.
DB (01:09:57):
George Bush Number 1 was a fairly good politician, and as a political person, played out a good role. Ronald Reagan, I have never understood, really have never understood, because he is a man who responds to cue cards. But he does is very well. I have never understood the adulation for Reagan or what achievements were supposed to have been. I think what he did do, in a way, was to take the country, which felt very guilty by the Vietnam War, and got the country to put it all aside for a while.
SM (01:10:45):
Well, Bill Clinton and George Bush the Second.
DB (01:10:50):
Clinton was a very good politician, very shrewd, very smart, but never wholly consistent. George Bush the Second, to me, was a cipher, a little cipher, and in many ways a very unfortunate president. Particularly by letting Cheney do so much behind the scenes.
SM (01:11:22):
Of course, President Obama and Dwight Eisenhower.
DB (01:11:26):
Well, I think Obama has great potential. His books of wonderful books, great sense of feeling, but he has not had that much of a chance, now, to really bring it out. Eisenhower was a man who was underrated. He was very good, very shrewd, but he was shrewd enough to appear not to be shrewd.
SM (01:11:52):
How about Harry Truman, because he was the very first president for the movers.
DB (01:11:58):
I would say Truman was, again, underappreciated. He was a very good president, most importantly, because like Nixon, he knew how to choose good people around him.
SM (01:12:10):
Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, people who stood out for the Women's Movement.
DB (01:12:20):
Gloria Steinem was a great publicity hound, and very shrewd at that. Bella Abzug, again, she was defeated by Pat Moynihan, and eclipsed by him.
SM (01:12:38):
Mm-hmm.
DB (01:12:41):
And who was the third one you mentioned?
SM (01:12:44):
Oh. It was Betty Freidan, Bella Abzug, and Gloria Steinem.
DB (01:12:49):
Well, Betty Friedan was important because she was able to re-focus attention on the nature of the Women's Movement, and the Women's Movement's role. But, essentially, it was the ability to put forth an issue rather than anything else. Gloria Steinem always took issues. People forget that one time she worked for the CIA.
SM (01:13:15):
I did not know that.
DB (01:13:16):
Yeah.
SM (01:13:16):
Oh, my God.
DB (01:13:17):
She and Clay Felker. When the CIA was setting up movements to oppose communist fronts, she worked for the CIA at one time. And then, she married Mort Zuckerman. We could go to any lengths to see how weird this woman is.
SM (01:13:37):
How about Malcolm X and Dr King.
DB (01:13:43):
Malcolm X became important because King was killed. And his rhetoric was, for a while, very strong. But after a while people realized it was rhetoric. King had a strength of personality, but people forget, he was also plagiarist.
SM (01:14:08):
That is come out recently from-
DB (01:14:10):
Came out sometime ago.
SM (01:14:12):
Clayborne Carson, or...
DB (01:14:13):
Sometime ago. But that famous speech of his, it was ad hoc. "I have a dream."
SM (01:14:23):
He did use that in some of his sermons before, too. It was an ad hoc, but he had used that phrasing in some of his sermons.
DB (01:14:31):
No. He was very shrewd in terms of knowing when to put forth certain ideas and certain rhetoric. And he was able to take advantage of it.
SM (01:14:40):
During that period, you had the Big Four. And I do not think you have seen anybody since. The Big Four, which was James Farmer, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, and Dr King. That was a powerful portion of this.
DB (01:14:51):
Well, I knew Farmer quite well. He was a good man, but never had real strength behind him. Wilkins is a very, very good man. Wilkins is a real intellectual among them, in a way. Who was the fourth?
SM (01:15:05):
Whitney Young, and Dr King. You already mentioned [inaudible].
DB (01:15:11):
Whitney Young was a good leader of NAACP, for groups for that kind, but, except for the last one, never played a national role. But Roy Wilkins, particularly in terms of Washington politics, played a much more important role.
SM (01:15:28):
How about Muhammad Ali and Jackie Robinson, because they were monumental people-people.
DB (01:15:33):
Well, I have never been a fan of boxing, so I cannot talk about Muhammad Ali. Jackie Robinson was an extremely good baseball player and deserved, in that sense, his fame.
SM (01:15:52):
And then, the Black Panthers. And I have to admit, because there is [inaudible].
DB (01:15:54):
The Black Panthers were a dreadful movement, in which the one-time Horowitz, was-was right wing, wrote about the Black Panthers. They were dreadful people in terms of people they killed and the people they tried to support, and such.
SM (01:16:20):
There is-
DB (01:16:20):
I think the Black Panthers did more to destroy the Black movement then almost anything else.
SM (01:16:26):
Yeah. I will mention, though, that there are six big personalities that stand out here. And of course, it is Bobby Seal, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, Etta Brown, and Stokely Carmichael. And Nate Hilliard is another one. Elaine Brown. They are big names.
DB (01:16:46):
Well, they are all names. Cleaver, however, as you know, went overseas, and then turned the other way. Went over to the right.
SM (01:16:54):
Right.
DB (01:16:57):
Bobby Seal. Well, one has to distinguish those people built up by the press and by the need for certain individuals to build up people like that, from their actual accomplishments.
SM (01:17:12):
Forget Mark Rudd, here. What did you think of Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, because they were the weatherman?
DB (01:17:18):
Well, Dorhrn was a dreadful person, the way she, at one point, approved of the Manson killing. They stuck a fork in a woman. Oh, yeah. I think she is a dreadful person.
SM (01:17:41):
How about George Wallace?
DB (01:17:44):
Who?
SM (01:17:44):
George Wallace.
DB (01:17:46):
You mean from the south?
SM (01:17:47):
Yes.
DB (01:17:47):
Well-
SM (01:17:49):
He was in the elections there, a couple times.
DB (01:17:50):
He was a southern politician, and a bad one. And he was very dangerous for the country.
SM (01:17:56):
How about Barry Goldwater and William Buckley, these real strong conservatives.
DB (01:18:00):
Well, Goldwater, for his time, was a fairly good man. But then, other than the phrases that he used when he ran for President, had no real substance. Buckley was an incredibly shrewd man, and incredibly good at publicity, debate, and very effective. Had respect for Buckley.
SM (01:18:35):
And then, the last thing is just these terms or these events. What did Woodstock and the Summer of Love mean to you?
DB (01:18:46):
Again, these are media terms built up by attention by the media. And Woodstock, somebody gave a phrase. The Summer of Love, people would not even understand what it means anymore. One has to distinguish between media-built sensations and actual movements. And I do not think either Woodstock or so-called Summer of Love, the hate Asbury kind of thing-
SM (01:19:13):
Mm-hmm.
DB (01:19:15):
... are real movements. These were media events.
SM (01:19:18):
How about Watergate?
DB (01:19:25):
Watergate was an actuality, and proved how duplicitous Nixon and his camp could be.
SM (01:19:39):
The other thing I mentioned was just the term, counterculture. What does counterculture mean to you, and communes?
DB (01:19:45):
Nothing anymore.
SM (01:19:46):
Communes.
DB (01:19:48):
Nothing anymore.
SM (01:19:49):
A couple who have gone on to be fairly successful. Woodward and Bernstein. They are thought to have changed the way journalism was.
DB (01:19:58):
Yes. I think it did change, in a way, but more so again, as a media event than actuality. And best illustration, the Times never became a Woodward and Bernstein kind of paper, became a sober-grade paper, as it should be.
SM (01:20:23):
How about the Vietnam Veterans against the War?
DB (01:20:28):
No understanding of that.
SM (01:20:31):
The American Indian Movement?
DB (01:20:33):
Again, no understanding of it. I do not even know what it is. I know what the term is supposed to say, but I do not know what it means.
SM (01:20:41):
The Young Lords were the Latino version of the Black Panthers. They were big in Philadelphia.
DB (01:20:49):
Again, I have no sense of what all that is anymore.
SM (01:20:53):
And the National Organization for Women, as a group?
DB (01:20:56):
A what?
SM (01:20:57):
Now.
DB (01:20:58):
Again, no feeling for what it means.
SM (01:21:03):
And the Equal Rights Amendment. That failed, but there was strong attempts for it.
DB (01:21:13):
What rights do you want? When you say equal rights, there is no specification of, what rights do you want? Again, one has to distinguish between a mood, a movement, and actuality, and as all these things roll together.
SM (01:21:33):
And the year 1968, which is a traumatic year, which included Tet.
DB (01:21:40):
Well, again, I do not like such terms. I do not think they are useful, at all. I think they obscure more than they help.
SM (01:21:53):
This might be a general question, too, but you are a scholar, you are a writer, and you have written about periods, you wrote, in the 1950s, The End of Ideology. Do you think that a person like you, 50, 60 years from now, when most of the Boomers have gone on to higher Up, let us not even talk about what they are going to say about the Boomers? What are they going to say about young people and the people that grew up after World War II? What would the legacy be of that period, that many believe is a period of disruption and change?
DB (01:22:30):
Well, what's interesting to me is how quickly so much of that gets obscured now by the Muslim problem. Suddenly, the Muslim problem's everywhere. Paul Burner writes a book attacking a Muslim thinker, and the papers are full of arguments about that. Suddenly, that obscures everything else before. Beginning of the year 2000, the Times Literary Supplement published a list of the most important books of the last 50 years, or more. And two of my books were listed, The End of Ideology and The Cultural Context of Capitalism. Two books by Isaiah Berlin were listed. Two books by Belinda Orange. David Reisman and Ken Cavalharad had only one book listed.
SM (01:23:28):
Wow.
DB (01:23:28):
So, if you look at the Times Literary of Supplement, which afterward, was one of the most important intellectual journals, they list the most important books. But who would know that, Isaiah Berlin, Cavalharad, and myself, the only ones who had two books listed.
SM (01:23:42):
What an honor, though. What an honor. This book is a classic book. I have actually encouraged people to read it, right now, The End of Ideology. I think it is great.
DB (01:23:54):
Well-
SM (01:23:56):
I think it is got so much context. And when I was reading it, and when I read it a long time ago, because it was linked to a class, but now I am reading it, I can enjoy it more, and I can take a chapter, and I can take a page, and I can take an idea, and just stop and try to understand it more, rather than rushing it for a class, which I had to do when I was much younger. But it was very good. My very last question is this. And I thank you very much for spending this time with me. And I truly appreciate I it. It is an honor to meet you. The (19)50s, you were a journalist in the very beginning of your career, and then, you became a professor. But I was curious of what you thought about television and the television media. Because the young people that grew up after World War II, TV was what replaced the radio. And, of course we knew about the Vietnam War through television more than any other war. The question is, do you think that describe the (19)50s television, particularly when this generation was younger in the (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s, really is exemplary of the times they were living in? Can I just put mention these? When you look at the (19)50s, now, this is a little boy. I am remembering now, me as a little boy watching TV near Ithaca, New York. I can remember seeing Victory at Sea, Hopalong Cassidy, watching Walt Disney, Edward R Murrow, I loved him, Arthur Godfrey, I know my parents loved him, and Art Linkletter's House Party, those things kind of stand out, and all the westerns, of course. Then, you get into the (19)60s, and the things that stand out more was TV shows like Laugh-In. You see more and more Black artists. Vietnam War's on TV, the Smothers Brothers seemed to be highly unusual, and All in the Family was something that stood up for the (19)70s. I guess, the question I am asking is this, how has TV influenced the young people of that grew up after World War II? And do you believe that the television and journalism as a whole in the 1950s hid some of the realities of the bad things that were happening in America, right up to the time President Kennedy was elected?
DB (01:26:28):
Let me put it this way. I think what TV did was to make us aware of a visual culture. Now, it is interesting that there was something before that, which was very visual, but never had that effect. And that was photography. Photography was about a hundred years old by the time of TV. But photography never had that much of an effect. There are great photographers like Steichen, and others, very great photographers. But it never had a mass effect the way TV did. And what TV did was to move, radio did not disappear, radio, in fact, flourished to when people used their cars more. Because when you drove your car, you put on the radio. But it made us predominantly a visual culture, and gave us a sense of the impact of things. Because what it did is allow us to visualize things. So, yes, it has it changed the way the Gutenberg press changed the nature of culture of its own time. Do you know who the Cuopisei were?
SM (01:27:40):
The who?
DB (01:27:40):
Cuopisei?
SM (01:27:40):
How do you spell that?
DB (01:27:52):
C-U-O-P-I-S-E-I.
SM (01:27:52):
No.
DB (01:27:58):
The Cuopisei were all the people thrown out of work by the Gutenberg Press. They were the copyists. Before the Gutenberg, people had books, but they were done by copyists. And Thomas Carlisle wrote a wonderful book about this. But the first technological unemployment were really the copyists, because people had books, but they were copies written out by people who were paid to copy a book. For the Gutenberg Press, you had moveable type. And therefore, you can do away with the copyist. In some way, TV had an impact the way the Gutenberg people did. And the contrast, I would say, is with photography, as you had to the copyists before with the Gutenberg Press. You had photography before, but never had that kind of impact the way television did.
SM (01:28:58):
One last thing I forgot to mention. What were your thoughts of Kent State and Jackson State?
DB (01:29:02):
About what?
SM (01:29:04):
Kent State and Jackson State in 1970. That was such a tragic event.
DB (01:29:08):
Well, these were horrible events, and rightly so. But there you see the impact was due to photography, the image of the young woman-
SM (01:29:24):
Yes.
DB (01:29:24):
... and the man being shot. There, it was not television, but photography, which became important.
SM (01:29:31):
Are there any final thoughts you have in terms of, I am writing about Boomers, and we have hit a lot of different areas here. And you have hit different angles that other people have not hit, in terms of ideas and what you have written, and so forth. But is there any-
DB (01:29:50):
I would hope never to have final thoughts. I would be able to go on and on and on and on.
SM (01:29:55):
Is there any question I did not ask that you thought I might ask?
DB (01:29:58):
No.
SM (01:29:58):
No.
DB (01:30:00):
You have been very comprehensive.
SM (01:30:02):
Well, thank you very much, professor. It is an honor, an honor indeed. And I am going to take-
(End of Interview)
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Title
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Interview with Dr. Daniel Bell
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Bell, Daniel, 1919-2011 ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Sociologists; Authors; Editors; College teachers; Bell, Daniel, 1919-2011--Interviews
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Daniel Bell (1919 - 2011) was an American sociologist, writer, editor, and academic, best known for his contributions to the study of post-industrialism. He received his B.S. at City College of New York and his Ph.D. at Columbia University. Bell became a professor of sociology at Harvard University, where he remained until 1990.
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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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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.22
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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90:13
-
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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
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Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
David Boldt
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"David Boldt was editor of the editorial page of The Philadelphia Inquirer and a political columnist for the same paper during the 1980s and 1990s. Boldt won the Pulitzer Prize as a member of The Inquirer's team that covered a nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island electrical power plant, and received a citation for excellence from the Overseas Press Club for his reporting on the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Boldt has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in interpreting contemporary affairs as an adjunct professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. He earned a Bachelor's degree in History from Dartmouth College."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">David Boldt was editor of the editorial page of <em>The Philadelphia Inquirer</em> and a political columnist for the same paper during the 1980s and 1990s. Boldt won the Pulitzer Prize as a member of the <em>Inquirer</em>'s team that covered a nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island electrical power plant and received a citation for excellence from the Overseas Press Club for his reporting on the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Boldt has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in interpreting contemporary affairs as an adjunct professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. He earned a Bachelor's degree in History from Dartmouth College.</span>
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Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
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MicroCassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby Baby boom generation; Women's Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Anti-War Movement; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Tom Hayden; Linden Johnson; Bobby Kennedy; Vietnam War memorial; Bill Clinton"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":2,"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Baby boom generation; Women's Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Anti-War Movement; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Tom Hayden; Lyndon Johnson; Bobby Kennedy; Vietnam War memorial; Bill Clinton</span>
Duration
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121:15
Subject LCSH
Editors; Journalists; Awards—United States; Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant (Pa.); Iran—History—Revolution, 1979; Boldt, David--Interviews
Transcription
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: David Boldt
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Benjamin Mehdi So
Date of interview: ND
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
00:03
SM: The Boomer generations and 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?
00:31
DB: Oh, boy. Yeah, I could probably write a book about that. Well, you know, I think that-that it is fair to say that almost every institution in our society was kind of torn apart during the (19)60s and (19)70s. Many of them for no good reason, and often rather thoughtlessly and without giving things a lot of attention. You know, you can go through a whole series of things from the breakdown of the institution of marriage to the drop off in the sense of obligations to the community. It undoubtedly became a generation that was—was very much into what we now call 'expressive individualism.' And that basically forgot, because, for the most part, it had it so easy, and had it so easy in a very profound way. That they just did not have a sense of why certain things were done the way they were done. And principle among those is the fact that you cannot have a democratic society unless people are as aware of their responsibilities of that society as they are of their rights. And we basically lost that sense of responsibility. 'If it felt good, do it' was the maximum of the generation. They were brought up by a generation that had been through the Depression and World War II that had really been through hard times. And you know, to some extent, I think the parents of the boomer generation and my parents, I am—I was born in 1941, so I sort of saw them kind of coming up behind me. The parents, of that generation just went to incredible lengths to protect their children against the very kind of experience that had enabled them to succeed. Whether that was getting a good education, you know, establishing a successful relationship with other people, whether it was in the family, or in any of our institutions or universities, with our political community. Keep this [inaudible]
3:36
SM: What has been the overall impact of the Boomers on America? Positive or negative?
3:41
DB: Well, we just had the, I mean, it was all summed up by Tom Wolfe and the "me" decades. We had an entire huge generation dominating, or certainly its elites, as they emerged in journalism, in the media, in politics, in the entertainment industry, that was just totally self-indulgent. Or remarkably self-indulgent, not totally. The question is what was the effect? The effect was to completely lose the sense that rights carry with them responsibilities. You know, when Thomas Jefferson wrote The American Ideal that all men are created with certain unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He was writing that in a frame of mind where he believed that if people pursued happiness, they would regard the chance to be a fully involved citizen, a parent, an effective member of the community at work and in the civic realm as maximum happiness. And for this generation, it became too often, the pursuit of happiness reverted down to the lower nature of man and became a seeking of pleasure through music, artificial substances— basically drugs, sexual experiences, and we just lost that whole enlightenment mindset which is so basic to the to the American faith and to the success of the nation. And the whole— I think the whole experiment became imperiled, because the wretched excesses of the baby boomers. Yeah, I believe that in social history, as in physics, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And so, you had— not only did this create this tremendous culture of self-indulgent pleasure, but it created its opposite as well— the reaction to it. You know, I have often thought that the antics of the left as much created Watergate as did Richard Nixon himself. It became an atmosphere in which excess was— in which it turned out that Barry Goldwater's supposedly rejected idea that moderation is a— can be a, in certain circumstances a vice, and excess can be a virtue. I mean, he ultimately triumphed! It turned out to be what was believed and it ended up— I mean, many other commentators have written about this. And I guess the most evocative is Tom Wolfe in the "me" decade, which I still think is the most, it stood the test of time and is the clearest, most effective analysis of that time.
07:40
SM: Let us double check to make sure everything is working here. Okay, but you have to admit also that there are probably— let me get out my questions here, so I get a spontaneous feel and the written questions. [laughs] Cannot you say that there were some good things, though, with respect to the boomers, in terms of the fact that this generation ended a war, responsible for ending a war. In my comment— in my interview with Senator McCarthy, I asked him specifically that particular question that if there is not any other generation in American history that had such an impact on American foreign policy. And he said there were other perils in American history but not to the extreme of the boomers and what they did. So, they ended the war, many young people got involved in the Civil Rights Movement, many young people get involved in the environmental movement, for the Earth Day. So, with, do you think the media portrayed them in such a way that it is not doing justice to some of the good things they did?
08:50
DB: Well, that is just flat wrong. First of all, the baby boom generation did not end the Vietnam War. Like it or not, Richard Nixon ended the Vietnam War. And he ended it after defeating the Peace Party candidate George Govern— McGovern—by, I think, one of if not the biggest, one of the biggest landslides in American political history. I mean, it is amazing to look back and see that from 1970 onward, something like 70 percent of the American people were against our involvement in the war, yet somehow rather the antiwar movement, and I think this is unprecedented in our history, the antiwar movement was never able to get it together sufficiently to turn that around. I mean, what they should have done, instead of marching in Washington, which really turned out to be sort of a waste of time and, you know, everybody felt good about it, they really did not do anything. But they needed to do was go out and defeat congressmen who were voting for the war or supporting the war effort. And elect those that were, and they had to get out and elect a presidential candidate in 1972, or 1968, who would have ended the war. The Civil Rights revolution had nothing to do with the baby boomers, except that they-they were in on sort of the victory celebration of it. And that that gave them this feeling that they were both Vietnam, the fact that the Vietnam War was looked upon as a great moral victory of the people who were opposing an unjust war. And we will always wonder just why it was that all those people fled from the communists as they moved into the country, whether they really were all this capitalist dupes have always wondered why it is that the United States is now being welcomed back into Vietnam, in such an open, in such an open armed way as to whether we will always wonder if our perspective on that was-was totally correct. Either when we were for the war or when we turned against it-it was a very difficult situation very nuanced. But turning to civil rights, I mean, the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, when the baby boomers were still in the middle of a, we were just starting college, I guess, or the for the first of them had just gotten to be, just gotten to college, I guess. There were no baby boomers involved in Mississippi summer, which was when you had to really suck it up and go down there and do something that was really dangerous. They were there for sort of the celebrations afterwards. There were no baby boomers on the podium at the Civil Rights March 1963, very few I suspect in the crowd. Baby, the civil rights revolution was won by, as nearly as I can tell, there were no baby boomers on the freedom rider buses. There were no baby boomers marching in Selma. The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement had a belief, were religious leaders, were the kind of leaders that the baby boomers would later reject, laugh at ridicule. And so, I have never marked leaders of the Civil Rights revolution lest we forget, we are people like Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy. They are the people I know of who were inside the University of Mississippi, where people like Ed Goffman, who was my predecessor is the editor of the editorial page, he was down there for the Department of Justice. Right? He is a World War II veteran. The basic legislation that brought about the Civil Rights revolution in 1964, brought about the culmination of the Civil Rights revolution, was done with without any conspicuous assistance from the baby boom generation, but they always thought that they had something to do with it, because they were there. What was the third thing that you were getting credit for?
13:38
SM: Well, the environmental movement Earth Day, 1970.
13:46
DB: Well, I do not know. I do not know enough about the history of the environmental movement, to say, you know, to what extent it was, it was successful, it was always had its greatest successes. So, when it was removed from the spirit of environmental Nazism, which characterize sort of the baby boomer-boomer approach, marching in front of nuclear power plants, it was nothing. And when you had people like the Environmental Defense Fund, who were able to negotiate things that actually bring about formulas in legislation that drastically reduced the amount of pollution that was being put into the air, and to clean up rivers, and maybe there are a few baby boomers involved in there. But yeah, I mean, it is the environmental movement gets so difficult to analyze. Did you see the cover story in New York Times Magazine four weeks ago? That said basically, recycling is the most fun wasteful activity that humans engage in. That I will not attempt to recapture the entire thing, but it is- it makes us feel good. And we tell all our kids about all things that have been accomplished by recycling. And it actually turns out that it is not any particular benefit to us that we are not running out of place to put our trash that it is probably environmentally more sound certainly, and I mean, I was just thinking about this the other day, it was big fight that we had to we had to have a trash to steam plan. And I think everybody with a college degree, I think every member of the baby boomer generation in Philadelphia, certainly the college educated part of the baby boomer generation, but Philadelphia absolutely had to have a trashed steam plant to take care of its trash, and it was just kind of the low rent blue collar people of South Philadelphia, a couple of kind of aging crypto Marxists like David Cohen on the city council, who said, no this is not a good idea. Now we have to look back on that whole situation and say, those people were right. We did not need to trash the steam plan, the trash to steam plan would have actually added to pollution as opposed to what we are doing with our trash now. So, I look on the environmental movement as-as being a mixed movement. And, and I guess I should say that I do not really know a lot about who the people were. I have met the guy who was who started the first Earth Day.
16:42
SM: It was Senator Nelson.
16:44
DB: Well, no this was actually a guy named, who got Senator Nelson to do it and he went around, he was doing the 25th anniversary.
16;52
SM: Right.
16:52
DB: So you got sort of petered out, you know, the Earth Day for a few years now. Then they had a big splash on its 20th or 25th anniversary, whatever, whatever it was. And not much. And then in between, you know, the work was done. There are all kinds of ironies to the history of that situation. I will just mention one other one. John Ehrlichman, Nixon's, whatever he was, counsel, was one of the first environmental lawyer, the EPA was created during the Nixon administration. The fact that I will bet if you went around and asked 1000 people today, you could not get more than a handful to tell you that. It was because environmental ism was something that clearly had to be done at that time in terms of providing people with clean air and clean water. And we did it.
17:46
SM: We can agree that women's movement they were that was not late (19)60s, early (19)70s phenomena, as well as the same lines as the Civil Rights Movement. The terms that Laurie scholastic was not. Betty Friedan was not a boomer.
18:04
DB: Guess neither was who wrote. And neither was the woman who wrote the other. Oh, is Betty for Friedan is the feminine mystique. And then there is yet another that you have not mentioned. Yeah, the leaders that were not baby boomers. And the response to it among Baby Boomers has been equivocal, I mean, the feminist movement itself? Well, I, I do not know I have not studied the history of the women's movement that much. I never thought of it particularly as being connected with the boomers.
18:50
SM: This is kind of a long one here. Can today’s generation of youth, which is a slacker Generation X 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 at the (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 of the boomers and today's generation. Please keep your thoughts on the issues and Boomers lives and how they can have impact on students’ eyes today.
19:29
DB: Well, I guess what we are dealing with is the aftermath, trying to pick up the wreckage after the baby-baby boomers have gone through. And I guess in particular, destroyed our educational system came up with this idea that we no longer needed to have standards that would go to pass fail and that would be fine for college courses. We had all these grand experiments that were equally grand failures, open claims restrooms, social promotions. The new math could go on for some time. And we were now sitting around, we were trying to kind of put things back together again. And this is a federal Road A, I cannot remember his name. He is a Nobel Prize winner. He wrote a book called physics for poets. And he works with the Chicago Public Schools, one place where they-they seem to be making some progress, getting things back together again. He said somewhere back there in the (19)60s and (19)70s, we just lost it. I do not know what it was. I do not know what it was the new math, the open classroom. The fact that he says we cannot underestimate the fact that women suddenly discovered that the only career open to them was not they had other careers open to them besides teaching, and that had an effect on education was not compensated for it, I am very I am very much worried. I, you know, I would hope that generation X would represent kind of a reaction against the baby boom generation, that there would be a it would be sort of a return a new appreciation of political institutions, or social institutions. And there is not. The kids, the baby boomers not only did a bad job themselves, but they left the legacy behind of having been bad parents as well and raised a generation that does not know much or care much. And I do not know what we are going to do about that. I am not pessimistic. Because I do not think our I do not think young Americans, you know, fortunately us and for them. Still going? Yeah-yeah, I do not think young Americans are that much worse off than young Germans or young Japanese. I mean, it is sort of it is funny the way you know, kind of a spirit of the age passes around the entire world. But as luck would have it, slacker-slacker ism, is not confined to the United States. And our slackers will be up against the Germans and the Japanese slacker. And they may just come out of it. Alright. But at some time or other, I would like to see some sign that we understand again, the importance of our obligations, and our responsibilities to our community, to our families, to our government. Just like to see that. Rabbi, sometimes I feel I see signs that I do not think they can look to the boomers for that. And we have this oddity I mean, the person who seems to have the- we have the Republicans running somebody, the last tethering of the Second World War, I am sure he will run for president. And he is being run because he represents a- because it is felt- he represents a kind of moral values that he cannot find anywhere else. Or, you know, my own generation was kind of failure in terms of I mean, whatever you would call us that was kind of the last generation the niche between those people who went off to World War Two, and those who were born after World War Two. We did not for some reason, produce an effective, effective leadership. I do not know why that is. You look at the people who came close. And it is a little disappointing. I certainly do not think Gary Hart would have been a good president. And I cannot rattle off the ones that were candidates and might have even come close. But it is an interesting phenomenon that we have gone directly to a baby boom president from a world war two generation president has skipping over the generation in between. So, I am not sure it is fairly clear that generation X is not looking to us for leadership either. World War Two generation is now in its (19)70s. I think we are going through a period in which we are really going to have to reinvent America to use a cliche which it will have to be the kind of discovered anew why we did different things. And I hope it is, but I do not think they can look back. I thought, the basically Generation X from what I Read, look back at the (19)60s and they were sick and tired of hearing their parents say have great things had been good. The music had been wonderful it was to be so easily on the winning side and so many complicated. I would not say single minded, but perhaps simple minded issues that have in retrospect turned out to be a lot more complicated than we thought. I did not know what I mean, in Bill Clinton and his best, I think he has an understanding of what went wrong. And yet he is-he is also the embodiment of it. What went wrong? That is a tricky question. I do not know. I almost think that generally, the Generation X and whatever the generation is, is going to come after have to both look to the look to the past and look to the future.
25:59
SM: Some of the people-
26:00
DB: I mean the deep past, somehow or rather than have to rediscover history, there is no sign that they are.
26:08
SM: You have got to see some of the baby boomers today. Oh, no, it is still working. Yeah, read more. We have boomers like Bill Clinton, Al Gore got John Kessing, which was highly respected in the Republican Party, that you have got the Christian coalition of person like Ralph Reed. Now here, you see you have got extreme conservatives, and you have got liberals and again, moderates in the middle, you got people like Bill Clinton, and they tend to understand where he stands on an issue. There are boomers. So this is getting off the track. Here are the questions I am asking but what does that say about boomers when you see the differences even within that group? And there some may be lean towards your thoughts on what the boomer generation should be?
27:00
DB: Oh, perhaps they are. I mean, perhaps to be some, although, like, never turn around that that motif of just rampant hell for leather, damn the torpedoes. Individualism that mark the era? I mean, I guess Newt Gingrich, as close, as close as you come to sort of an antidote? I think some of them understand that. I mean, I was really, I think, actually, that was one of the things I gave you was, I thought that Al Gore's speech at the 1992 pension when he talked about how when we look into looking into his son's eyes after the accident, and saying that he then realized that we were on Earth for some larger purpose than ourselves, or however he put it. That was, I thought that was a very significant sign of maturity, of a real realization that we are part of what wolf in the me decade, calls the chromosomal flow, the flow of history of humanity through history, that we are an extension of our parents, and that our children are an extension of our lives. And it all goes on. We have an obligation to those children and their-their children, even. And so, I mean, you have people who are, you know, trying to point out the wretched excessive, somebody said, read just the other day, that Bill Clinton was the perfect expression of America at this time. Somebody who, you know, has great mind and tremendous ability, but total-total inability to control his own appetites or to dissect his own appetites, and a tremendous ambivalence. Although I sort of like his I am not one of those people who criticizes him for being wishy washy. I think a certain amount of deviousness is necessary in politics, and when used for good is not to be criticized. Franklin Roosevelt was so devious that his most trusted aides said they would come out of a meeting with him and not really sure where he stood on a particular issue. It is often a mark of greatness and a leader, and I have been a supporter of Clinton's, an avid supporter from very early on. And have this this this hope that he that because he is so much of his generation, his accesses are literally Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Even although he did not enhance Yeah. But that, you know, maybe he, because of what he understands. And I mean, is not an odd sort of way, but profoundly religious person. Which is not so odd. I mean, I think religion is one of the ways that you cope with the weaknesses of humanity. And to that extent, is somewhat different from many other boomers. But was the threat of where the question was? Maybe you better get me back on track.
30:33
SM: I am going to go on to a question here, where you could just get some adjectives to describe. If you describe the youth of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, please describe the qualities you most admire, and the qualities you least admire. first, if there is any qualities you admire. Well, okay, they are good. I think we should be pretty close to her. So, yeah.
30:54
DB: I think one thing you can say about baby boomers and whether or not they were in on the civil rights revolution, they are not racist. They are certainly not the extent they were [audio cuts] before. There you go. You know, one of the things. The other thing that happened during the baby boom, is that somehow America got separated into its cultural elites. And the great unwashed masses. And if you actually look at the voting record of baby boomers, it has been far more conservative than you think. Baby Boomers voted for Ronald Reagan. But the-the kind of opinion leaders and people who were kind of representing the generation kind of got disconnected this very complicated concept. I mean, entire books have been written about it, then Daniel Yankelovich, over to his book. Title, I have forgotten, I am getting to that age where you forget these things. Christopher Lasch wrote something that is literally like the disconnected.
32:07
SM: Elite, something of the elite. Yeah.
32:11
DB: In which he talked about this. So that happened. So it is true. I mean, you are talking about the baby boomers, you are talking about that kind of cutting edge. The baby boom, the one that was most in the media, but I will take care of all these. And so I say that. Baby boomers, whatever you make whatever else you may think about them, this is actually quoting somebody else's observation. They are not racist. And they, what else can you say that was good about them. Which me there was such a disappointment. I saw you know, as I went into my 20s, I thought, you know, gee, I am going to be part of the best educated, most healthy ablest generation in the history of the world has ever seen. So sort of, saw these, these ranks of people coming behind me that you know, in the time I grew up. I know, I am rambling. I will try to try to make a point here. My point and I do have one is that I really saw it as being the American century we hear we were intact as a nation, and you are kind of towering over war torn Europe and defeated Japanese and ravaged Chinese. And I thought that, you know, it was just going to be one of the-the golden arrows of a world history, and then kind of look back, and everything had come apart. So in terms of specific adjectives, there was hard to think of positive adjectives you want to say idealism. But it was an idealism that was so easily won so untested. In an idealism in which you had this peculiar turn about which cowardice could be seen as valor, the dodging the draft could be seen as a brave thing to do the long tradition in American history. People who disobey that, who opposed their country's position, but realize that their duty to the community required them to go along with it, you know, famous essays written by I am sorry, I cannot rattle off the names. But there is a famous poet who went off into the Mexican War American war even though he deeply opposed Oliver Wendell Holmes, I believe, sir In some war, he opposed and wrote very eloquently about, you know, I think this is wrong, but this is what my country is decided to do.
35:08
SM: But then you, William Fulbright wrote the book, The arrogance of power, that the-the true Democrats and the true will leaders were coached and refused to go.
35:19
DB: Well, that is right. So the saying became a very confused time. You are asking me to boil it down to a few adjectives, positive added adjectives would be I think you have to give them credit for being energetic, innovative. Lot of new things certainly brought up made the transition into they began the transition into the information age. Some questions whether they were making the turn or not. On the other hand, the-the advocates on the other side, I did not give you a very good answer. I mean, I suppose by thought longer, I could think of some more positive advocates. But the negative adjectives would be the ones I have used before self-indulgent, uncaring. Heedless. All of it caught so neatly in that song and hair. how can people be so cruel, especially people who care about people? There was a great tendency among the baby-baby boomers to love mankind but to be very unpleasant to be around. To love mankind, but not necessarily get along very well with people. And I think that song from here, really focused on that and really caught it. If you look at the lyrics, I think, tells you something.
36:54
SM: You hit a point though that an adjective if you were to even ask some of the generation X and the slackers characteristic that in the theory, they cared about minorities they cared about. They did not trust leaders. And that the whole concept of trust is another issue that is coming up later. Another question, but they were scared. They cared about the environment, they cared about minorities, they cared about what was happening, poverty in the inner cities they cared about. I know that some of the characteristics of the (19)60s liberals, for women behind the scenes, they were basically xeroxing off. We have heard all those stories; they really were not equal. But still, it was an era where a lot of people start caring about things feed instead of just going to work every day. That is what that that is interesting. Could you comment on that? Because I think caring you say they were not a caring group yet. So many things they got involved in that they did care that-
37:59
DB: I think it was summed up in that idea, they cared about humankind, but they did not care much about people. Going back to the civil rights, I mean, you can pick up on each one of the strands that you are pointing to. As I said, the important advances in civil rights were made by a previous generation. And they just kind of basked in the afterglow, of those accomplishments, the I mean, they created the welfare system, which turned out to be, I guess, one of the most pernicious social mechanisms in the history of the world. And now we are trying to figure out I mean, now we have had Bill Clinton come along, and say that we have got to change welfare as we know it, and everybody knows it. But we ended up spending a lot of money thinking, thinking really, that spending money on something would help. And if you go back and you look at what they actually did, there was a tremendous decline. During the ascendancy of the baby boomers, in participation in PTA meetings, in voting, I mean, if they cared, why did not they vote? In it, it is so many indices of so many indices of actual civic involvement and some extent, you cannot separate the baby boom generation and the effects that it had from the fact that it was also the TV generation. I wonder, I think we are just beginning to understand what that might mean. If someday it will be better known as the TV generation, then as the baby boom generation, because there is no question that watching television drained a lot of time that people might have otherwise spent being. Being ten mothers. What captures me is the epitome you caring about the environment, that we went from a time when my father would be president of the PTA. At the Roosevelt Elementary school would change the environment by getting a traffic light install the place where the kids had to walk across to get the school, to where the equivalent today would be someone who cares about the and that that required work, you know, going to meetings every month, getting-getting, putting up with a lot of crap going through dealing with a bureaucracy downtown. And whereas the caring about the environment seems to me to be consistent mainly, once a year, writing out checks for the Sierra Club and putting the calendar up on your wall. I do not see those signs; I think that the entire baby boom generation has been up until very recently. I know there is controversy about this, and I am following it closely. They are really trying to understand it. But certainly initially, there was a tremendous decline and involvement in civic organizations in kind of almost everything, but churches that cinco gone along almost the same level, kind of under the surface with nobody noticing. But, you know, all kinds of civic organizations, choral societies, you know, all the decline and all summarized in the essay Bowling Alone, which is a rebut by Robert Putnam at Harvard, where we stopped bowling leagues and went out and started Bowling alone. I mean, I think that is connected with the baby boom, phenomenon. There is also I noticed an essay disputing that in this weeks’ Time Magazine, that is complex. It is not, there is no simple answer, you know, as we were saying before, but the- this image of a caring is to care about them by to care about the urban poor. By having basically government programs that did not work and being tremendously reluctant to recognize only now is being recognized that we have not made a dent in poverty. And it is true. I mean, Ronald Reagan was right, we had a war on poverty and poverty won. The number of people living below the poverty line is I think, today the same as it was in 1960. Or maybe more. I mean, the poverty line is artificial blind. But, you know, I think that tells us something, we did not solve the problem. In fact, during the baby boom, ascendancy, you had the whole creation of the underclass, the whole division of the country, and the haves and have nots has accelerated, not decelerating. I do not see any signs of any great humanitarianism.
43:27
SM: Have you changed your opinion on the use of the (19)60s over the last 25 years, say when you were very 1978, what you thought about them, and maybe what you thought about in 1980, and then now in 1996-
43:41
DB inconsistent. I mean, I wrote, When the war ended in 1975, pretty much the same thing I told you about how it was not the antiwar movement that ended the war. In fact, the antiwar movement was remarkably ineffective, in terms of translating popular sentiment. Because, you know, just you had the-the radical part of the antiwar movement that could never kind of connect with the rest of the people who were upset about the war as well. It never became an effective movement. So, I mean, I can go back and if we went into the archives of the inquire, I think we can find they-they said exactly that 1974 Because anything, I have changed on that it has become an appreciation of you had really great music. The cynic might say they produce some really great elevator music. But there really has not been anything like that since. And This contributions in popular culture have been-have been pretty good.
44:57
SM: A lot of the music of that era was There are so many messages in the music. You know, there were a lot of messages written by Bill and he really sat down and listened to philharmonic orchestra some of those musicians of that era and really listened to the words and really, almost like goose bumps to you want to get out there move, be it be a changing, you know, for the betterment of society at times?
45:26
DB: Well, you know, I guess. I mean, that is-that is what I say is one thing, you ended up with an appreciation for the popular music and I heard somebody the other day, make the case that maybe we are living through a golden age now that people live in gold, the trenches never know it at the time. But we are questioning everything and kind of coming up with new forms, to-to respond to the basic requirements of human society that we are going to, we are going into the dawn of the information age, and that maybe people will look back on this kind of a great day. And my own, that was an intriguing possibility. But I would think that if we are in a golden age, we have had better art and its that thinking that maybe when the actual cultural history of this era of the last quarter 30 years of the, to get back into the (19)60s, the (19)60s, you know, really starting to 65 or so. And then and go well into the (19)70s Maybe the Beach Boys good vibrations will be what people go to hear 100 years from now or, or some kind of Jim Morrison in the door, come on baby light my fire, the long version will be seen as a as a crowning cultural achievement. And, yeah, we knew we had crummy literature and nobody could really write very well, but-but Star Wars will be remembered. The Star Wars trilogy will be remembered as the great epic of our, our time.
47:19
SM: I mean, notice how a lot of the (19)60 songs are now in oh, advertisements, including the chambers brothers time, time, which is a very big song back in the late (19)60s, time.
47:30
DB: What is amazing, and every hit movie, for a while there had to be built around some-some song, the soundtrack of lives that Stephen King movie about the kids, its all rock and roll songs. And Tom Cruise and fighter pilot movie is all built around that the righteous brothers, you have lost that loving feeling. And for while I think every single movie that came out was built around some (19)60s rock and roll song. And yeah. Look at that still going after all these years, the Beatles may not be our first not adding anything. But I am sure that so many more records since they broke up than they did. While they were all together.
48:22
SM: I am going to go double check to make sure that is still going overall. Yeah. Where would you describe the boomers as the most unique generation in American history?
48:32
DB: No, gosh, no, I certainly they were the most-most unique. I mean, there was nothing else like them. What do you mean by unique?
48:46
SM: They were so different from any other generation that they stand above the crowd, so to speak, and you look at all the generations since our founding fathers look through all the generations. There are people out there that say no, there was never a time like the (19)60s and (19)70s. Except that happened.
49:05
DB: I was going to say in terms of extraordinary generations, certainly the generation that lived through the Civil War must be up there. And the most amazing generation of Americans were the founding fathers, but he is just still fucking amazing. Now they know whether they that different from the generations that came before them are not unique. It was they were unique, in that sense. be something I would have to give more thought to. I do not know. They were a mutant generation. I am just going back to that idea of kind of forgetting the fact that being an American and having rights and responsibilities I do not think any other generation has done that. There was much in the (19)60s. It was like the 1920s, kind of in terms of indulgence, and the baby boomers coming of age rabbit gets rich in the (19)80s was rather than maybe women, really the decade of greed, very similar to the 1920s, I do not think I have a feeling for a history that would enable me to really compare them. In that way, we forget how extraordinary times we have all lived through, I mean, being on the frontier must have been this next generation, that is going to take us into the information age, I think they have a and the generation that took us through the progressive era at the end of the last century, which we really had to remake ourselves from agricultural to an industrial nation, from a nation of the little local economies into a national economy, just like now we have to go from national international, during our Roosevelt's generation, Theodore Roosevelt himself such an extraordinary individual, that it is hard to say, We have had times of wretched excess too.
51:35
SM: it is often quoted that only 15 percent of the Boomers were truly activists for the link civil rights, Vietnam or protest during lesbian youth movement, the environmental movement, and overall, being active in issues of the day was just another way to lessen the impact this group has had on Americans.
51:51
DB: Oh, I was thinking I mean, that was what I was referring to before the boomers are identified by that 15 percent. They are voting statistics are actually sort of surprising. But you know that those are the people who were activists who were I mean, they put their stamp on the generation, I think they are entitled to the credit for that. I mean, I think-I think that the- those 15 percent I think that is probably true of any generation, there is like 15 percent of them are activists. As I say, the unique thing about the unique thing, one of the unique things, something possibly you need to be careful that word. Was this splitting apart. And to elites, which function kind of independent. They thought they represented the rest of the nation, but they did not. The awful truth was the people who are going around yelling power to the people did not realize that the people already had power. And then the people were getting increasingly annoyed at the people who are going around yelling power to the people, you follow me. I mean, that was why they voted for Richard Nixon, including a lot of baby boomers. I wonder about the statistics which show but yeah, there were people who put there was an activist group that put a stamp on that generation, I think they are entitled to at least that letter. Whether I like what they did or not. I think any generation.
53:33
SM: Do you? Do you feel that the boomers are a generation that is still having problems with the healing? Veterans Memorial did a great job with veterans and in some respect for families and veterans? But do you feel that healing is really taking place in large numbers? And I am trying to getting at here is, you know, we see a lot of unsettled dialogue today in our society, shouting instead of listening, very little dialogue. And I am wondering if there is a direct correlation of that back to that era. It is-it is-
54:03
DB: But there is but I think it is television. Television is what destroyed dialogue. If you do not talk to television, you are spending six hours in front of the television, much-
54:16
SM: Do You think the computer age is going to continue that with your computer all day, you are not going to talk to anyone either.
54:22
DB: Well, I do not know. I mean, I know if you sit at your computer all day, you actually do pretty much nothing but talk to other people. I mean, that is what I do on my computer twice a day, pick up my email, send off messages. I mean, I have the sort of dream that because of email and computers, people will learn how to write again. That may be fanciful, or you know, even-even silly when especially when you look at some of the obscene crap. That is on the internet. But I, you know, funny things like that happen. I do not think though that chat rooms are really a substitute for human contact. If you want to want to know what, you did not really ask me what I expect, what was the question again? I do not want to wonder that far.
55:21
SM: Do you think here is, do you feel that boomers are a generation that is still having a prominent feeling?
55:26
DB: Oh, yeah. No, I think there is confused as ever. But I hope that there. I hope that we are starting to see in the current moment, you know, we are finally getting to the point where people are able to talk candidly about what the things are, that did not work and went wrong. I think that is Clinton's great contribution to American history is to somehow I mean, he really did get the political dialogue back to the real problems of real Americans and off of the symbolic stuff, which is the essence of the baby boom, slash television generation. The symbolism, soundbites. motional, ism sensationalism living for sensations. So, yeah, we are definitely still having a problem. I hope we are starting to do better.
56:31
SM: What are your thoughts about former left leaders who have been writing books recently about their involvement in the movement? Horowitz Rosen Collier wrote a book called the disrupter generation where they work to the extreme left, and now they are-they are analyzing themselves and saying, admitting to their wrongs and then basically condemning anybody else that was ever involved on the left. And we are seeing more and more books coming out that way. Those the left becoming basically conservatives.
57:07
DB: Right, I you know, I cited the destructive generation, we had that first conversation, I thought that was just a very, you know, that book just has a lot of truth telling in it. The class of (19)64 was another good book. I mean, I think you are right. Coming out and becoming conservatives, you are reminded about some famous person once said that anybody who, anyone under 30, who is a, who is not a liberal, does not have a heart, anyone over 30, who is not a conservative does not have a brain. And, and, you know, doubtedly, seeing that effect take place. And it is kind of I mean, I am a great believer in the pendulum theory of history, and that, you know, things had to swing back. But the question, you know, that I asked at the top of one of those columns that you put there is- is- there ever been a society that is really kind of swung so far into self-destructive behavior that has come so far? unfastened from its from its moral underpinnings and come back? I think that is the question. We are looking to find out the answer to that. What was your question? Again, I-
58:31
SM: Think the left leaders and the left leaders.
58:33
DB: Well, I think they did-did a lot of important truth telling and it had to be done. It was a dirty job, but they did it. I mean, I subscribed to Colliers. Horowitz and Colliers public publications. You know, I think sometimes they get a little bit. Neither, I mean, you have to allow them. I mean, quite often, they will go get a little spin a little bit out of control. But I think they have been very important. And-
59:06
SM: I know that you have already basically answered this question. I have to ask him directly. Again, it was boomers used to say they were going to change the world. In we were often quoted as being the that would change the world in a positive way. Was this true? Were they different? And in what way? Yeah, I have.
59:22
DB: The world has stayed pretty much the same. And what they had to discover is that there are reasons why the world is the way that there are reasons why families exist. And if you are going to stop having families, you better damn well, that some better system for working it out before you do it, and I think now they are coming back to that realization that if you are going to have successful politics, people have to participate. You have to have a dialogue. You have to talk things through they stopped doing I thought, well, we do not need to do that. We thought we already know what to do. I do not have to think about.
1:00:07
SM: How do you deal with this whole issue, though another characteristics oftentimes placed on boards that they are very- [oh, yeah] Dr. King did not he have the same philosophy. Because if you look at the civil rights movement, not to criticize Thurgood Marshall. But that was a more gradualist approach to the courts, as opposed to Dr. King's nonviolence, which was, I am tired of all the roadblocks we wanted. I want this now, we are not going to have any more of these roadblocks placed in our, in our face, to end racism, the society and to integrate society. And so do not you think the boomers had a lot of that same type of philosophy that they saw these roadblocks fully by the Bureaucracy. And, and thus, they became very impatient and basically took the line of advocate that civil disobedience, we are going to go to the streets. So, we are going to-we are not going to have these roadblocks anymore. We want to have-
1:01:02
DB: Like, I mean, what is the start of the question again? Let me try to respond to it because brought another thought to my mind.
1:01:11
SM: This whole issue that the boomers are an impatient group that they really want it now. And they use Dr. King is an example of that through his civil nonviolence, because except the Thurgood Marshall approach through the courts, he said he would not get into the streets.
1:01:29
SM: Well, you can hardly call the actions of Martin Luther King, precipitous or sudden or impatient. He was redressing wrongs that dated back 100 years if you want to count it that way. 300 years. And at that point, people, African Americans, black Americans, and I suppose Negroes or colored people. As Dr. King would have said had waited.
1:02:16
SM: This is a question dealing with just specific names and your individual response to these your gut level feelings about them as well. And maybe your also your perception of how we think boomers today, look at these people. They can be just short responses. Tom Hayden.
1:02:35
DB: Tom Hayden, replaced by Ted Turner.
1:02:45
SM: [laughs] Very Good. Any other comments?
1:02:47
DB: Oh, yeah, I guess one of the numbers of what, an example of one of the people who was who seemed to have a lot of promise that did not never, never really came off. And I could not tell you where he is today.
1:03:02
SM: The state legislator in Sacramento. I am surprised he is still an author. He is going to be at the Chicago convention as a delegate. And that is interesting, because in (19)68-
1:03:12
DB: He was outside.
1:03:13
SM: Lyndon Johnson.
1:03:16
DB: Oh, gosh. I should tell you what I think of Lyndon Johnson in 100 words or less Johnson is a tremendously complicated man and the Carroll biographies come close to perhaps they do not give him some of the credit he deserves. But he was me, he will always be hurt by the fact that people will be repelled by what a by his lack of ethics, lack of personal ethics. You basically had somebody with an amoral mentality. I have a friend named Ron Kessler wrote, it happened in the White House Science bestseller as reading lately, he is always say that the nation was really badly hurt by the fact that you had somebody who was basically a criminal, this President of the United States, and he has all this stuff about this incredible amount of White House stuffies, though, that you wanted to crisp short answer. You know, Lyndon Johnson, very complex, tremendous achievements in terms of the passage of the Civil Rights legislation. But basically, not anyone that is going to be looked back on as a great president. His personal failings were too profound. I will try to be short.
1:04:55
SM: Bobby Kennedy.
1:04:58
DB: Bobby Kennedy, you have a piece that I wrote there. I was in the hotel the night that he was shot that was one of the most was something I will never, I mean, it is just so profound, I almost cannot sum it up. Bobby Kennedy was the last political leader that might have held us together prevented the polarization. The most amazing thing I remember about him is later on doing a political story somewhere in East Texas around Lufkin. was actually a story out of Congressman. Corrupt Congressman. But in the course of the reporting there, I discovered that that a major portion of the Bobby Kennedy organization in that part of Texas had conned George Wallace. There was something about the continuation of the Kennedy Mystique, his own ability to communicate a vision of what America ought to be doing, that I think was real was powerful and that it could have held us together instead of that. That incredible period of polarization and splitting apart that we went through.
1:06:24
SM: Eugene McCarthy.
1:06:27
DB: Eugene McCarthy was thoroughly ordinary person who has kind of thrust into a role far bigger than he was capable of playing.
1:06:44
SM: George McGovern.
1:06:47
DB: I would say almost exactly the same thing about him. This man who just did not have a there was no center to it he. I have a lot of thoughts about that, because I used to actually teach a course based on the 1972 campaign put the McGovern's strategy in that was just get to be the farthest out on the left as possible. He did not really know what he was for. He has this famous $1,000 giveaway, he did not he never knew. He never really knew what he was for. He never had thought through. He was basically a weak and incompetent leader. And once campaign got to be a contest of competence versus incompetence he was done for.
1:07:50
SM: When people look at the liberals of today, they will say that man that comes to mind most George McGovern, because he stood by his liberal beliefs.
1:07:58
DB: I cannot remember a single thing that he believed in. Here is a candidate who managed to get himself, he projected so poorly, in terms of what he believed that he managed to get himself defined by his opposition as the candidate of the three a’s: abortion, acid and amnesty. Theodore White talks about that, and it is making me the president in 1972. And because he did not, you know, the whole the whole story of $1,000 giveaway you is because he just sat there and listened to these economists who just winged it and he said, he just kind of took some of the stuff they said seriously, and because he himself just had not thought things through. I mean, that was one thing that was different about Clinton was different about Carter that they either in Carter's case worked very hard to try to get to the bottom of things or just had a superior understanding of the way the world works than George McGovern did.
1:09:21
SM: Hughey Newton.
1:09: 24
DB: I think history has shown what kind of person Huey Newton was revealed.
1:09:31
SM: So did you also put in that category the bobby Seales and the Eldritch Cleavers? The Panthers too?
1:09:41
DB: Yeah, I think the but we have now seen I mean, you shall know them by their fruits. I think if you look at what became of all of them the truth has emerged.
1:09:59
SM: Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman.
1:10:02
DB: They were opportunistic, imposters. People you know the there are people who actually change events and they are people who were kind of thrown up like froth off the top of Wave. And Hoffman and Reuben were in the latter category.
1:10:25
SM: Timothy Leary.
1:10:28
DB: Timothy Leary was an interesting guy who kind of typifies what went wrong. The fact that somebody of his stature and ability would actually say that what young people should do is what Amis favorite tune their turn, turn on drop out? I mean, that along with if it feels good, do it? Where are the statements that characterize the era? I mean, I think he can be seen as a major, major influence on what basically became a malignant movement.
1:11:15
SM: How about Daniel Ellsberg.
1:11:18
DB: Daniel Ellsberg just, again, somebody who happened to be in a certain place at a certain time and was not particularly important before or since.
1:11:32
SM: Ralph Nader.
1:11:36
DB: Well, I mean, I think everybody has to have a certain amount of respect for Ralph Nader. And some extent is [inaudible] in his belief in the powers of litigation, have worn, have gotten to be a little bit annoying over time. I do not believe he will be effective this year as the Green Party candidate. If I have to say one thing about him is kind of an archetypal example of somebody who loved humankind, but you would not really want to be around personally for very long.
1:12:23
SM: How about Dr. Benjamin Spock?
1:12:26
DB: Well, Dr. Spock finally admitted that he did it wrong. He will be much paid attention to as a wonderful final book, and perhaps he is still alive. Yes. But he wrote a book, say basically taking it all back. I looked through the book jacket, and I did not actually get it to read it. [audio cuts] Great, you have to give him credit for that. But he also is, he also has a lot of a lot to be the answer for and he has answered. I mean, I think I would, I would take his own judgement of himself. At this point.
1:13:15
SM: Hubert Humphrey.
1:13:16
DB: Hubert Humphrey. Alright. It is one of the most well-meaning and misguided figures in American history. Misguided and star-crossed.
1:13:31
SM: John Kennedy.
1:13:33
DB: Oh, gosh. Difficult to cope with what we have to prove what we know about John Kennedy today. And yeah, there is aspects of his personal behavior affects [audio cuts] his personal behavior. We are surely reprehensible. Were absolutely reprehensible. Yet there is no question but in terms of style grace under pressure, eloquence. He has set a standard that American presidents will, presidential candidates will be measured against for the rest of my life.
1:14:25
SM: Martin Luther King Jr.
1:14:27
DB: Well, true hero. But whose contribution almost cannot be underestimated? Whose brain still sets the standard for what America should aspire to? It is amazing to think that the highlight of the opening ceremonies to me would be the clip of the King's Speech. The opening ceremonies at the Atlanta Olympics. And here that was 1964, (19)74, (19)84, (19)94. More than 30 years later to think that his words and his vision still carry such strength, meaning is amazing.
1:15:29
SM: Berrigan Brothers.
1:15:30
DB: Minor character Hello, [audio cuts] Gavin the Olympics bring him to mind. He was the only figure that could bring together the white antiwar movement and the civil rights movement. He was the unique figure is way beyond his athletic accomplishments. And I mean, not surprising or unworthy. That he would be at one point, at least the most recognized person in the world.
1:16:13
SM: He still is.
1:16:17
DB: And I think it was it was that fact that he really did seem to stand for so much during that time. And it is amazing. Just an amazing figure.
1:16:37
SM: George Wallace.
1:16:47
DB: [chuckles] George Wallace was a fascinating figure far more articulate and, in his criticism, of big government. That whole area is so complicated, I mean, to think of him as the man stood in the University of Alabama door to block the entrance of black students and yet he started off as a kind of liberal politician and then was beaten, said he would never be up Niggered again. I remember him as just being and under an underappreciated articulator of some basic American call them populist, but maybe even more profound than the label with indicate ideas. You want short sharply, right. I can still remember him speaking at Dartmouth College in 1964. He made this tour of campuses, they just went to Harvard went to Dartmouth he went to in the Northeast, and people just being stunned at his articulate [inaudible] and humor. Still remember things that he said? We down here in Alabama, do not believe that everything that comes from Washington is heaven sent. This line about the bureaucrats that could not park their bicycle straight, and that he did not believe that all juvenile criminals had gotten that way because their daddy did not take them to see the Orioles play. And he-he was an incredibly powerful speaker. When he came back again about four years later, it triggered a riot. They rocked his car and but people did not know what to expect when they went there in (19)64 were amazed that this guy they expected to be a room and a bumpkin could speak with such authority and he was he was drawing on much more than racism and should be remembered for that.
1:19:11
SM: Jane Fonda.
1:19:12
DB: Changed, the thing I always say, I got to get shorter because you know, the thing I remember most about Jane Fonda was her first husband who directed her in Barbarella explaining how their marriage had come apart, saying I simply did not want to be married to the American Joan of Arc. That is the only thing I can remember that might add to what others would say.
1:19:46
SM: Robert McNamara.
1:19:47
DB: Robert McNamara when I was a cog in a wheel I did not read this book. It is good a very good book. I remember him as somebody who set out to be the best secretary of defense he could be. Right remember about him was his idea that the army could be the thing the army did best was education. And it could become a vehicle for bringing kids out of the terrible schools in the inner cities, giving them an education and an opportunity. And then how ironic it was, that the army he created would become, although it would do that, it would become the institution in our society that was most effectively, racially integrated, would be remembered as being the institution that just so unfairly sent so many young black Americans to their deaths in Vietnam. There is such an irony involved there it is so complex. I mean, it is so terrible all of the he made mistakes, a terrible mistake. And yet, there is that other irony that we would not know about them. If he had not had the sense of his own role and history to make sure that they were recorded in the study. Who would come back and answer for them in book late in life? kind of remarkable.
1:21:39
SM: Gerald Ford.
1:21:40
DB: Gerald Ford was a thoroughly decent, honest guy. But not, did not have the makings of greatness.
1:21:52
SM: Richard Nixon.
1:21:55
DB: [chuckles] short, sharp answer. Yeah, Richard Nixon was Richard Nixon was it was really an enigma who I do not pretend to have any special insight into. Watergate was awful. And, you know, I mean, another thing that contributed to the moral smugness of the baby boomers. You know, as I suggested before, that the wretched excesses of Watergate we are in their way, and sort of equal and opposite reaction to the wretched excesses of the left. I do not have anything to add to all the other things that have been said about what an enigmatic guy was.
1:22:44
SM: How about Spiro Agnew?
1:22:46
DB: Spiro Agnew is a small, corrupt, dirty little politician, by accident of fate, ended up briefly in the spotlight and has since slumped back to the level of which is appropriate, which so far as I know is total oblivion.
1:23:08
SM: How about Barry Goldwater?
1:23:10
DB: Barry Goldwater was a man who stood the test of time. Even people who did not like him always thought that he was a decent, intelligent man. There is that irony that I talked about before, that the nation would seem to so completely renounce his philosophy of excess being a virtue and moderation being a sin. Yet ultimately, that came to be the hallmark of the generation that so many things that you remember about him? If he was a good, honest, interesting guy, the reporters that covered them used of respect him. I do not think any of them voted for him. And-
1:24:07
SM: How about John Dean and John Mitchell?
1:24:10
DB: Oh, other people who are just-just in the spotlight of history, more or less by accident. Do not think Tom Mitchell was a villain. Nor was John Dean a hero.
1:24:31
SM: Sam Ervin.
1:24:32
DB: Sam Ervin was the person who was given his role and accomplished it certainly gave us faith in the he gave us back some faith in the American political system press more than he should have. He was not that great person. But I think the Watergate hearings did establish the idea that we were capable to a remarkable degree, if not entirely, examining ourselves looking at our shortcomings.
1:25:09
SM: And Gloria Steinem.
1:25:11
DB: Gloria Steinem, I have trouble remembering anything that Gloria Steinem did as such-
1:25:21
SM: [audio cuts) money was a big factor.
1:25:24
DB: I guess I knew that it seems to have gotten so involved and you know, sort of the-the self-fulfillment movement I think her name will always be remembered and, and that many people will have the problem I am having right now that says, we will have a great difficulty remembering just exactly what for.
1:25:58
SM: And musicians of the year of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, those-
1:26:03
DB: They will live forever No. They were the one unmitigated triumph of the (19)60s generation.
1:26:17
SM: Do you feel this is just a personal question? Do you feel that you have made an impact on American society? now, since being asked that has been asked to all the participants, including some Vietnam veteran, they know in Philadelphia and Senator McCarthy and Senator McGovern. And as a follow up, do you feel you would have made a positive impact in your life on the boomers and this current generation on generation?
1:26:43
DB: [audio cuts] Hello [audio cuts]. If I have, it has been very modest. [audio cuts] Your records more than Oh, that would be the only way I would have any effect.
1:27:00
SM: On the generation gap in the (19)60s and early (19)70s, and the generation gap and two cents on today.
1:27:05
DB: [audio cuts] was there. I do not think I have any really profound insights to offer on that, and not that I have on any of the other things. I did not feel there was a gap between myself and my parents. They are not a baby boomer do not feel I feel I am pretty close to my own son is 25, which makes him a generation Xer. But we have never talked about how he feels about baby boomers. So, I do not I just do not do not have a good sense of that all I know, all I know, is really derivative, what I have read from other people, I do not have a firsthand grasp of that.
1:28:06
SM: What is the lasting legacy of the boomer generation?
1:28:11
DB: I hope that the lasting legacy of the boomer generation will be a realization that all of the things they trampled on and tore down. By forcing us to learn the process all over again. That they will renew it sort of the way every once in a while forest has to be burned.
1:28:47
SM: Again, and this Might be repetitive, but what role at many does activism in the boomer generation penetrating the lives of-
1:28:52
DB: None that I can detect And of course, I had that question about you know, to what extent the activism was apparent and what he said was real.
1:29:11
SM: If it is possible to heal within a generation now this week, this is a little different than the previous to heal. Do You think it is possible to heal within a generation where differences and spiritual assistance healing process should we cater and is it feasible?
1:29:25
DB: Well, say that again.
1:29:31
SM: Do you think it is possible to heal within a generation where differences and positions take within-
1:29:37
DB: A generation of time or to heal within the baby boomers?
1:29:41
SM: The Vietnam veterans coming back the divisions between those with protests or heads many of our trans remember that scene in New York City. Where not all they were not all when they were younger hardhats on the front of where it was in New York. The divisions are still obviously there. Do you think it is possible to heal within a generation we are different systems decision to assist in the healing process should be cured as a peaceful? I want to follow this up for example, during my many trips to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington I have been and I have really had a cute year to what I have been hearing a lot of pictures for example, the most portrait that I have man standing at the wall with a jacket on with-with an artificial arm and an artificial leg. And a denim jacket with a big Sanjana Jane Fonda bitch. And, and then hearing in the front row with the last Memorial were for Vietnam veterans did not want to listen to Peter net, because he was the one of the reporters that said bad things about Vietnam veterans, one of the early reporters. So they were there, but they had no respect for him. Even though he-he accepted the invitation Jana scrubs to be there. And certainly, that the dislike of Bill Clinton, which is so ever present amongst all the veterans that I have talked to, I do not care if they are liberal or conservative, everyone I have interviewed so far, and even just to my observations at the wall, is that they just do not like.
1:31:06
DB: Alright, I wonder if it was actually reflected in? So, it is an eroding statistic. The? Well, I think that I think it is, it might be possible to bring about healing within a generation. In fact, you would expect that it would be taking place, it is kind of surprising that there has been so little of it. And I think that reflects the fact that not the divisions were so why certainly the divisions were as nothing compared to the divisions in the Civil War generation, or even the-the American Revolution generation were supposedly created. John Adams, you had a third of the people who were for independence, the third were for staying with England and the third who did not much care. The what has been lost are the mechanisms for healing or reconciliation, we do not have the mechanisms for civic dialogue. We do not have civil societies, everyone is now seen. And so, we do not have any place that we can go and talk about this. We do not have the civic institutions. They do not have that sense of participation in, in civic and cultural and political organizations that might allow the kind of dialogue and healing to take place. It is all taking place in the mass media, and I suppose it has had some success. But I am not optimistic. I think these people will still be fighting over it and over shuffleboard in their retirement house. But it is-
1:32:51
SM: What is interesting is that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was built to heal amongst the Vietnam veterans and their families and a chance for injury. Yet you still see the political attitudes at the wall at these ceremonies. And it is amazing. I was I was really under pressure in the Vietnam veterans a large number were truly starting to heal. And then I, but then I see [audio cuts]
1:33:24
DB: Yep.
1:33:25
SM: Your comments are interesting.
1:33:28
SM: I just wanted to mention, too, that when we went to see Senator, students to Washington, we met him about two and a half years ago, he had something comparable departments and gym shaking, but his mind was still sharp. And we had two hours with him. And did most of students had never met him, most of them and had not even heard him until they had an opportunity to meet him and read his Vita. But the one question that I asked, which brought tears to his eyes, was the question about the inability of the talking about the (19)68 Convention. The trend is divisions in America at that time, and, and the inability of a lot of boomers like myself to have to who still had this trust toward people of authority based on those times. And I thought he was just going to respond about the (19)60s and then he did a melodramatic pause. Then tears are brought to his eyes, the students are all looking at each other. I was looking at the students. And then finally he opened up and he said, I was in the hospital at that time. Looking at the Civil War, I was very sick for a while looking at the Ken Burns Civil War videos to the Secretary of State and when he was in the hospital, and he said, we have a meal since the Civil War. And so, he said for us to start talking about the (19)60s that we really had to divide America into two eras before and after the Civil War. And that was very revealing, because the Senate's clear message to the students in that room. That Civil War generation went to their graves without healing with all the Problems of reconstruction here, according to Disney, and that are is the boomer generation of Vietnam veterans on the protests of the war, the 15 percent, who are activist, some are playing the games, some who did not stay 85 percent of this were supposedly, they were not in the file, but maybe have it in their subconscious, but they take their kids to the wall. So the kids say Dad what did you do in the war. And they did not go or whatever, that there was a tremendous market. And they have made the boomer will go to their grave with [inaudible]-
1:35:33
DB: Oh, well, I think that is absolutely true. I think the Vietnam I mean, the War Memorial, just tremendously moving and effective. Memorial. I do not think anybody goes there without feeling the
sense of loss and sacrifice, and courage and bravery that was involved and played there added those figures of the people, the guy was 1000 yards, there, and so on. But I think the only hope is that the context will change. We actually check to see whether-whether Vietnam vets really vote in a block against Clinton.
1:36:21
SM: I do not know, I do know one thing in my I get to know her a little bit. Not well, phone conversations that we took students to watch. And he wrote the book, the prize winning book. Fortunately, if you have not read that book, the best written books ever written. He was hired by George Mason University to teach writing, he knew how to write was a skill that very few people had, at my understanding. He was writing essays that are carried were designed to kill themselves. He was halfway through it. But the one the one thing is that Vietnam veteran supported Bill Clinton, up until the fall of (19)93, in the spring of (19)94, and he killed himself may have a war but-but then in this in February of (19)94, something happened between love of Vietnam veterans and build one another. They say flip flopped on certain issues. And he was very bitter, and then the obituary and some of the people talked about, he wanted to become the first ambassador of Vietnam, what was the goal is to become a personal masterpiece. He was very daring to go to Vietnam to visit with some of the veterans over there to try to help them and in certain ways, so but something happened, I do not know. And I probably not investigated further. I think there is there was some sort of a break between the Vietnam Veterans and Bill Clinton in that period in 1994, the spring and I do not think it is healed because I went to the Vietnam Memorial. Veterans Day ceremony this past November and tap CEOs and corporations are really bad mouthing bills in public. And we are bad mouthing the government and some of the things. So, there are some very serious divisions now between Bill Clinton and the Vietnam Veterans and I but I do not understand why. I do not understand what is going on behind the scenes.
1:38:19
DB: Yeah, I wonder if a lot of people it is fair to Vietnam just have no connection with that. They are certainly not part of did not join veterans’ organizations are not. I, I only know one Vietnam veteran. And he was a public relations guy for-for infantry. Even I believe that there are only two Vietnam veterans that work for the Philadelphia Inquirer. I think the one thing that is really wrong in that movie is that courage under fire. Is this idea that there is some old combat veteran working for The Washington Post. I do not think there is any. I bet he checked. If you could change something you wanted to go into, Rob, that there is no combat veteran from Vietnam working for The Washington Post banquet, there might only be a handful of people who have served anywhere at all. And that was one of the things that has-that has happened. We really volunteer army and so on. The Army has become a sort of a foreign experience used to be one of the rites of passage. And that ended in the boomer era. We have not I mean, we lost the all of the things that define maturity. From the time when you had to start wearing a tie to the office or working in a farm of some kind.
1:40:01
SM: Do you think that we will ever have trust for elected leaders again after the debacle of Vietnam and Watergate and Uber's. Distrust, what effect is this having on the current generation of youth?
1:40:13
DB: That is a tough question. I mean, I think we have trust for some leaders and do not have trust for others. I think I like to think that the political process, at least at the presidential level is reconnecting. And we saw it in 1992, we will see more of it 1996. Although 1996 may end up just being a putting out election. I am not good at predicting the future, by the way. I have had a few lucky guesses, but I do not know what is going to happen next. But yeah, we have to get back to trusting our leader. If we do not, we are sunk. So, it is really asking the question whether the American experiment democracy will continue or not. And I have to believe that will. But that is part a leap of faith.
1:41:15
SM: Is still running. Yep. Yeah, please, I apologize. Some of these questions are repetitive, but I direct. How did they use it (19)60s and early (19)70s changed your life and the attitude towards that future generations? Did they have any effect on your life?
1:41:42
DB: Yeah, there is a great tendency for them, for me, for them to make me cynical. So many examples of good intentions gone awry. Which is a theme of Kurt Vonnegut's books ended up being big [audio cuts]
1:42:04
SM: Are there examples of events or activities, major cynical, or just the whole game?
1:42:12
DB: Yeah. Let us see. Let me see if I can at least pick out one. Hello, I think the one area that I have concentrated would concentrate on and I mean, I think it takes place with across the spectrum. I gave some examples earlier. And everything from trying to deal with urban poverty dealing with urban problems. But most profoundly we see it in education, where you have had all of these well-meaning quotes unquote, reforms that have had the net effect of diluting and making our education less effective. At a time when we needed more than ever. How many people who thought they were doing something good, and then having a disastrous effect? Open classrooms, the new math, social promotions, the dumbing down of the curriculum, the IT erosion of standards, grade inflation, all things done by people with proof that the road to hell probably is paved with good intentions. And you have to go back and undo it. Or the point of it that anecdote, I started on way, way back about the guy who wrote the book Physics for poets and is involved in the in the Chicago Public Schools is that we can very quickly destroy an institution, it takes a long time to build it back. I guess the people feeling that they were doing the right thing by achieving self-fulfillment in their own lives and wrecking the lives of their children. end up just shaking your head. Santa's amazement.
1:44:13
SM: Great history books are written on the growing up years from the boomers saying 25 to 50 years and I am ensuring those people do not major in undergrad program, the higher ed in graduate school. We were always taught best issued books were probably issued 50 years after events take place from best books on World War Two right now are being written today. As opposed to some books written by James McGregor burns, really? When the history books are written on the growing up years for the overseeing 2550 years from now what will be the overall evaluation of the boomers? Because of the booming right now are, Well, I do not get into this category of making (19)46 to (19)64 because sometimes those people born between (19)46 and (19)56 in the late (19)50s and early (19)60s. We got a couple of people in West Chester that I just have a hard time relate to. They are still categorized as boomers, but they had no sense of what transpired back then.
1:45:09
DB: Not only that they resent the older boomers. I think your divisions probably are better. What will History Think?
1:45:22
SM: Yeah especially some of them are just coming into power now. So-
1:45:25
DB: I am sad to say that I am not good at progress. prognosticating history, I do not think there is any way I would just stick with I have gotten really fond of this analogy with the baby boomers were like a fire that had to burn through and clean things happen. So the new growth could occur.
1:45:55
SM: [audio cuts] And last question, is this. The youth of that period of belief, they could have impact on society and government policy in the (19)50s (19)60s and (19)70s. Vietnam policy, the draft civil rights legislation, nonviolent protests, multiple months, in other words, a sense of empowering, why is society resisting this today? And why in your words, are the sons and daughters of boomers feel less confident about their ability to have an impact on society? And in some respects, less desire to seemingly less opportunity? Am I wrong in assuming this question?
1:46:30
DB: I think the problem is they turned out to be wrong. So many of them are going back with things like education what are the policies we look at? They thought they could solve poverty in the city, and they could not be now undoing the things that they tried to do to try something else. And we are going to do it with a great deal of trepidation and not going to do it, that same sense of we can change the world. And we will probably do it better. You looked at all the things that they tried to do look at things that, for example, that the baby boomer era created, whether as baby boomers did it or not, they have to reflect a lot longer, maybe even look some stuff up. But questioning whether affirmative action was the way to eradicate racism. Because we have discovered that in many cases, and it is hard to weigh the case in which it does good in the cases in which it does bad. It is exacerbated by the fact that the welfare system that we tried to create did not free people from a downward spiral. Or it did not pre bring people back up, and instead seems to launch them into a multi-generational downward spiral into which situation seems increasingly dire, which we now feel when you come right down to it, but we have too many people in America now that cannot do anything that anybody would pay them the minimum wage for, and that the system is creating more of them. What was question again? I got a little lost.
1:48:26
SM: What was the impact of the Boomers have had and they felt they could change?
1:48:37
DB: They felt they could change the world. And they were wrong. And so, people are kind of stepping out onto the charred ground, it has been left very cautiously and carefully and tried to rebuild something there that will pay more attention to the laws of unintended consequence. And things like-
1:48:59
SM: Do you feel that there is a direct correlation. I went back to the question earlier that the reason why Generation X youth or young adults cannot get involved is because of the examples that have been set by their parents. Whether it be over the kitchen table, or just by observation.
1:49:23
DB: I once again have to take myself out of that, because I did not see that. I do not know. I mean, I go to see a movie like Reality Bites are clueless or whatever. And I do not understand. I do not know what happened. I do not know why those people are the way they are. I do not know if it is a reaction to their parents. I tend to think it is because our whole society lost the ability to transmit its values. And I hope we are getting it back. But this whole the whole lack of knowledge and interest on the part of this generation is-is really appalling. And people are always trying to figure out ways to make excuses for it. I expected to be some kind of, you know, the fireman talks about a back blast when they go into a fire and the fire has gone in a certain direction for a long time. And it gets to be a, an area behind the vacuum, and then suddenly things blast pack into it. I expect we are going to see something like that. And it is going to happen, particularly in regard. I think we already see it happening in regard to spiritual values, kind of so many of these questions you bring up, you could spend an entire chapter on the boomer generation holds up as the great example of what it what was accomplished. It holds up the civil rights revolution as a great example of what can be accomplished, and yet rejects the central religious core of that movement. At least its activists. It is the least as I say, somehow, rather America just continues to be the most religious country in the world. This kind of goes on like some something underwater, a big iceberg underwater. So, you cannot say we have lost that.
1:51:33
SM: I do believe this church attendance was down from like, when-when I was getting the link with the church every Sunday and Sunday school was over. But as I got older, myself, I did not go to church anymore. And a lot of my peers get caught up into that, too. And I am kind of wondering, it was not like the (19)50s. It is fascinating.
1:51:56
DB” I mean, this sort of was my impression, but I am told that if you would look at Gallup Poll asked people what percentage 40 percent went to church, or synagogue last night went to religious services in the previous week, and it is just tasting exactly the same. Just like there is another America out there as we connect with it. Just kind of goes on.
1:52:24
SM: Person in my position to work with student’s day in and day out. And I work with a lot of faculty to work. Frustrated that today's college students love it, they have faith in them, it is not they do not have faith, have you always had faith in young people, you always give them the benefit of the doubt. And but that does not mean that they cannot be constructively criticize the time. And that is that they do not have a sense of history. They, they do not do much reading, they do not really want to understand the past. They only want to deal with the present and really care about the future. But the sense of history and a lot of a boomer faculty, they do not get frustrated with some of their students on some occasion and they go back to when they were asked. And because of those times, we questioned faculty members in the classroom. It was highly interactive, faculty were in the residence halls at that time, there was a linkage between the faculty and then now faculty members do not seem to be linked to students at all. It is I do not know I am trying to get at here and it is somewhat frustrating his friends, absolutely baffling try to see we are trying to see the image of today's students as we were in some respects and that is to challenge a lot of these young people in my opinion do not challenge the system.
1:53:44
DB: But I can tell you that is my impression as well. Correct me even to my-my-my son, his friends. I gave his girlfriend 20 bucks she would she said you know we are reading all these plays and they are just such crap. So why do not you say anything that you say challenge professors. You know, I think this stuff is just by eliminating all the ambiguity and it has come so close to some sort of quasi pornography. Brit modern British theatre, modern British drama. And this is why you might want to get an A and I am already I have a 3.78 grade average and I am getting turned down for interviews because they want people put their grade average I will give you 20 bucks if you stand up and just say one thing because I want to see if anybody else stands up and says the same thing. I want to see what Professor react and nobody joined here, except the one or two students she already knew felt that way. And professor’s kind of matter of fact in class but then when she went into took discuss her paper with women, he reduced her to tears and I think it was educational to do that.
1:55:05
SM: David Are there any other final comments you would like to say?
1:55:14
DB: No, I want to thank you very much for participating in private. No, I think I have had a chance to say pretty much everyone thought that I did not get in, you know, there was a feeling that to some extent, the assassinations, just cauterize everybody's nerve endings, that people did not feel things is profoundly anymore. That you after you have been through the death of John Kennedy, the assassination of Robert did the assassination of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, you-you got to be afraid to hope. And that was another thing that went on was that had a big effect? Hard, hard cremation.
1:56:00
SM: Could you? Just everyone out there? Were you waiting in the room for Bobby Kennedy to go through the pantry there? Because there was no more he made the announcement he told to another group. What does duh. Yes, that is exactly right. There were two ballrooms or four people in each spoke, I think the people who were I do not know how they separate. I think the people the first group were kind of more insiders, although my wife was a precinct cabinet for the time. And we were in the lower ballroom or, and he was going to the pantry to come down there. And it did not come and I just wandered out into the hall. And there were people in the rooms down the hall or watching the whole proceedings on television and went into one and there was a woman just keeled over. She had fallen over in a chair and sobbing uncontrollably. And there was great disturbance and discombobulation in the room. I thought it was over this woman who, you know, is having some perhaps some kind of epileptic fit or diabetic shock. But it was all because they just heard that shot over the television. We did not know it in the big room because televisions were off because he was going to come and speak. But the ambassador just after that, I mean, in that piece I gave you my wife said, you know, part of me died with him. And you guys never she was never able to do enthusiastically support anybody.
1:57:49
SM I have [audio cuts] Many times and I have gone to that spot.
1:57:52
DB: And neither was I-
1:57:55
SM: White crosses there in Arlington.
1:57:57
DB: Well, yeah, it makes me sad though, because the kids that come there, they do not seem to have the same appreciation. I interviewed the guard there. Something like fussy has working to the post from (19)69 to (19)72. Watching. Yeah. So over I have been there for and I remember him today, the kids now they just do not. They do not have they do not understand. And he started to cry. [inaudible] (19)63. So it was not the tenth.
1:58:29
SM: If he gets enough in here to regarding the heroes, that maybe they had heroes, they looked up to sometimes Europe may not be the right word. Think they looked up to John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and some of the other civil rights leaders to like a young man in Java who was other politicians too, that were run. Today, again, it is just a sense that I have there are no people that go for their parents, sometimes I it is interesting. I have had some interviews with students. We interviewed students for positions on our campus within our nations, and specifically asked them who their heroes are. And I thought [inaudible] majority are my sister, me and my upbringing. And my parents divorced. My-my parents, my mom and dad, they may not be both, but it may be one of them. So I find that interesting. And again, this is only about 30 or 40 students. Commentaries, but you never hear oh my heroes Martin Luther King, my hero was John Kennedy, my hero or any of the current leaders. It is just amazing.
1:59:45
DB: Yeah, as an as an editor, I tried to bring back the idea of Return of the hero. I remember back they still have the Lone Ranger on the cover. And inside the head stories that people were getting ready to go to look at heroes, again, Movie Star Wars to come out and set those turning points. But it really has not. I saw US News and World Report tried to do the same article five, five years ago or so. And turned out that heroes, they turned out to be entertainment figures, people who portrayed somebody else. And somebody talking about that was saying so amazing that when they have when they were having hearings in Washington on foreign problems that one of the people had bring in a sissy space because he was in whatever movie that was about the trouble on the farm the fact that we do not have heroes. It is really, really important.
2:00:49
SM: Joe McGuiness wrote a book about [inaudible] Did you read that book?
2:00:53
DB: Yeah.
2:00:55
SM: Talking about Teddy Kennedy segment and we are trying to get through to them for a long time. Bear with me here. [audio cuts]
(End of Interview)
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Interview with David Boldt
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Boldt, David ; McKiernan, Stephen
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Editors; Journalists; Awards—United States; Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant (Pa.); Iran—History—Revolution, 1979; Boldt, David--Interviews
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David Boldt was editor of the editorial page of <em>The Philadelphia Inquirer</em> and a political columnist for the same paper during the 1980's and 1990's. Boldt won the Pulitzer Prize as a member of the <em>Inquirer</em>'s team that covered a nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island electrical power plant, and received a citation for excellence from the Overseas Press Club for his reporting on the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Boldt has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in interpreting contemporary affairs as an adjunct professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. He earned a bachelor's degree in History from Darthmouth College.
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ND
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.23a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.23b
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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121:15
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/2b7be8e337d2094696aa1f32692240b6.mp3
da7f47f783aa92f14aae48ec6b888eaa
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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
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Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
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Julian Bond, 1940-2015
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Julian Horace Bond (1940 - 2015) was a social activist and leader in the civil rights movement, politician, poet, educator and author. He attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Bond is best known for his fight to take his duly elected seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. He later served as the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP. Bond died in 2015 at his home in Fort Walton Beach, Florida after a brief illness."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">Julian Horace Bond (1940 - 2015) was a social activist and leader in the civil rights movement, politician, poet, educator, and author. He attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Bond is best known for his fight to take his duly elected seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. He later served as the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP. Bond died in 2015 at his home in Fort Walton Beach, Florida after a brief illness.</span>
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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":"Baby boom generation; Women's Rights Movement; Activism; Public education; Vietnam War; Race; University Campuses; Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy; John Kennedy; Hubert Humphrey; George McGovern; Muhammad Ali; Richard Nixon; Spiro Agnew; Gerald Ford; Angela Davis; Affirmative Action; Individualism; Tolerance; Cooperative Action; Healing; Vietnam Memorial"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":2,"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Baby boom generation; Women's Rights Movement; Activism; Public education; Vietnam War; Race; University Campuses; Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X; Robert Kennedy; John Kennedy; Hubert Humphrey; George McGovern; Muhammad Ali; Richard Nixon; Spiro Agnew; Gerald Ford; Angela Davis; Affirmative Action; Individualism; Tolerance; Cooperative Action; Healing; Vietnam Memorial</span>
Duration
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99:33
Subject LCSH
African American politicians--United States; Political activists--United States; Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Bond, Julian, 1940-2015--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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Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
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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
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Interview with Julian Horace Bond
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Bond, Julian, 1940-2015 ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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African American politicians--United States; Political activists--United States; Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Bond, Julian, 1940-2015--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Julian Horace Bond (1940 - 2015) was a social activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement, politician, poet, educator and author. He attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Bond is best known for his fight to take his duly elected seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. He later served as the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP. Bond died in 2015 at his home in Fort Walton Beach, Florida after a brief illness.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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ND
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In Copyright
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.24a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.24b
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.
99:33
-
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/a241e9b50dd29b12de82cf8cd00ff17c.mp3
590da30bb3caaeba63c5c2aed19fd853
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
2011-01-29
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Linda Borus
Language
English
Biographical Text
Linda Borus is the Chief Investigator with the State Appellate Defender Office, State of Michigan. Borus was an activist and Ph.D. student at Columbia University when she became the investigator for Bernard Stroble (Shango) case, as part of the Attica Defense Committee. After this trial, she devoted her entire career to working in the criminal justice system.
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":"The 1960s; Columbia; Attica; John Kennedy's assassination; Malcolm X; Martin Luther King Jr; Anti-War Movement; Mohammad Ali; Baby boomer generation"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":2,"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">The 1960s; Columbia; Attica; John Kennedy's assassination; Malcolm X; Martin Luther King Jr; Anti-War Movement; Mohammad Ali; Baby boomer generation</span>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
130:39
Subject LCSH
Michigan State Appellate Defender Office; Public defenders; Borus, Linda--Interviews
Accessibility
Copy/Paste below:
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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 Linda Borus
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Borus, Linda ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
Michigan State Appellate Defender Office; Public defenders; Borus, Linda--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Linda Borus is the Chief Investigator with the State Appellate Defender Office, State of Michigan. Borus was an activist and Ph.D. student at Columbia University when she became the investigator for Bernard Stroble (Shango) case, as part of the Attica Defense Committee. After this trial, she devoted her entire career working in the criminal justice system.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-01-29
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.10.2016.25a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.25b
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.
130:39