68 10 1775 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/1f04ded7dd5330a1bc263a204320e220.jpg bca0f11ffca39d132e5411e14d810949 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/c9afb1ec0b0eafa9985b6aa4ae998780.mp3 65268b98da9b0d3527a5b2690a01f0cb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-12-13 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Richard Flacks Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Richard Flacks is an academic, social activist and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at University of California-Santa Barbara. He is the author of Making History: The American Left and the American Mind and Beyond the Barricades. Dr. Flacks has a Ph.D. from University of Michigan.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13057,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Dr. Richard Flacks is an academic, social activist and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara. He is the author of <em>Making History: The American Left and the American Mind</em> and <em>Beyond the Barricades</em>. Dr. Flacks has a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Teacher unionism; McCarthy period; Red Diaper Baby; Brooklyn College in the nineteen fifties; Cuban missile crisis; Port Huron; Nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Student activists; Women's movement&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792}}">Teacher unionism; McCarthy period; Red Diaper Baby; Brooklyn College in the nineteen fifties; Cuban missile crisis; Port Huron; Nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Student activists; Women's movement</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 161:24 Subject LCSH Political activists--United States; College teachers; Sociologists; University of California, Santa Barbara; Flacks, Richard--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Richard Flacks Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 13 December 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:04): Testing one, two. My first question is how did you become who you are as a person? Could you give me a little bit of background on your growing up years before you went off to graduate school at Michigan? What I have- RF (00:00:25): I was born in Brooklyn, New York of parents who themselves were left wing folks. They were both New York City school teachers, very active in pioneering teacher unionism and community work in... My mother worked in black community [inaudible] she taught school there, first grade. And they were both... And Brooklyn, in the years I was growing up, World War II and after, was a pretty progressive left wing environment, generally in terms of where people's political identifications were. And there was a widespread left wing culture in New York. I went to children's camps that were interracial and progressive, and most of my parents friends were of similar mind. But then came the McCarthy period, and my parents were among a couple hundred teachers who were purged [inaudible] their alleged political affiliations from the schools. And that was part of this much broader climate in the country, of course, the political repression that I experienced from the time I was about 12 years old on, this was very significant part of my sense. SM (00:02:16): How did your parents... Because I have talked to quite a few other people too, that had similar experiences being labeled red diaper babies, but the question is, as a young person growing up as a child or young teenager, how did your parents... Did they sit down with you and tried to explain why this was happening? RF (00:02:36): McCarthy, period? SM (00:02:37): Yeah, yes. RF (00:02:39): Well, they did not need to... I was attentive enough and aware enough, and I did not need a lot of sitting down and explaining. I got it from an early time, and, of course... And I attended public meetings where people who were dissenters from the McCarthy atmosphere would speak. I mean, it was just very much a part of my life and it did not just, me and my parents sitting down. I mean, I must have asked them a lot of questions all through my childhood. But by the time of the... And in fact, the place that probably I got the most sense of awareness about all this was in the camp that I went to where a lot of the kids have families going through similar kinds of things. So there was a great deal of discussion and exchange about that. SM (00:03:52): What were your undergraduate college years like before you went off to Michigan? RF (00:03:57): I went to Brooklyn College, which is now part of the city university, precollege. And that was at the height of the (19)50s, sort of red scare. I was politically active, I joined the Young Democrats and became president of the Young Democrats. And I was part of a little group of more lefty kids who met and discussed things. But generally, when the Young Democrats and other groups try to get students to just signed petitions, for example, about civil rights issues, very mainstream seeming issues, well supporting a law to federal law against the poll tax, would they [inaudible]. Kids would say, "My mother told me when I get to college, do not sign anything. I will get into trouble in the future." There was a lot of that feeling among students. SM (00:05:10): One of the things about the (19)50s, before we get into the (19)60s is the (19)50s is always kind of labeled as a quiet time on university campuses. Although there was a lot of activism, obviously in the Civil Rights Movement. RF (00:05:26): Well, the civil right... In (19)55 and (195)6 was the Montgomery Bus Boycott, there were other things. A woman named Autherine Lucy tried to get into the University of Alabama. That was a major event that I remember. And yes, in fact, all through the (19)50s in college, you were aware that there was a kind of subterranean, bohemian, counter-cultural process going on for a lot of young people. Identification with beat poets and the jazz and folk music cultures, and New York was filled with those kinds of opportunities for college kids to go to and be part of. And so even though there was this miasma of political withdrawal, on one hand, there certainly was this cultural rebellion that you could immediately sense if you were a college student. And there were incidents, Brooklyn College was a particularly repressive college. The president of Brooklyn, Harry Gideon, was famous for having been brought to Brooklyn College in the early... Or I think it was in the, yeah early (19)50s, to clean it up from the communist influence on the student body. He literally abolished student government and set up a censorship regime over the student paper. Every year that I was there, by the end of the year, the student editors had resigned because of the restrictions being placed on them. And so there was a contingent of students even then at Brooklyn who were... And in the years, I was there, (19)54 to (19)58 were increasingly antagonistic to the administration and staging events. The most interesting sort of collective action that I remember, talking to you right now was when at the time that McCarthy was going to be censored, [inaudible] by the [inaudible], and there was a national movement called the Green Feather Movement. I do not know if you have ever heard of this. SM (00:08:11): No. RF (00:08:11): And all it was wearing a button with a green feather on it. Now, the root of that was that in Indiana, there was a move in the state legislature to ban Robin Hood because Robin Hood stole from the rich gave to the poor, he was clearly a communist. SM (00:08:28): Oh yeah. RF (00:08:31): So people started to wear these buttons, and it was almost like this feeling, well, yeah, we have been underground in our feelings, now this is a way to express it. And though by the time I was ready to graduate, I felt there was a loosening of, in many ways, of the atmosphere on... Even at Brooklyn College in terms of questioning. And in fact, there was a march on Washington, a couple of them called Youth March on Washington for integration that acquired Rustin. SM (00:09:10): Oh, yes. RF (00:09:12): That, and these were just small compared to later things, 20,000 people maybe went. But I remember going on one of those. So yeah, the more you can dig into it, the more you realize that there was a lot of permit, I would put that. SM (00:09:36): Right. In fact, there is a picture of Dr. King, I think in 1957 at the Lincoln Memorial. RF (00:09:41): Yeah. SM (00:09:42): Everybody thinks of (19)63, the March on Washington, but there was one previous, and of course by- RF (00:09:47): Yeah well, and Rustin got practice in staging those events because for 63, which he led to [inaudible], so yeah. SM (00:09:59): You know he is from Westchester? RF (00:10:02): Okay. SM (00:10:03): Yeah, and we did a national tribute to him in 1999 on our campus. So we had a lot... He is a historic figure from our area. One of the things, the Beats, it is interesting when I ask some of the people that I have interviewed, when did the (19)60s begin? Several individuals said that it really began with the Beats because they were anti-authoritarian, kind of did their own thing, they were very independent minded. They were a lot different, and of course, a lot of people think they were all secluded in New York City and San Francisco. So how could they really have that much of an influence? Kerouac and Ginsburg and [inaudible] Getty, and their- RF (00:10:49): Yeah, but they were featured. The big mass media in that era were magazines like Life Magazine and I remember that Life Magazine covered the Beats. And once that happens... And by the way, the same thing happened in (19)65 with SDS when Life did a big spread on it and we had never been heard of before. So once Life... In those in those years, Life and Look Magazines gave that kind of big pictorial display, these things were on the cultural map for a lot of people in middle of there, between the coast, so to speak. And I think I remember feeling to some extent, indeed that the Beats were something of a media hype. Because if you grew up in New York, you were aware that there was a much longer tradition of Bohemian cultural expression in Greenwich Village and so on and so on. We were attracted to going to the village on weekends and stuff, not just because of the Beats, but they were just the visible... In a way you could say the Beats nationalized Greenwich Village, made it national whereas [inaudible] they really were. But there were elements of what they were into Eastern religion so forth that were not fully in the awareness of a lot of... I knew. SM (00:12:39): The mains in the television tried to portray the Beats in a very humorous way with Maynard G. Krebs, remember that? RF (00:12:47): Well, there was a lot of that, yeah. And by the way, it is not just... I think music was a more important subcultural, and always has been, subcultural center than simply so called Beat... I mean, the jazz on the one hand and folk music on the other, there were two big overlapping circles of people who were orienting to this music because... And away from commercialized mass culture music during the (19)50s. And music because it was played in clubs and other social venues, people congregated around it. And that, I have always felt was crucial for what happened in creating a student movement was that there was this subculture around folk music, particularly. SM (00:13:58): Yeah. When you think of the Greenwich Village, you still think of Bob Dylan. RF (00:14:02): Yeah. SM (00:14:03): And you think of- RF (00:14:06): [inaudible] and many others of his type. It was interesting that a whole bunch of young troubadours emerged all at the same time, and they all went to Greenwich Village, that is where they... When they wanted to begin a career, because there were a bunch of small clubs there that they could be booked into and do record labels right there. It was like a little nexus for creating this. SM (00:14:38): Then you had some of the great comedians come out of there too, with Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce. They were certainly different, and they were from that kind of period too. RF (00:14:49): And all of that was the mix that I remember in my college year. And that is the (19)50s, yeah. SM (00:14:57): Now, talk about your college years at Michigan. I did some reading on... I have quite a few of your books, by the way. RF (00:15:05): Well, that is nice. SM (00:15:06): And I even have your book that you... One of the very early books, I was able to get ahold of that and read it. But talk about your college years at Michigan and your links to Tom Hayden. I know Tom, I have interviewed him twice. We brought him to our campus and he is unbelievable person as a human being and an intellect. And I can see how he influenced people like you. But you were a graduate student, but talk about Michigan a little bit. RF (00:15:34): Well, I went to Ann Arbor to study social psychology in 1958, graduated Brooklyn. At that time, there were three others of us who went at the same time, the Michigan Psych Department and Social Psychology program, were the... If you were interested in that topic and that subject, that was the place to go. So we were very lucky, the feeling that we had gotten into Michigan Social Psychology. And social psychology, I just add is an interesting discipline, whose roots to a great extent were in intellectuals who were German refugee intellectuals who were escaping from Hitler and wanted to understand how the German population, which was supposed to be so culturally advanced, could have fallen under Hitler's sway and so forth. That is the social psychology, that is part of what got me interested in that kind of topic. So anyway, but I had graduated from college in 58 with the feeling that I wanted to be in academia because there was no political future. I was a political guy, but I did not see any way to express that vocationally or in life terms, and that I was very good academically, and that is where I could maybe have more a chance to understand the world and express myself. I did not think politics was possible in the United States anymore. And if change in the world were to happen, it would be happening from third world revolutionary movements and things like that. But I did not really expect anything to the left in this country to happen. And in Ann Arbor, interesting by the way, this bohemian thread that I was talking about in New York was very evident in Ann Arbor, but somehow felt pressure, it felt... And it was actually more political for the kinds of expressions people were making. And there was the underground film community. There was the same kind of coffee house book music world, of course, there were artists and poets, and this is when we first got there. And the thing that crystallized so much in the (19)60s, I believe this is crucial, that when the students sat in, in Greensboro in North Carolina, February 1st, 1960, it was immediately efforts in Ann Arbor and a lot of other college towns to do sympathy demonstrations, picketing the Woolworths stores in those towns, and telling people to boycott Woolworths as long as segregation persisted in the South, in those same stores in the South. And so people came to these pickets, let us say 100 people picketing the Woolworths store on Stage Street in Ann Arbor. And most of them did not know each other. I mean, we did not know each other before we got there. Somehow by word of mouth, I do not even remember how the word went out that this was something to do. And so what you are seeing there is this interesting moment where people are making public statement, which most of them had not done about their political belief and in the presence of other people with like-mind who they had not met before. This was a formula that sociologists can write almost about how a social movement can begin is where you have this collective self-mutual discovery of common ground, common grievance, common... And what is beautiful about this issue of segregation as a force for change is that it presents a target that is so clear and so morally right, that people could... And that you can see how it can be overcome. That is very important in the social movement that you take action that might really make it different, not just express yourself symbolically. And that was all present when you got together on a picket line at Woolworths in Ann Arbor in February 1960, that was a moment. And so from then on, there was even before SDS, various kinds of... Mostly turned out to be... Well, not mostly, it was a combination of civil rights activism and peace activism was going on there, and that was true really all over the country, but it was certainly evident in Ann Arbor. Small groups of people, it was not ever felt, I do not think you ever felt in that period that you could really reach and change the behavior of most students. Matter of fact, in (19)62, with the Cuban Missile Crisis, a bunch of us staged a march and we were met of protest. No, it was not the Cuban missile... It was the Cuban... It was the Bay of Pigs invasion. That is what it was. SM (00:21:51): (19)61, yeah. RF (00:21:55): And all these fraternity kids came out with fines, Bob Havana and screaming at us. I may be mixing up something that might have even been about Vietnam. But anyway, it does not... The point is there that there was the sense... Most of the students, undergraduates were Republican, Midwestern Republican. We were different. And there were a lot of graduate student types, probably in the pro civil rights peace world. As well as, I am going to say another thing about Ann Arbor, and this may have been typical of other places, is a sizable Quaker community that was always very peace oriented and wanting to promote pacifist activism. And several faculty, including the great economist, Kenneth Boulding was a leader of that. And then at the same time, and my wife was part of this because we had gotten married, shortly after graduate school. And she came out in 1960 and she was going to City College, got finished in 60, or came out. Anyway, she was part of this group Women's Strike for Peace, which is somewhat forgotten, but important early development in the (19)60s movement history. And they were mothers and wives, not undergraduate women at all, who were trying to do creative activity to promote opposition to the arms race and pro-peace activity. And that became a loose national organization that a number of Ann Arbor women, including my wife, were active in. So these are the elements even before SDS came on the scene. As you know, Hayden was the editor of the Michigan Daily. SM (00:24:23): Yes. RF (00:24:23): Well, let me... I am not going to give you a good chronology. I do not have any in front of me to remember all this. So I will be more general about it. The story is well known, Al Haber, whose father was a big professor at Michigan who was politically. Just a little bit older than... He was a little even older than I was and in (19)60, I was 22. So in (19)62 I was [inaudible]. 62 in [inaudible] I was 24, so that is a few years older. Hayden was only... Well, he was 22 [inaudible 00:25:07], yeah, I guess. Anyway, Al started... He was based, he lived in Ann Arbor, so that is made Ann Arbor in the future, an important part of the SDS history. Al went to New York to recreate this organization, which became the student lead for industrial democracy, which became SDS and he began to recruit other people around the country, students, into this formation. Very innovative, brilliant idea, really had turned out to be, but at the time, no one was sure of anything. I had never heard of it. In Ann Arbor, I had never heard of it until I got... Some people started... Hayden was editing the Michigan Daily, very impressive articles that he wrote about an emerging student movement. And I think he himself said later he was trying to create the movement through his worth, I mean knowing... In other words, if you write these long descriptive, emotionally powerful pieces describing students on the march, you are creating an awareness that this might be possible. No one had been thinking really of a student movement, or not very many people until... And I do not think he alone was thinking about it, but it was an emerging idea more than a reality in (19)61, (19)62. Anyway, there was a student party, political party on campus called Voice. And that too was parallel that some of the other big universities, a lefty political party at Berkeley, it was called Slate. SM (00:27:12): Yes. RF (00:27:13): And then University of Chicago, there was another one, [inaudible] Madison, a few examples of this. And those were local, they were not tied to any actual group, but Al Haber saw that he could recruit the leaders of Voice into this SDS. And so when the planning for Port Huron starting to get going, and Tom wrote this draft of what became Port Huron [inaudible], that is when I was first exposed to the fact that this was happening. I had other friends who knew Tom before I did, introduced us a little. So I began... Yep, he was a... You may find him impressive now, but he was even more impressive as a 21 [inaudible]. Brilliant speaker, brilliant writer. And for those New York, Jewish, rusty kids, red diaper babies, here is a guy who did not have that background. He grew up in a very conservative Catholic community in Detroit and came out of there. And that is significant. If you have the view, which I did that well, the left wing in America's going to be really isolated in these pockets of distinctive cultural pocket like the New York Jewish world or Union World of San Francisco, Bohemian Union World. And it will not reach out beyond that. There is little traditions of leftism around America, but it will not become a force. And suddenly you are seeing people like Hayden who coming out of nowhere, so to speak, with a very sharp, critical awareness, a new, fresh way of thinking about what it meant to be on the left. You left. And so that captured me immediately, as soon as I read this draft of [inaudible], this is what I have been wanting and would never believe could happen. So I decided to go to Port Huron. This is part of my story, I do not know how much you want. Is this a personal story or? SM (00:29:38): Yeah, it is a personal story because it is part of the (19)60s. And this is important, and I even had a question here. Why was Port Huron picked to be this- RF (00:29:47): I mean that is sort of well known, I mean they were looking... Among the connections that Al had made was with a young woman named Sharon Jeffrey, who was one of the leaders of the Voice party is Michigan. Her mother was Mildred Jeffrey, who was Walter Reuther UAW- SM (00:30:05): Oh, yes. RF (00:30:08): Was a right-hand woman. She was a very powerful, well-known figure in Michigan politics and in the Union. And so I guess that Millie Jeffery just suggested you could use the Port Huron camp or whatever it was called that the BUAW owned up there for the meeting and it [inaudible]. So that was a great resource, you felt like perfect for... I do not know if they even charged... Let us just do it. Yeah, so it was that UAW connection was very important and I think has lessons for today. The UAW... We need a new student movement. I may be getting ahead of my story, and UAW is willing to sponsor SDS without knowing what that would mean. In other words, they took a risk politically in backing these upstart students with not only Port Huron, they gave some money to things like that. So anyway, where were we? So yeah, here I was a red diaper baby and SBS required for membership that you sign a statement saying that you were not part of the communists, basically. Which I was not, but I hated, and I was... Many of us red diaper babies hated that kind of loyalty statement. And I was not sure how we would be received, my wife went with me, given our background. So I went there. There was a left wing paper at the time called the National Guardian, which I had a lot of friendship connections with some people there. And I said, "Well, let me cover the Port Huron meeting for the Guardian." And I will go Port Huron under that rubric, not knowing whether I was able to or willing to join the organization, so to speak. So when we got there, we realized that there was... One of the key things about the meeting was going to be to overturn that loyalty oath and really transform the organization's identity. Not to be pro-communist, but to denounce this kind of Cold War categorizations that was- RF (00:33:03): ... kind of Cold War categorizations that was killing the left, really, that kind of Cold War thinking. So almost immediately we got to Port Huron I knew I was part of this, and incidentally did write pieces for The Guardian, which they did not want to publish. They did not publish, because they did not trust SDS. "Well, it is still social democratic part of the league for industrial democracy. They were red baiters and so on." Even though I tried to explain that this was something new, the Guardian editors did not buy that story right away and they did not care what I thought so that was an interesting... The part of the left that I had identified with up to them was The Guardian and the magazine Monthly Review. These were independent Marxist oriented publications. They were not Communist Party publications, but they were not anti-communist in the Cold War then. So I liked those. But neither magazine understood SDS at the beginning. They just did not get the idea of a New Left until later. Is that important? I do not know. Anyway, so that is how we got there. We very involved in the discussions there. I helped the right, or I wrote the redraft, matter of fact, of the communist statement in the Port Huron statements, the passages about communism and anti-communism. Not to make them less anti-communist, but I actually thought Tom was too soft on the communist [inaudible] when he had written the original draft. So we were very involved at that point. I always take credit of being one of the founders of SDS, that is part of my identity that I was at that founding meeting and I actually helped conceive what the organization was to be along with, of course, a dozen other people. SM (00:35:42): How important was President Kennedy's inaugural speech on some of the students at Michigan? "Ask not what your country can do for you as what you can do for your country." Because when he campaigned in (19)60 and of course then he won, and then in (19)61 he gave in his inaugural those words that did inspire a lot of people. Of course the Peace Corps meeting that took place outside of the University of Michigan library- RF (00:36:08): Well, let me tell you the exact- SM (00:36:09): Yeah. RF (00:36:11): And the anniversary of that is just been, so- SM (00:36:14): Right. RF (00:36:15): Yeah, that was during the presidential campaign. He was scheduled to come, not the library, the Michigan Union, the student union, he was to appear on the steps there. People waited for hours. He was late, like 2:00 AM as I recall, thousands of kids waiting there. In that speech he says, "Would not you like to serve your country giving aid to people in Ghana?" I forget the exact words, but he was posing almost the idea that instead of military service, there would be this other option. Immediately a guy named Al Guskin, who had been my roommate before we both got married when we first got to Ann Arbor, he was another Brooklyn College guy, Al and a few others, formed a group right away that next day, I think, to support the Kennedy idea. They went to see Kennedy at another campaign stop, I think, a few, couple weeks later to say, "We are behind this, we want to work for it." Some people say that Peace Corps would not have gelled as an idea where it not for the fact that there was this spontaneous student response to it in Ann Arbor that pretty much spread pretty quickly, I think, around the country. A matter of fact, that is how I met Hayden is because Guskin reached out to the editor of the student paper Tom Hayden, and then Al starts telling me, "There is this guy, Hayden, you have got to meet him." Anyway, the SDS people were not in love with Kennedy at all. I would say the psychology of that moment was, on the one hand, yes, we have the first president born in the 20th century. There is a fresh feeling of a turning point in history, but it was as much the sit-ins in the South and the civil rights uprising than as Kennedy. Kennedy was the more conservative, a lot of the liberal young wanted Adlai Stevenson to be the Democratic nominee in (19)60. That was a completely impossible idea. But Kennedy was not considered the darling of liberal Democrat at all. By the time of SDS, there had been the Cuban invasion. There had been a big acceleration of the arms race under Kennedy, big reinvestment in military. By the way, can I take a little bit of a diversion here? SM (00:39:25): Yes. RF (00:39:25): I remembered another important thing that was going on in Michigan. There was an academic center called the Center for Study of Conflict Resolution, which was essentially a peace research center that a number of my mentors, faculty types, were involved with. I got a research job there. Actually, my wife also worked there in a clerical capacity. The reason I am bringing it up is because that center sponsored a number of really significant to me, formative academic type conferences on the arms race and disarmament issues. I learned a tremendous amount at that time about what policy debates were inside the administration, some of the key players. So McNamara came from Ann Arbor, Secretary of Defense. So there was a connection intellectually and even personally between the Ann Arbor faculty that were concerned with arms issues and Kennedy administration, but they were not favoring Kennedy. There was a feeling, McNamara was a target of their anger, and then later McNamara wrote and talked a lot about how he had so much contributed to the acceleration of the arms race, missile race, and that rather than praising himself, he thought they had made a terrible move at that point. So those of us involved with the SDS development, we were very conscious of this about Kennedy. Plus on the civil rights side, there was a tendency in the Kennedy administration, a strong tendency, to try to dampen down the civil rights movement. Bobby met with a bunch of African American intellectuals, James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, and I do not know who else was in the room. There was a shouting match. They were saying, "You are not doing anything much to support." That was a real issue for us, failure of the Justice Department to really defend the civil rights workers who were being jailed in the South. Instead, what the Kennedys were promoting was the idea to stop the civil disobedience campaign and start voter registration in the South. There was a lot of money generated through foundations to get the civil rights movement to promote voter registration rather than direct action. This turned out to be actually a good thing historically, but it was the appearance to those of us who identified with SNCC, we were very connected with SNCC, that the Kennedy administration was certainly not providing the kind of support that the Constitution seemed to mandate that they do. Now, the dynamic, if you look back on this period, the very recalcitrance of the Kennedy administration helped the movement grow. Again, one of these things that you can really figure out after the fact how a movement can merge. If you have an administration in Washington that says, "Civil rights is a profoundly moral correct path," and then they failed to fulfill their rhetoric with adequate action, that is a framework for grassroots action. At least at that time it was. So I am saying there was ambiguity, and the Kennedy you are talking about, and the sacrifice, "Ask not what you can do for your country," seemed to some of us, maybe, we did not use this term then, but an imperial message, not a message promoting service in the sense that we meant it. Now I have to add that when Kennedy made a famous speech June (19)63 promoting detente with the Soviet Union, there were things he was moving toward before he was murdered that were very much more on line with what we had been hoping for. So it was complicated. It is funny how people now are attacking Obama from the left, and they sort of [inaudible] Kennedy as Obama has, I have read people saying, "he has betrayed the Democratic Party's principals." And they hold up Kennedy as well as FDR, as exemplars of this. By no means, from the point of view of the equivalent lefties back in the early (19)60s, Kennedy did not look good from that point of view. But he did create space and the worst moment was the Cuban missile crisis. I can describe how significant in SDS history and in Ann Arbor. You do not mind me rambling like this? SM (00:45:43): I have a couple specific questions about the 60 people who met, but if you have some comments on the Cuban missile crisis- RF (00:45:52): Let me just finish the Cuban thing. SM (00:45:54): Yep. RF (00:45:55): Tom Hayden had traveled in the South after he graduated for a year and then became SDS president, married Casey Hayden. They moved back to Ann Arbor and lived in a house which had a basement, which unfortunately for their marriage but fortunately for SDS, we converted the basement into a headquarters for SDS in Ann Arbor. It was not just for locality. It had a lot of outreach beyond that and had a mimeo machine there, and we had a lot of meetings and so on and so forth. Well, when the Cuban missile crisis began, a bunch of us gathered there for a lot of time there making calls around the country. It was an important moment for reaching student activists at a number of other schools who we had not met yet. SDS had not met, let us say the Harvard Peace activists, like Todd Gitlin, calling them up. "What are you doing? How are you responding?" Creating by phone, a national network of people who were trying to figure out what to do in response to this missile crisis. In fact, there was a march on Washington pretty spontaneously organized that week, and we all went to Washington on that Saturday. When the crisis reached a head, we thought when we were marching that there was going to be a nuclear war. We actually- SM (00:47:44): Wow. RF (00:47:45): Because I. F. Stone had given a speech to the assembled people there, and he said, "I hate to say this, but I cannot see any way out. This might be the end of human history." People were screaming. Yet two hours later, the Russian ships had turned around and the crisis eased, which was [inaudible] liberating moment of my life. So my point being that Cuban Missile Crisis for the SDS group fitting in Ann Arbor was formative in terms of our opposition to the Kennedy administration and to the war machine as we find it then and so forth. So anyway, go ahead. SM (00:48:44): Yeah, there were 60 people that met at Port Huron- RF (00:48:49): Approximately. SM (00:48:50): ... to hash out the statement you and Tom were involved in writing. Who were the 60? I know about you and Tom and I know about Al Haber, but who were the 60? Just briefly, what was their composition, male, female? RF (00:49:07): It is hard to generalize. Hayden and Haber had gone to the National Student Association meetings. I do not know where the one was prior to Port Huron, but those were national conventions of student government leaders that were very important in that period for the student world in the US. The NSA meetings provided opportunities for debates among political groups, for tables with literature and for recruitment. So a number of the people at Port Huron were either editors of major... Like Robb Burlage was there, Robb was- SM (00:49:56): How do you spell that name? RF (00:49:58): University of Texas student paper. There were guys from Madison who were head of student government. So one type of person at Port Huron were very successful student government or student organizational leaders from different campuses. Paul Booth, he had come from Swarthmore. I do not know what he was, president of the student body or something significant as a worker there. So that was one group. The second contingent, and that was not really a contingent, but it was a type of person who was there. Then there was a group from New York, there is a guy named Steve Max who became a full-time SDS organizer and who to this day is one of the leading mentors and theorists of community organizing in America. But Steve was a young red diaper baby in New York, and he had created a little organization in New York, local group, not connected to SDS, but they decided to affiliate with SDS so several of their members came to Port Huron. I forget the name of his group, but it became a New York chapter of SDS, probably right before the Port Huron. Somehow there were other people, I do not know exactly where some of the other people that I can think of. Oh, there was several SNCC leaders. There was Chuck McDew, who was the national head of SNCC, I believe at that time. And a guy named Tim Jenkins, who was an African American guy who was a very active in NSA. I think he might have been an empowered person. I do not know what has become of him. There was Casey Hayden and Bob. There was a very well-known white southern SNCC activist who was there, and I am blanking on his name right now. There was a woman, Maria Varela, she came from a Catholic college and has later became Maria Varela. She is one of the most revered leaders of Latino or Mexican American community organizing now in New Mexico. That is been where she has been for years, ever since Port Huron. But she was there as a young college person. So there was interesting to us from New York background, was a kind of liberal Christian, both Protestant and Catholic, element at Port Huron who had been mobilized by the Civil Rights movement, but were part of things like YWCA or the other liberal Christian formations in the South and Midwest. So if you remember what I said before that it was important to meet people who were not from our background, who were identifying with the left, Port Huron was paradise. All of these young people who came, they were not red [inaudible]. SM (00:54:14): Were most of the men or how many women were- RF (00:54:16): No, I would say- SM (00:54:18): About 50/50. RF (00:54:18): Yeah. SM (00:54:18): Good. Now what has become of most of them? You have made reference to some have gone on to some excellent careers, Steve Max and the Latino leader who's in New Mexico. But there is a lot of perceptions that people have written about activists of the (19)60s, that there are a few that stayed the course like Tom Hayden and obviously you and your teaching and so forth, but the majority did not. They went on any other generation? RF (00:54:50): Well, I have written a whole book on this before. SM (00:54:51): Yeah, I know. RF (00:54:54): Okay. But the people of Port Huron, I do not think... Well, there may be a few that we have lost complete track of that I do not know where they are. But I would say none of them became mainstream American. They remained true to some important part of the identity they were forming at that time. So Paul Booth, he is one of the most respected labor leaders in America. He is vice president of the AFSCME. SM (00:55:27): I interviewed his wife a week ago, Heather. RF (00:55:32): She was one of my students, by the way, university of Chicago. And Burlage is a healthcare policy and political activist in New York. Some people have had very visible careers. Well, Bob Ross is vice president of SDS then, he was from Ann Arbor. He is a well-known sociology professor in Massachusetts. I guess a number of people ended up in sort of academic framework. I do not have the whole list of folks, but I do not- SM (00:56:25): Well ever since we all know that when Ronald Reagan came to power in 1980, a lot of history books have been written that say that the last 30-plus years in America has really been defined by the right. That right has really dominated our politics. RF (00:56:47): Okay, well I have a lot to say on that. SM (00:56:51): And the New Left, they are there, but they are not as powerful as the right. RF (00:56:59): Well, they do not say that. Well, I do not know that there has been much good history writing from my point of view about, not just from the time of Reagan, but the (19)70s are a very important decade, and that decade in which feminism, environmentalism, gay liberation really became important forces in American life. Those are not (19)60s movements, those are (19)70s by and large. Many of the people who were active in the New Left were the foundational, catalytic figures in those movements in the (19)70s, the new social movement, came out of that activism that people went on after the (19)60s and after the resolution of the war issue and the Vietnam issue and the civil rights issues, people move into other domains with their activism. The thing that got most publicity was sort of identity politics. I have always felt that that was a mistake to just simply say the (19)70s was about identity politics. Feminism is not simply identity politics. Gay liberation is not simply that. Then you did have not only environmental movement nationally, but a tremendous array of local activism. This has been my experience and my wife's experience, we moved to this town in 1969 and we have been here for all those years since. We are leaders of this community in promoting environmental and social justice politics. The whole town is transformed. It is not the town we moved into, which was conservative, potentially right wing dominated community. I mean, if you look at California alone, you could not make a story out of the right wing dominance. The Republican Party right now in California is virtually the power of the Latino and other immigrant communities politically as voting block in terms of new leadership, tremendous labor movement here with many former New Leftists in the labor movement as leaders, big political force. It is the only state where the labor movement has been growing actually in terms of percentage of population. I do not want to overstate, but the point I would make is, and is California isolated? No, I think there are many, many towns and regions where after the (19)60s a political movement toward the left is the real story. You look at a state like Oregon, a city like Portland, the state of Washington, similar dynamic go on there. What happened is that a lot of the (19)60s counter culturally influenced young people, moved to certain neighborhoods, certain towns, college towns in particular, but other towns, and became politically potent, and the odd thing that I cannot explain sitting here very well is that the national politics moved rightward and a lot of that was fed as a kind of backlash against the [inaudible]. If you look at national voting patterns of white people- SM (01:01:06): Can you hold on one second? RF (01:01:07): ... they are far right wing. SM (01:01:08): I have to change my tape here. Hold on a second. RF (01:01:08): Okay. SM (01:01:08): Other than that, it is cold. RF (01:01:08): Terrible weather in the Midwest. SM (01:01:22): Yeah. All right, I am back. RF (01:01:24): Anyway, what I start to say is, yeah, the national politics has shifted. The Republicans have tended to dominate since Reagan, as you have said, although there have been important episodes of [inaudible]. But to me it is a far more range and complicated, even nationally. I mean, Obama was elected president, nobody thought that could happen. But not by white people. The white vote, especially white male vote, is far to the right. That is, to me, the biggest shift in consciousness towards right occurred among white male, middle class, working class voters, the so-called Reagan Democrat vote, which was part of the New Deal Coalition, and then has broken away. It is understandable if you add together the civil rights and Black movement reaction against that or feeling threatened by it, feeling threatened by feminism and by economic decline in the loss of manufacturing economy, those things help explain why large numbers of white men in particular decide they were conservative and wanting to protect what they were losing. I think that that is, but that means that they are reacting against something that they see as real, which is that there is a rising tide on the other side. SM (01:03:18): One of the- RF (01:03:18): The very thing the Republicans in California are dead because they tried to play an anti-immigrant politics. That has united Asian-American, Latino voters, and that accounts for a lot of what has happened in California. I am sure the anti-immigrant vote policy proposal, those ideas appeal to a certain significant number of white folks in the state, but they do not have the capacity to mobilize even a sizable minority of the vote at this point. SM (01:03:54): One of the questions I have asked everyone is a takeoff of what we were saying, talking about Ronald Reagan and the backlash. The right or the conservatives have said that most of the problems we have in America today begin in the (19)60s and (19)70s when Boomers were identified as the reason for the breakup of the American family unit, the reason why we have a divorce rate, the drug culture, the illicit sexual mores, the welfare state where everybody wants a handout, a lack of respect for authority in law and order, a "I want it" mentality with no discipline financially. Some of them even criticize for the financial crisis we are in. And a culture where victimization takes center stage in many of the (19)60s and (19)70s involvement groups. Your thoughts. Again, Newt Gingrich has made comments in (19)94 about this when Republicans came to power, and George Will writes about it a lot in his books. RF (01:05:02): Oh, yeah. Yeah. SM (01:05:03): And certainly Huckabee and Glenn Beck and all this. RF (01:05:07): Well, I have thought a lot about that. The point I would make in response is A) the consumer economy that grew up after World War II, many people were saying promoted values that ran counter to traditional. This has nothing to do with social movement to the (19)60s. This has a lot to do with the promotion of values of consumption and what you were saying, sort of immediate gratification and the idea of simply focusing on hedonism and pleasure counter to what used to be called the Protestant ethics. That story was written about in the (19)50s that was happening to this country. And in many ways... RF (01:06:03): ...that was happening to this country. In many ways, the (19)60s counterculture was a rebellion against that, against consumer values, against materialism for a more spiritual way of life. Now, the thing that people in the counterculture did not quite get when they were in the early stages is that the counterculture could become part of the consumer culture. It could transform and translate many of the practices of the counterculture into commodities for promotion, whether it is water beds or drugs themselves. As a sociologist, I would say some of what we call the counterculture and the youth rebellion, and I have written about this, is not about an organized effort by people to challenge the status quo. It is about more like symptoms of the loss of meaning that people felt because the Protestant ethic was so out of phase with the kind of economy, kind of social order that was growing up after World War II, looking for new values, looking for ways of life, feeling [inaudible] in a disrupted moral order. Now, the second answer I would give is the highest rates of everything you said, divorce, alcoholism, whatever else you mentioned, drug use method, methadone use, is in the reddest areas of the country, the most conservative areas of the country. I wish people would face this. There is a sense to that, but it is not about the damage in the (19)60s, it is about the damaged lives that a failing economy creates. It is about the difficulty of traditional religious institutions and generally institutions to manage the kind of social change that is created by mass media, by the consumer economy, and by the degree of mobility, physical mobility that people have to have undergone. I mean, just the fact that people have moved so much in order to find work or to find a reasonable life. Highest rates of divorce, that is what I was [inaudible] in those areas. So to me, the anti-authority aspect of the (19)60s has a lot to do with the Vietnam War, I felt. If you wage a war like that with a conscript army and people come to realize that the whole war is a lie and they are being asked to die, forced to die, fight and die on that, you have done a great deal of damage to people's trust and certainly a lot of events of the (19)60s challenged priority. But to me, the sad part of the post (19)60s era in terms of the new left is that many of the ideas that people in the new left have had about how to restructure America have gotten lost in... I mean, take the idea of participatory democracy, which is a central theme of the [inaudible] statement. I still think people struggle on their community level for voice. What that phrase refers to really is the impulse people have to want to have a say in decisions that affect them, that are being made in the political world, but also in the economic world. This is still going ... you see this all the time, almost every day, in our town, that people are challenging... it is not challenging authority for the sake of challenging authority. They are saying, "You are acting without hearing us." Yet there are not people very visibly now on the national political scene proposing ways that our institutions can be restructured so that voice could be more easily gotten by average people. I still think that if a political movement or leadership came along or trying to articulate that, they would make an impact. But because of the Reagan revolution and post Reagan era, a lot of the new leftists ended up defending things we were criticizing, the welfare state. We acted on the assumption that the welfare state was permanent and that what needed to happen is to make it democratic and responsive and not bureaucratic. That was an example of the central part of our story, what we were trying to say. We believe in decentralized governance, but if you are going to where communities have more voice, but if you are going to basically prevent the adequate funding of institutions that people depend on, that takes priority over how people are going to be able to organize their local life to have more voice. In other words, in the post Reagan period, people have been more defensive on the left of the existing definition. People now, and I am very critical of contemporary left because they think their main job is to defend government. I would say their main job is to defend democracy. But it is very hard not to be in the position of defending government when you have a political force on the right that wants to stop government from functioning. You see what I am saying? SM (01:13:31): Yes-yes. RF (01:13:35): In the absence of government, we are going to get a corporate dictatorship. We are pretty far along in that. SM (01:13:40): Many Boomers felt that they were the most unique generation in American history. A lot of young people on college campuses, I know on my campus they felt that way, and they were going to better everything. They were going to show other generations caring about others is what it is all about. They were believing in ending war and bringing peace, ending racism, sexism, homophobia, protecting in the environment. How would you rate this efforts 40 years hence? Discuss what you see as the gap between expectations and the hopes of the Boomer activist. RF (01:14:23): Well, I am kind of have to say that I always criticize the generational model. I think that is almost a trap because it is saying the change comes from a particular age group or a particular generational cohort, which makes only limited ... there is truth in it, but it is limited truth. In order for the changes to happen, you have to have cross-generational alliances coalition that young people have to reach out to older people. I think that the generational mission idea really did not last all that long. What is a Boomer? I do not even know anymore how you define it. SM (01:15:25): It is those born between (19)46 and (19)64. RF (01:15:29): I know, but that is one definition. I have seen others that are less broad or more broad or whatever. You can easily debunk that by pointing out that all those people that you just defined were very different from each other. There is quite a lot of political diversity and so forth. That is one side of it. On the other hand, I always have, and I have written about this, that people who were in college or influenced by the movements and who were adolescent in the time, let us say, between (19)67 and (19)70, that little period, that had a tremendous impact. When you have millions of people, kids stopping school and going on strike after [inaudible] and all that, it has an effect on many of those people's sense of who they are. I do not think we have had a good effort to document the full fate of that generation. The book I wrote with Jack Whelan is about people up to 20 years after they graduated, 1970, we have had 20 years [inaudible]. What has happened to those people. I could suggest that some numbers of people who have been more corporate than they thought they would be nevertheless have a side of them that think, "Well, I ought to be giving back" or "I want to retire from this rap race and start doing something more creative." In other words, what is not documented is the degree to which people from that era have continued to try with their lives to make some kind of difference along the lines that you were talking about you. Another way of looking at it is now look at the college campuses, the faculty and administration, people who are on the senior level who are controlling things are the (19)60s generation. Well, that has not produced a whole new type of education. There is many-many-many things about the higher education now that are better or more wonderful than anything back then. But on the other hand, in terms of what you were talking about, in terms of issues about race and gender and sexuality, the campuses are quite a different place. The University of California, which is the one place I know best, many of the dreams of the (19)60s students are now taken for granted as the way the university operates in terms of the diversity of the student body and the diversity of faculty. It is still a long way to go to have fully mesh with American demography, but it is very-very different, and even the curriculum... What I am trying to say is, on the one hand, there has been more ... I think a lot of the change that actually happened we take for granted now and do not recognize which it is. But on the other hand, the limit to that change have not been studied either. What made it not possible to move as far as this or that? You would have thought by now that marijuana would be legal if you were back in 1970. Well, certainly in 40 years you would have thought that the US would be in a different modality internationally, that there would be a real ... we have a tremendously greater questioning of war policy and military policy now than we ever had prior to Vietnam [inaudible] very clear. We do not have a draft, but we still are thinking we are the global superpower that should be the global superpower and so on and so forth. I would have said in the early (19)70s, "Oh, by 40 years from now we might well have corporations run with a lot of internal democracy where workers would have voice in their workplace, where the corporation would be a different kind of governance institution." But I do not think that that has come to pass, although there are examples of that all over the place. But the dominant form remains. What I am trying to say is we do not have a good ... Maybe I will end up doing some of this writing, but one could write a very interesting history of the last 40 years by asking what happened to these dreams and what were the ... the story is not that the dreams failed. In what ways did they not fail, in what ways did they fail and why? Not just describing it, but trying to understand the reason. That would tell you a lot about this country. SM (01:21:44): In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin, when did it end, and what was the watershed moment? RF (01:21:53): I would say it makes sense to begin then with Rosa Park was not going to the back of the bus, which is exactly 55 years ago next week. You could say the end of the Vietnam War probably is a good marking point because ... yeah, if you want to think about it that way. It is really a 20-year period. But in some way, and I would put a little hedge on that because when Carter was president, a number of the (19)60s people were in that administration and there were things begun like vista programs and other community organizing effort where people have not documented this well. There was a lot going on in the Carter period that was promising along ... if you were a (19)60s person like me, well, what is going on in the Carter time? SM (01:23:06): Sam Brown. That is right. RF (01:23:08): Sam Brown is a great case. So it may be that you should really end the (19)60s with Reagan's election, but you could end it with McGovern's defeat. These are arbitrary constructions and you learn something from each of these [inaudible]. SM (01:23:36): How about the watershed moment? RF (01:23:38): Watershed, well, I am not sure what you mean by watershed. One watershed I have mentioned is the sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina in February 1960. Because if you really think about those actions, very simple, four guys sit in at a lunch counter where they are not supposed to be, boom. But what flowed from that and the form of that action really has repeated in certain ways throughout the decade, direct action, not waiting. These four guys did not try to persuade a lot of people to end segregation. They broke through. They also had a network of transmission of their actions through their own communication, but also through the mass media. Well, that is the same pattern of spreading innovation in the (19)60s, the Double Parallel Act. The innovators communicate outward, but so do the mass media spread in various ways, positive and distorted, know what they are doing. That to me would be a crucial watershed. There is another watershed, it is sort of obvious, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. SM (01:24:56): Right, and I got a question on that later on. RF (01:24:59): That is the first mass uprising of college students, and so obviously a lot was [inaudible]. SM (01:25:10): There were a lot of books that influenced members of the Boomer generation, the (19)60s generation that came out in the late (19)60s and (19)70s, and I want your thoughts just briefly. I am going to list them here; do you think these were important books and whether you rate them as really kind of describing the period in the generation. The books I always think of are Charles Reich, the Greening of America, Theodore Roszak, the Making of a Counterculture. Then you had later on Michael Medved's book, Whatever Happened to the Class of (19)65? You had Eric Erickson's book on the academy in descent, Michael Harrington on the Other America. You had Kenneth Kennison's Youth in Descent, Harry Edwards book, Black Students, which really define activists and revolutionaries and militants. Then you had Clark Kerr's Uses of the university. How important were they to you in explaining the America of the (19)60s and (19)70s? RF (01:26:13): Okay, well, I think Reich and Roszak are books that explained ... they make an effort to explain to a wider public what they think is happening, what the authors think is happening in the youth world and the counterculture. Greening of America was the best example of that popularization effort. I mean, he really... and when you read it now, it is almost possible to read because it is so silly, in my opinion. But that review... cut that out, that is not that important. But it was a sign. Here is what Reich's book meant to me, that there was an important tendency in the older, elite generation to try to understand the student movement and the protests and the counterculture rather than suppress it. Remember, his book came out about the time of Nixon and Agnew and so forth. I mean, in my judgment, it was important that there was this other elite tendency that says, "Wait a minute, these are our kids. These are our children. You are going to create a tremendous upheaval in America if you keep trying to repress them." It is not that the book prevented the repression, but it did provide another way of looking at things that I think was very helpful to a lot of old parents and older, elite, people in authority how to think about this thing. Roszak probably helped some of the counterculture people with their own sense of who they were, in a way probably more influential within the counterculture than ... Reich's book was not really read [inaudible]. Now, let us see what other. Clark Kerr's book was very important because it was used as a symbol by Mario Savio and other people in the free speech movement to define what it was they were up against, multiversity. Kerr gave them a framework. Oddly enough, he even predicted that there would be student unrest in the multiversity. So it is a bit unfair, I think, to some extent to Kerr's ... although the way he acted as president of the university sort of reinforced what they thought the book was about. Let us see, you mentioned- SM (01:29:20): I had the Harry Edwards Black- RF (01:29:21): Harry Edwards, I do not think that was an important ... I mean it is Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice was a very important book in defining Black consciousness on a sort of mass scale. SM (01:29:34): Michael Harrington's The Other- RF (01:29:35): Wait a minute, and the Frantz Fanon Wretched of the Earth. SM (01:29:42): Oh, yes. RF (01:29:43): But Michael Harrington, The Other America, that was a genuinely significant piece of social reporting because it did force onto the national stage the question of poverty, and it allowed Kennedy and then [inaudible] Johnson to ... well, it encouraged this poverty policy framework that was really significant in defining what the welfare state would ... how it would evolve. It was not just Harrington's book. It was, again ... Reich's book appeared in the New Yorker, so the Other America was written up by Dwight McDonald in the New Yorker and that writeup [inaudible] pretty far. All of these books are significant as classroom texts as well, but probably not in the (19)60s so much as [inaudible], although probably Other America- SM (01:30:45): Eric Erickson had written several on the [inaudible]. RF (01:30:49): Erickson is a totally different character. I mean, he influenced me tremendously, as a social psychologist, and Gandhi's Truth, Young Man Luther, but also, he wrote a book on identity, per se. It is very clarifying work on youth consciousness. But a more influential book in the early (19)60s was Growing Up Absurd by Paul Goodman. SM (01:31:27): Oh yes-yes. RF (01:31:33): Do not forget that. He has been forgotten, but he was a very significant... SM (01:31:35): You mentioned that people like Saul Alinsky, Paul Goodman, C. Wright Mills were very influential in many student leaders in the (19)60s. RF (01:31:43): Absolutely. SM (01:31:44): In fact, Tom Hayden wrote a book on C. Wright Mills. Who were they and why were they a big influence, those three? RF (01:31:51): Well, for different reasons, but Goodman and Mills were both intellectuals who did not buy into the standard interpretations of the world and especially the Cold War, and both were strong critics of militarism, they were strong critics of corporate power, and they both were pointing in a new direction for the left. They were not using Marxist language, they were using really pragmatist, philosophical pragmatist framework a lot, and they both provided ingredients for what we [inaudible] by our participatory democracy. Their work is really worth the reading now, but at the time it was... when I read Mills in college, it was a completely different way of looking at things from any other sociology or political science books that we were asked to read. The teachers that I had were dismissive of it, of The Power Elite anyway. To some extent, my intellectual life from that point on was trying to show that their dismissal of this was ... I was breaking out of that. The ways I thought were conventional at the time in my learning. Alinsky was not so much as a writer, as a... but he provided a model of community organizing, which later was taken up by SPS in economic .... in so-called [inaudible] projects in northern urban community organizing projects that SPS was involved in, and the war on poverty, neighborhood organizing effort came out of the war on poverty where ... So Alinsky showed that community organization was not just for social work purposes, but for political power, and that has remained. We have a president now who learned at that school. SM (01:34:32): As a sociologist, a lot of people do not like the term Boomer generation, I will tell you that right up front and they do not like the greatest generation, the Millennials and all the other titles that are given to groups. But when you look at the period, though, that is defined as Boomers, those from 1946 to today, the oldest Boomers are 64 this year and the youngest are 49. In just a few words, you have already mentioned throughout the interview, but I have broken it down to six different periods when Boomers have been alive. Just a couple words to describe the period, the period 1946 to 1960. RF (01:35:10): Well, that was the period in terms of life cycle. Obviously, this was the adolescent period or the growing up and adolescence of the earliest Boomers. But that was the period of the seeming... the post-war so-called conformity era. In many ways, everyone understood of that age, when the (19)50s was going on, that we were rebelling against that time of our lives when the country was seemingly so [inaudible]. It was the time when suburbia developed, when the automobile became primary, when television emerged, and as well as the Cold War and anti [inaudible], the Red Scare. SM (01:36:13): The period (19)61 to (19)70. RF (01:36:13): Well, that is the period of creativity politically, culturally, that generation helped to... was in the forefront of. Margaret Mead wrote a book, I forget the title, but where she argued, rather fascinating argument, that most traditional societies, old people teach the young, and in a modern society age is not necessarily defined how knowledge is transmitted. But in the kind of society that was emerging, the young teach the old and that is because of something about the rapidity of social change is such that the old people do not understand what is going on, but young people more intuitively grasp it. SM (01:37:08): I think that book is Culture and Commitment. RF (01:37:08): Okay, that is. SM (01:37:08): I read it quite a few years ago. RF (01:37:20): So the (19)60s was that time. I do not think she was right about the trend because I do not think that continued to be quite so much to the case. That is a good question too. Why was she right and wrong about that? I do not know. But the point is, in the (19)60s was a time when the young were leading the rest of society in terms of cultural outlook. SM (01:37:49): The period 1971 to 1980. RF (01:37:55): Well, as I have said that time when there was a large amount of political innovation and experimentation as well as religious and spiritual experimentation. People were trying to redefine their lives and a lot of these things that we think of as (19)60s effects were really happening in the (19)70s. SM (01:38:19): The period 1981 to 1990. RF (01:38:24): Well, you could call that the Reagan era, when a lot of the established ideas about welfare state and about America's role of the world were coming into question and pre-market ideology seemed to be ascended. But I also make it the time when, on a more local level, a lot of... on a more local level. A lot of local power structures that had been dominant for generations were disappearing in the communities around the country and new political forces. SM (01:39:18): How about that period 1991 to 2000? RF (01:39:24): Well, I do not know that you can make simple... This is the post-communist era, and that is important. Maybe that is the most important thing about it. SM (01:39:36): And then the 2001 to 2000 now (20)11. RF (01:39:42): Well, it may be too early to figure it out, but one thing that it will be remembered for is the time of America's evident decline as a superpower. SM (01:39:58): Why did we lose the Vietnam War, in your opinion? RF (01:40:02): I do not think it was winnable. In fact, about a year ago we visited Vietnam. SM (01:40:09): Oh, you did? Oh, wow. I am going there next summer. RF (01:40:13): I highly recommend it, very fascinating experience. We just went on a little Smithsonian-led tour with a couple dozen people. But I remember feeling almost from the beginning of the tour that it is obvious now to me why we could not win the Vietnam War. I mean, the Vietnamese people have a lot to do with it. They have a history of hundreds and hundreds of years of being occupied by other powers, of having a tremendous capacity for adaptation to hardship and resiliency. We went down the Mekong River and spent a few days there and realized how could they have possibly thought the US could take over in this jungle area where people were well-organized and historically prepared to hold onto their lives there. I do not mean to romanticize the Vietnamese, but it just seemed like the height... And people, even during the war, in the earliest part of the war, understood some people just... What was going on in Vietnam was, if anything, a kind of civil war. But really, the great majority of people were opposed to the US-imposed regime, not just the US presence. And whether or not they identified as communist, they all identified as nationalist. The communist leadership, Ho Chi Minh, was the nationalist leadership. You see that now, and I am willing to bet when you go there, you will see this thing I am talking about. It is a little hard to... SM (01:42:11): I am actually going with vets. RF (01:42:11): Are you a vet? SM (01:42:18): No, I am not a vet, but I have worked very closely with Vietnam vets. I got to know Louis Poer quite well. RF (01:42:24): And they have made a lot. I have other friends who went under those kinds of [inaudible 01:42:32] and they had a very rich [inaudible]. SM (01:42:35): You were a... RF (01:42:37): I think we lost the war because it was even understood by military people before we entered Vietnam Amendment that winning a land war in Asia was not something you could do. And B, especially these people who were already well schooled in resisting foreign intervention. SM (01:43:02): You were a key member of the early SDS as you discussed. And what are your thoughts on the SDS members who took the group in a more violent direction, the Weathermen. And then as a kind of a sidelight here, how about groups like the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and the members of AIM who took their cause in a more violent and radical direction too in the early (19)70s? RF (01:43:32): Well, I was very-very dismayed by the Weathermen development, but basically the core group of Weathermen were people who, here is how I would put the... They came from typically privileged backgrounds. They were not just upper middle class. They came from elite background by and large. And their first impulses politically were pacifist service in many cases. They wanted to work in situations where they would be helping poor people and so forth. They experienced this guilt over their privilege. Why did they turn violent? Because they became very disillusioned in their experience with service and poverty and pacifism. And in terms of whether they could have effects that way. Their elite background made them feel this arrogant belief that they had... They did not question their right to make history as individuals. They had a lot of sense of potency because where they came from class terms, and this combined with guilt can be creative, but it can also be very self-destructive. And I think in many ways, I am speaking as a social psychologist, there was a kind of suicidal element that this guilt element of their consciousness. The other thing that was fatal to their thinking was that they formed these tight, cohesive, closed social groups that meant they could not allow each other to question where they were going. They punished each other for deviations from the line. They could not hear reality very well. And that is true of any tight, cohesive group that has that high risk. The cohesion enables them to make these sacrificial actions and to look very brave to themselves and to other people, but it blinds them to reality. And I think most of them in the aftermath, years later, retrospectively believe they were crazy, but crazy not in the mental illness sense, but these factors that I am talking about combining meant you lose touch with reality. I am often dismayed if there are people trying to tell the SDS story as it somehow the Weathermen were on the right path. Really, their way of acting is very damaging to SBS. I do not think it was an absolutely important force in destroying the larger sort of movement. But beyond that is what you are raising with these other groups as well, is in the end of the (19)60s, there was this widespread belief, A, there was no way to change America's short of "revolution." And B, the model of revolution is the Vietnamese or the Cubans who overthrew their dictatorship through violent revolution. And that pacifism non-violent revolution of Martin Luther King, early [inaudible] did not work. Now none of those things were true, but they were powerful plots. And if you wanted to show your commitment to your people, whether you were African American, native American or Puerto Rican or whatever, adopting this revolutionary stance seemed to be important for a few years in that time period. I think the Panthers suffered greatly from getting publicity hype that was, they did not know who they were after a while I do not know too much about them internally, but their leadership became more oriented toward celebrity of a certain kind rather than serious work, even though they had made some strides in a community level. I do not think AIM took up a violent path so much as, I may be wrong on this, as being... Each of these struggles is a little different from each other. The Native American struggle is one defined by AIM and literal sovereignty in terms of the Indian reservation world and so forth. And it is not illogical to say, well, if we have some sovereignty, we need to have some way of defending it militarily as well as politically. Young Lords I do not know much about, but I do not think they were, I do not know. SM (01:50:11): Yeah, I think they kind of... RF (01:50:15): [inaudible] there were a lot of, the Panthers inspired these other organizations, and I think the best thing to be said about all of them is that after this phase, you are referring to, many of the people who have led those things went on too much more creative political and cultural roles in their communities to this day. That a lot of the California, some of the political leadership that now emerged from Mexican American world probably started with Brown Braid, I know that to be the case just as an example or you have former Black Panthers like Congressman Bobby Rush in Chicago. In fact, if you look at the broad, long history of revolutionary moments in American history, like in the early thirties, late twenties, early thirties, there was this group of young communists who thought they were revolutionary as well. Most of them abandoned that, but they then went on to be union leaders and other leaders of importance. There is a way in which the small seemingly marginal political sect groups that formed very often and they are like little positive side of it as they are like schools where people do see reality after a while and they have developed some skills and leadership and some capacity leadership that then turns out to be good. SM (01:52:11): Well, that is a sociologist, the generation gap. You probably studied generation gaps, not only the boomer generation, but other generations, but seemed to be very strong. And of course, I remember the Life magazine with a young man in the front cover with his glasses on with the father on one shade and the son on the other pointing fingers at each other. And it was about the generation gap. But in a book called The Wounded Generation that came out in 1980, there was a panel that included James Fallows, Carol Caputo, Bobby Mueller, Jim Webb, and they talked about not only about the generation gap itself, but they said that the real generation gap, this came up in discussion, was between those who went to war and served in Vietnam and those who did not. The real generation gap is really within the generation as opposed to between generations. Your thoughts on that? RF (01:53:09): Well, I do not think so. Yes. People who went to any war there is a strong feeling they have, that they have an experience that they cannot be understood by people who did not. And I never have bought the idea that the anti-war people were anti those who were in the war. That was a myth created mostly post-war myth because many people, anti-war movement fought or active in it, leadership in it thought a lot about how can there be connections. And in fact, there was a whole movement called the GI Coffee House movement, in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s where anti-war activists did go to military base areas and create coffee houses and newspapers and things that they connected with. And the Vietnam Vet organization I do not think they see themselves as cutoff from the anti-war people. There is a movie recently brought out called [inaudible] that describes these Vietnam anti-war that shows them now, it also reviews their history. A Much more complicated story than simply those who went to war and those who did not. There is a new collection, actually, I think 20 plus CDs of songs from the Vietnam era. It is something you ought to get for your library, Bear Family Records. This is very illuminating because it has songs sung by people in uniform in the war, a lot of the anti-war songs, a lot of the pro-war country songs. It is just when you listen to this and look at, it has got a book with it, you realize how much of a mosaic really of feeling there was around the war by people just expressed through these songs. And I feel that those who went to [inaudible] by, or those who were in some ways victimized for their anti- war activity are also veterans of the war and some of the songs that are sung actually by GIs or guys who had been there. This collection where the guy acknowledges the people who died in Kansas City as part of the war dead. That is how I prefer to think about it, there may be that is who would yell at me for this, but I think there are others who would agree. SM (01:56:42): I am down to my final three questions here. And I may have to read this one here, I am going to just read this all, then you can kind of take it in and respond. This is about the Free Speech Movement. What are your thoughts on the Free Speech Movement in (19)64-(19)65 at Berkeley? And I break it down into parts here. What were its influences on higher education both then and now? Secondly, do you feel that these students of that era would be disappointed in the university of today? That seems to forget that the university life is about ideas and not corporate control of the university. And finally, this is just an opinion. Are universities today afraid of student activism on their campuses? And maybe it is because they do not want to return to the (19)60s where universities, because today's universities are hurting financially and they do not want anything to threaten their ability to fundraise even at the expense of ideas because money is so important today in higher education. Basically, if Mario was a lie today, and I talked to Bettina and I talked to several students that were in the movement, but to me as a student, I would be very disappointed in higher ed today. But just your thoughts. RF (01:58:12): Well, I tend to make things a little more complex, but what was the first question though was about it? SM (01:58:19): What are your thoughts on the Free Speech Movement? Its influences on higher education both then and now. RF (01:58:29): I think, the Free Speech Movement, itself, but also the vast amount of commentary that happened around it and after it raised all kinds of fundamental questions about higher education and particularly undergraduate education and where the student experience and so on and so forth. And point one, probably a great many curricular reforms and models of obstruction, experiential, all kinds of things came out of that period that now are part of the normal operation of college campuses. And we do not think of it as very innovative anymore, but it would, that is one point. The second point is that the Free Speech Movement became a model of action by student activists on campus, which involved direct action, occupied making demands, trying to negotiate demands, but that failing, you take direct action, civil disobedient, and then there is a confrontation. And of course that became, there is just hundreds and hundreds of cases of episodes like that in the (19)60s. Just amazing numbers, tremendous wave. Again, this is a good example of what I referred to earlier about, here is why were the visions and hopes raised by that period and that wave of protest. What happened to that positive and why, as you say, there is so much movement in higher education towards corporatized models. It is hard for me to speak about this firsthand because I do not see quite that process in the campus that I am at, UC Santa Barbara which I think is more aggressive than it was 10 years ago. And I also think that when you say afraid of activism, my experience has been with an administration that wants to channel activism rather than repress it. And I do not mean in a simply manipulative way. They make efforts because many of the people who were in the administration were student activists back when kids. And especially since the activism that is happened has to do so much with the issues of race and issues of college access and so forth, administrators are sympathetic with demands. And there is much more tendency to negotiate and try to deal with activism and ritualize it. Okay, you can do your civil disobedience, but let us have it between five and seven tomorrow evening and it will all be done in an orderly way. People are afraid of activism, not so much because of money, I think because in general, they do not want it. I am saying I do not know about being afraid of activist because of the financial issue. I think it is more just a fear of disorder that is always there. And I think that here is a proposition people may have learned from the (19)60s how to respond to student protests in ways that are less disorderly. But that has not been tested by the kind of confrontation that students were doing then, in other words, we do not know yet. There is cases of surprising amount of police, even in the University of California, not here at Santa Barbara so much, but in other places on other campuses recently where protests have happened, and police really did come in with a (19)60s like roughing up students. And then there is a case just now in Irvine where a group of Arab students had disrupted a pro-Israel thing from months ago, and now they are being disciplined. I was surprised at that because the story I have heard is they were not that disruptive, they were trying to express themselves. It was a much more able to be interpreted free speech conflict rather than something that should be criminalized. You may be right. And I would guess that administrators are pretty varied in their patience or willingness to gauge rather than suppress. SM (02:04:22): My thesis has been that they were much more comfortable with the term volunteerism, and they say that is real activism. And. of course, that is but it is only for limited periods of time. Sometimes it is required in fraternities and sororities and other groups and others do it on their own. Today's college students really have that spirit of volunteerism. I would say 95 percent of college campus students have that from their experiences in high school. But activism is a 24/7 mentality. It is a way one lives their life. And that is where I see the difference and that oftentimes the people that do run the universities are members of the boomer generation, but they were oftentimes not the activists. And that they learned, they experienced it and they know what it was like, so they fear it. I have been in universities for 30 years and I have just kind of sensed that. RF (02:05:20): Yeah, no, and I think it varies institutionally and depends on who in the faculty may be influential when these conflict arise and so on and so forth. I think it is an open question. I would make this comment about what you are calling boomer generation faculty. Many of them, even when they have very left-wing political attitudes, do not seem to be taking the degree of responsibility you would have thought they would take if they had been student activists in campus policy and governance. In other words, one of the big trends of the boomer faculty is much more focused in personal career issues, their own work and not getting too involved in the governance domain. And that is part of why corporate influence might grow. If I were giving speeches on this, I would be directing a lot toward my colleagues of my era or slightly younger and saying, what are you doing with respect to the future of the university? SM (02:06:53): Two things here, and this is my next to last question, and that is two qualities that I have been asking every one of my interviewees. Number one, do you feel that one of the main qualities inherent in the boomer generation or the (19)60s generation is their lack of trust in leaders in any profession due to all the lies and illegal actions that they witnessed in their youth? Whether it be as a very young child watching Eisenhower lie about the U2 incident, which he did on national television in 1959. About Gary Powers, to the Gulf of Tonkin with LBJ, to Watergate with Richard Nixon, to all the other lies about the number of people dying in Vietnam, that McNamara would often give the numbers and so forth. And so there seemed to be and you probably know this more than anybody, that the college students of the (19)60s and (19)70s oftentimes just did not trust anybody in a position of responsibility, whether it be a minister, a rabbi, a corporate leader, a congressman, a senator, a university president, a vice president of student of affairs. It did not matter. I just do not trust them. And do you think this is a bad quality to link to the generation, or is it a good quality? RF (02:08:18): Well, I agree that that was the mood very strongly, and it was also, you think about what term participatory democracy means. It means instead of relying on leadership from above, we want to have voice, we want to participate directly. And SDS had a practice of rotating leaders. You could not be president for more than one year, which I think actually did not turn out to be a great method because for various reasons about stability of knowledge, leadership, knowledge and so forth. But anyway, the paradox is that a lot of that generation did become the people in the positions that you are talking about. And I think some of them are very thoughtful people about remaking those kinds of roles. Being a different kind of college president than the ones that were there when we came in. Being a different kind of rabbi. And I have a number of people I know who became corporate consultants on management for the purpose of helping people manage in a more humane or more less racist sexist fashion or things like that. And then I would say if you talked to a cross section of boomers and said, did you have mistrust and how do you feel about it now? I think many of them might say, I think we went overboard because now they are leadership position. Do not trust anyone over 30, as soon as you get to be 30, you start thinking, wait a minute, I do not trust anyone under 30 now. You know what I mean? SM (02:10:26): Right. RF (02:10:28): One way you become " mature" is to question some of the enthusiasms or beliefs that you had when you were young. And this is a good area where such questioning probably would be likely, because as you move up the ladder of responsibility, you begin to see things that way. Same thing if you are a parent, you start saying, oh, now I understand my father much better than I did as a kid. SM (02:10:57): One thing you learn as a political science major is that you learn it in political science 101, that the stronger a democracy, the greater the need for a lack of trust, because by lacking trust in your government, you are able to speak up and criticize it, which shows that democracy is alive and well. RF (02:11:20): Let us add to that the current example of WikiLeaks. My sense is, and Tom Hayden has wrote a piece about this, people of my generation not only do not see anything wrong with WikiLeaks, but think this is the breakthrough in government transparency and making government accountable. And the idea that you are going to criminalize the people who are doing this is something that people, certainly my generation types, who are politically active are going to be very distressed about. RF (02:12:02): ...the actors are going to be very distressed about. Yet just to be complex, there are people who say, well, exposure for the sake of exposure is not really the best way to proceed. And so there will be some questions about just blanketly throwing out everything out on the table, stuff like that. But I think the main point I am making is the one I wanted to make about WikiLeaks being seen as positive by the same people who lack that, who have that sort of inherent mistrust of what governments say. I mean, governments have to lie. So it is part of democracy. That is why we supposedly have a press. SM (02:12:53): The second part of my question was the issue of healing. I have let everyone know in my interviews that I took a group of students to Washington DC in 1995 to meet Senator Muskie. He had had not been well, it was part of our leadership on the road programs, and actually he had been on in the hospital and he just got out, and he talked a lot about the Ken Burns Civil War series. But the question that the students came up with, who were not even alive in the (19)60s, is due to the divisions, the intense divisions, that took place in the (19)60s and early (19)70s between black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who supported the war and those who were against the war, and they even brought in the environmental debate in there, do you feel that the boomer generation, like the Civil War generation is going to go to its grave, truly not healing from the intense divisions that were part of their growing up years, because they never did in the Civil War? RF (02:13:58): Well, I do not think the divisions are quite like that, but they are being... I mean, to me, the big division is between people who welcome change and see the need for the new definition of America's role in the world, and a new definition of authority within America, versus people who are trying to hold on to what they think of as the past. Which involves, in most cases, not only past value, traditional values, but their own relatively advantaged positions. That to me is the division, that is not healed. And that if you elect an African American president, there are people who are so angry at that, that they do not want to believe that he is an actual American. And I do not see on the left the same, maybe I am blind to it, the same furious hatred. Even when in the Bush years, which were the worst years in terms of government practice that I have ever heard of in this country, and people really disliked George W. Bush and Cheney and all that. I do not think the same of pretty wild perspective on these guys was present. There might have been satire. And that is when you look back at some of the art and portrayals, let us say of LJ, they were far more vicious, you might say, than anything that was directed at [inaudible] W. So I do not mean to try to be self-serving and say, well, the left is nice and the right is not. But in fact, my own view is more to what I think Obama's view is, which is that the average American, left or right, does not have these passions to the degree that is being publicized in the media. In fact, when John Stewart made, he is the one who exemplifies the view I am just now saying. When Stewart, you know that march on Washington for that rally, his speech, he said this, he said, look, most people, left or right, do not have the sense of division that is being portrayed as the reality. Fox News is not America, or is not right-wing America, conservative America. And that is my experience and that is my understanding reading polling tea leaves. As a sociologist, I do not think the evidence is there for, on ground, that level of polarization. When it comes to race in particular, my experiences extremely other than that. There has been tremendous amount of coming together of healing, of mutual understanding on the ground and especially among young people. And the other way to answer your question is, if you look at the young generation under thirties, something has happened there in terms of race, sexuality, gender issues with large numbers of young people do not buy into the divisions and categories that you are referring to. And maybe that will change for them as they get older. But... SM (02:18:05): What the way Senator Muskie responded to that question on healing, he said, because I think they were thinking he was going to talk about the (19)68 convention and the young people there, he did not even mention. And he said, again, he talked about the Ken Burns series, how so many people had died and everything and how sad it was. He said, we have not healed since the Civil War in the area of race. And then he went on to talk about that in detail, and this is (19)95 and he died in (19)96. RF (02:18:35): Well, there is that the south remains different, having this regional difference is very, that is a very strong continuing difference. And many of the people who are speaking for the right wing are actually Southerners. And whether that matters or what that means, I am not sure. But John Stewart the other day who was satirizing some kind of organization that is promoting celebration of the Confederacy and how they were trying to deny that the Confederacy had anything to do with slavery and that it was because people felt overtaxed that they wanted to be [inaudible] and so forth. So there is still, there may well be those divisions. If you look at any of these countries, like in the Balkans that became tremendously bitterly divided and killing each other, I do not know that you could have seen that coming 10 years before. So, what are the conditions under which Americans would actually engage each other physically in combat? Maybe we have not been tested. SM (02:20:06): I know Gaylord Nelson, when I first, the late Gaylord Nelson, I remember he was, I was in his office at the Wilderness Society and I asked that question and he said, Steve, if you are asking on me that people are walking around Washington DC with lack of healing on their sleeves or whatever, it is not, it does not happen, it is not happening. But he did say it forever affected the body politic, and that is what he referred to, because we constantly talk about Vietnam over and over again, of course Vietnam syndrome and the links between Afghanistan, Vietnam. So it comes back many times. As my last question- RF (02:20:47): You are interested in that topic. Do you know Jerry Lemke? SM (02:20:51): Yes, I do. I interviewed him. RF (02:20:52): Oh, okay, good. Because he is really thought a lot of Vietnam. SM (02:20:55): Spitting image. Yeah, and the new book on Jane Fonda. As a lifelong professor, my last question is a two-parter too, but as a lifelong professor, how would you compare the students of 2010, (20)11 were the students who were your peers, the boomers. Today they are called the millennials. I know we do not like these terms. And then we had that group in between that never seemed to get along very well with boomers. And that is the Generation X-ers. RF (02:21:27): Lot of generalization. So I just do not follow. SM (02:21:31): How are they alike and how are they dissimilar? So I am talking about the students of the day and the students of the (19)60s and (19)70s. RF (02:21:41): I am retired and I have not really taught in the last year or two, so I am a little behind the curve. But point one, the thing I am most worried about is, I think back in the (19)60s, students in large numbers actually read newspapers. And I do not mean that the majority did. I do not know, we do not have, I do not know good data on that. But there certainly was a kind of shared awareness of current events, to put it very simply, which has seriously, seriously, seriously declined in the last period. Now, the majority of students say that they follow the news online, but I do not know that we know much about the content of that. Some students, online news junkies, are tremendously well-informed, equal to people I knew back in the SDS days. But large numbers, I think, are aware of themselves as clueless about a lot of things that are happening. And that is one thing that is worth really discussing, learning more about, trying to understand, what do young people today use as source of information? What is the knowledge base they are working from what and what consequences all that has? I do not see, I have never believed, that there was some fundamental change in the personality or character of people from generation to generation. Because I will show students films of let us say Berkeley in the (19)60s and 30 years later or more, and they will say, whoa, why are not we like that as if they were different. Well, you are not any different. The difference, they are facing a much more constrained framework of economic opportunity, than kids in the (19)60s thought they did, thought they had, in other words, in the (19)60s. And one way to measure it is what does rent cost a kid now, if he graduates from college, what are you going to have to pay for housing compared to then? It is not just inflation, it is much more than inflationary increase in housing prices, for example. It makes it harder to be experimental in your post-college life. People think they are required to find an income, they are in debt, they are paying for their college, they have to work during college. All of those things have effects on the capacity of students even to think they are part of a generation. I mean, they are not living such youthful lives, many, many kids, because they are required to play these economic roles that in the earlier generation of people their age in college, were not that required to do. And I think that has consequences, but it is hard to know exactly what they are. And I will say one other thing on this, which to me is interesting, but I do not have an explanation. The rich kids of today tend to be in a bubble and they are the ones who are not so burdened economically or not at all burdened. But in other words, if you are not working, I have done research on it, so I can talk with authority. If you are not working in college and you are not in debt, you are also not likely to be politically active, not likely to be community active, you are not likely to volunteer. Compared with first generation students who are working, who have debt, who may be the first to go to college in their families, are also likely to be more politically engaged, more service engaged than the rich kids. And the rich kids are partying a lot, binge drinking a lot and that kind of thing. So why is that? Because that class was part of the backbone of the (19)60s counterculture. They were the ones, the rich kids at the (19)60s were questioning authority, they were refusing to draft, they were experimenting with their lives. They thought they wanted to be different from their parents. So I do not have an explanation for this, but I do think it is a difference. The fact that there are plenty of young people now, plenty of college kids who are concerned, we have a global studies major at UCSB with something like 800 student and those are people who want to do something in a world. And that is just one. And that is maybe another difference is that a lot of the serving, socially serving impulses that students had in the (19)60s, they had to figure out on their own how to fulfill them. Now, there is a lot of curriculum, organized curriculum that gives them opportunities in that respect. And that is a good thing, but it may also mean they are less prone to the questioning of authority, the questioning of the status quo. They are trying to make use of their opportunities rather than question why do not they have those opportunities. SM (02:28:16): I want to recommend a book that just came out. You have heard of Dr. Alexander Aston? RF (02:28:23): Yeah. SM (02:28:23): He is a UCLA. Well, he has written an unbelievable book with his wife and one other scholar on the inner spirituality of today's college students. And it is kind of expensive, I am reading it right now. And it is basically that college students today, spirituality is very important to them. And it is always that question they are asking, who am I? Why am I here? What is my role in this world? That kind of thing. But he is finding that there is a direct link between spirituality and how well they do in school, how they get in involved in activities. The more spirituality they have, the inner spirituality, the more they are getting involved on college campuses, doing well in classes. And there is kind of four basic areas. I am just trying to get this off the top of my head here. I know there is a desire for inner understanding, a desire to care, a desire for greater compassion, and to understand their role, their social responsibility role. So those are very positive things when I am thinking about that. Because when you think of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, it seemed that religion was not a major factor. And of course, we all saw the example, the Beatles, and even Peter Coyote, he went into Zen Buddhism. And so they went from established religion into kind of an inner spirituality, even back then. And now it is important. So I recommend that book because I interviewed him for my book and he even said at the end, as did Arthur Chickering, another scholar, that the main issue in higher education today, the thing that disappoints him the most, is the corporate takeover. RF (02:30:20): Yes. Okay. SM (02:30:21): Yeah. And Chickering said that. I could not believe it when he said it at the very end. My last question is, the legacy. I know, let us forget about the boomer generation, the term, but when you think of this era of young people, and I include people that were, I would say born from (19)35 to about (19)56, because many of the leaders of the (19)60s were the graduate students. Tom Hayden was in the early (19)40s. Richie Havens over and over to me said, I am a boomer, Steve. I may not be a boomer in age, but I am a boomer in spirit. And so when you think of the legacy of this period, what do you think the history books and scholars will be saying? You are a sociologist, but what do you think that they will say about this generation, the legacy, that it is leaving future generations? RF (02:31:19): Well, I think the big thing is that it was the pioneer force, the era is the era of overcoming the racial divide. And not that we have fulfilled the dream, but we certainly made big change in race. And secondly, it might be understood, and that then, I should add, that then ramified into many areas of social inequality beyond race. And that the second thing has to do with what we were talking about earlier, the question of authority and hierarchy and a generation that started a process of challenging hierarchical social arrangements and authoritarian social arrangements. Not again that it achieved any dream fulfilled, but that the questions were raised more forcefully on them, for more people about that. SM (02:32:52): And one of the things I did not say in that many of the movements of the (19)60s and (19)70s particularly, we did not even talk about the women's movement, but many who went in the women's movement, left the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement, because of the fact that they were sexist. And that- RF (02:33:13): I do not know if they left it, they felt that the position of women needed to be raised to the forefront in those movements. SM (02:33:26): And your personal activism, yourself in the community of Santa Barbara, what have you done during the times that you have been a professor? Are there certain activist causes that you are really linked to yourself? RF (02:33:40): Well, when we settled here, it was just a few months after a big oil spill that devastated the coast. And Santa Barbara, at the time we arrived, was beginning to, the community was beginning to see itself as a center for environmentalism on many levels, not just the oil issue, but all kinds of related questions. Any politics around that began to take shape here, which we played an important part in helping and to this day. And so we are, Mickey and Dick Flacks, are seen as community leaders, veteran community leaders on the progressive side. That is one. As a teacher, I have been lucky to be able to teach sociology courses on social movements and politics and even on the university. So right out of my activist history, I can weave a pedagogical work. And so when I retired in 2006, we did a daylong conference about activism where many, many, many people who were students of mine came with different panels and so forth. And I could see this is what a teacher loves, that people you had helped enable a numbers of people that do things that you could feel great about in terms of the work that they have been doing. And that, so as a teacher, I have always felt it is very important to teach, not to get students to agree with me politically, but to think about who they were in, as you were saying, with quoting as them, what the purpose of their lives was in social term. SM (02:35:56): Well- RF (02:35:56): And how they could helping facilitate goals that they wanted achieve. In the campus scene, I am also, over 40 years, became quite a leader on campus. I did not want to take big administrative roles or even in the academic senate, take top leadership roles. But I am kind of proud of work that I have done. And in the last few years, I took a lot of leadership on admissions policy after the state abolished affirmative action. SM (02:36:36): I read that. I read that in the Whip. RF (02:36:39): Yeah. So we think we had a good deal of discuss in changing rules that allowed without dealing with the race directly, allowed for more diversity. And I can bore you with all the explanation of how you do that, but essentially just involves questioning the SAT as fundamental tool, but encouraging students' academic achievement in high school to be their measure of their merit or eligibility. SM (02:37:16): Well, I want to end this, but not with a question, but two anecdotes of, and I have been thinking about them as I was interviewing you, and they are both dealing with two of my sociology professors at Binghamton University. I graduated from the University of Binghamton, and one of them was in 1967, (19)68 when I was in my early first year or early year there, Dr. Leman, I do not know if you ever heard of him. He was a sociologist at Binghamton University, he was fired for leading a protest in downtown Binghamton in front of City Hall. RF (02:37:53): Is that Arthur Lehman? Arthur Lehman? SM (02:37:53): I am not sure if his first name, but he was my social 101 teacher. And I thought he was very good yet he was let go because he let a protest and I could not believe it. He was gone the end of the year. The second one was Professor Mahovsky who had just graduated with a PhD at Berkeley, and he was a brand-new social professor, and he was in this class, I think, it is the very second time the students met with him, in the very first semester. And we had a student who was one of our leading radicals on campus, who led a lot of the protests and he was in the back of the room with his dog. And Dr. Mahovsky said, first off, get the dog out of my classroom. So he took the dog outside and tied him up, but he came back in. And then before he had a chance to even say another word, he said, are you going to join us? And Dr. Makovsky said, join you? Yeah, we are going to shut down the administration building this afternoon, because they are bringing in the recruiters for ROTC, and we are going to shut the administration building down. Are you going to join us? You are a Berkeley grad. And I will never forget it, Dr. Mahovsky, who I remember seeing him drive into campus one day with an old Volkswagen, perfect (19)60s guy, he said, no, I have a job now. I am raising my, I have to pay, I have a baby on the way, and so I know I am not going to join you. And those are two memories of my college years from two Soc professors, and I never understood why Dr. Lehman was fired. I just could not understand it. RF (02:39:42): Well, maybe there is a way to find out more about that. I do not know if it is Art Lehman, I think he is still on the planet somewhere. SM (02:39:51): Yeah. Well, he was a very young professor back then. And maybe, do you remember a professor being fired? RF (02:40:00): I remember some kind of, but it is varied in controversies around Binghamton and sociology, but I cannot remember the- SM (02:40:07): Well, yeah, I thought that was wrong. He had guts to go downtown. And that is what we want in our faculty members, is to be associates with their students. So I want to thank you very much for a great interview. RF (02:40:21): Well, I always enjoy talking about this stuff that helps me formulate my thought. So that was very good. And if you have got stuff to share that you write, I would, certainly- SM (02:40:34): Oh yeah, you are going to see the transcript. I have been doing this now. I am going to be spending six to eight months on transcribing all these interviews myself. RF (02:40:43): Oh, wow. SM (02:40:43): And because I have come some people that told me that they had other people do them and the mistakes were outrageous and they decided to do them themselves. So you will eventually see it. But I am also going to need two pictures of you eventually. RF (02:40:58): Well, if you email me, I can send you back. SM (02:41:00): Okay. RF (02:41:01): Just that is electronically. SM (02:41:03): Great. Well, thank you very much for spending all this time with me and have happy holiday season and I will be in touch with you down the road. RF (02:41:11): Thank you, man. SM (02:41:12): And thanks for writing great books. RF (02:41:14): Thank you. SM (02:41:15): I love your books. RF (02:41:16): Okay, great. SM (02:41:17): Thanks. Bye. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Richard Flacks Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Flacks, Richard ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Political activists--United States; College teachers; Sociologists; University of California, Santa Barbara; Flacks, Richard--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Richard Flacks is an academic, social activist and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at University of California-Santa Barbara. He is the author of <em>Making History: The American Left and the American Mind</em> and <em>Beyond the Barricades</em>. Dr. Flacks has a Ph.D. from University of Michigan. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-12-13 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.10.2016.52a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.52b 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. 161:24 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/fa20f006fa4673765c4166a2bf351b57.jpg 0e715652ebb2b09023cfa6f79264d906 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/e84b6bbc90db2ffe1214b521277f7a90.mp3 f1096149996749649cffc57bd1d784be 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 2011-06-03 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Richard Lorber, 1946- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Lorber is an art critic, writer, editor, teacher, chairman and CEO of a film and distribution company. In 1968, he and his uncle, Ernest Fladell, co-authored The Gap, a bestselling book, which took a conversational approach to the growing cultural divide between baby boomers and their parents. Lorber has earned Bachelor's degree, Master's degree and Ph.D. from Columbia University.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:7043,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,1644825],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Dr. Lorber is an art critic, writer, editor, teacher, chairman and CEO of a film and distribution company. In 1968, he and his uncle, Ernest Fladell, co-authored <em>The Gap</em>, a bestselling book, which took a conversational approach to the growing cultural divide between baby boomers and their parents. Lorber has earned a Bachelor's degree, Master's degree and Ph.D. from Columbia University.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Activism; Baby boom generation; Vietnam draft; the National Guard; Draft deferment; Vietnam War; Jean-Luc Godard; Hollywood film industry; Radicalism; Progressive; Student protestors; Trust; John Lindsay.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">Activism; Baby boom generation; Vietnam draft; the National Guard; Draft deferment; Vietnam War; Jean-Luc Godard; Hollywood film industry; Radicalism; Progressive; Student protestors; Trust; John Lindsay.</span> Subject LCSH Art critics; Authors; Editors; Lorber, Richard, 1946--Interviews Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 98:24 Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Richard Lorber Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lorber, Richard, 1946- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Art critics; Authors; Editors; Lorber, Richard, 1946--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Lorber is an art critic, writer, editor, teacher, chairman and CEO of a film and distribution company. In 1968, he and his uncle, Ernest Fladell, co-authored <em>The Gap</em>, a bestselling book, which took a conversational approach to the growing cultural divide between baby boomers and their parents. Lorber has earned a Bachelor's degree, Master's degree and Ph.D. from Columbia University. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-06-03 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.10.2016.83 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. 98:24 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/a478dacb6ed154c74e7fdacb9498d1ba.jpg 3598cf14be1cf3dd6e23d13511db4e8c https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b36e16b686b058c45d55ddb2a9a4be05.mp3 a6b42b40249b0e86671ab6ac8dc18551 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-11-19 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Robert Cohen, 1955 May 21- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Robert Cohen is a professor at New York University where he teaches History, Social Studies, Education, and Human Development. He received his Bachelor's degree at SUNY Buffalo and his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley. Cohen also writes books and most of them focus on either history or people as a whole.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Dr. Robert Cohen is a professor at New York University where he teaches History, Social Studies, Education, and Human Development. He received his Bachelor's degree at SUNY Buffalo and his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley. Cohen also writes books, most of which focus on either history or people as a whole.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span>University experience; University of South Carolina: Columbia: Berkeley: Free speech movement; Student protest; Walkout; Anti-war movement; Youth activism; SUNY Buffalo; 1960's; Social change; Welfare Rights Group; Black Panthers; Stereotypes; NAACP</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 199:21 Subject LCSH College teachers; New York University; Cohen, Robert, 1955 May 21--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Robert Cohen Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 19 November 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:04): Testing one, two, testing. Record this. RC (00:00:08): Sure. SM (00:00:09): Yeah. RC (00:00:11): The president, this is the University of South Carolina. I can get the name of the person who spoke, I do not recall it offhand, but it was an administrator, who was explaining this freshman, or I think he called it First-Year Experience. And what happened was, after Kent State, I think it was, the student union building at University of South Carolina was taken over by the student protestors. And the president of the University of South Carolina was pretty upset about this. Like you said, why? How could students be so elevated from the university that they would take over a building? So how can we make them feel better about the university and better orient them? And those conversations led to this creating of this project, Freshman Experience. And it led to what emerged as a whole center at the University of South Carolina that launched this whole First-year Experience thing out of, became a big national, international thing. And now it has gone beyond that. I think there is a Sophomore Experience and there is a Senior Experience. There is a whole... And there's a ton of publications and all that. Anyway, this administrator, whose name I can, if you remind me, I can dig up, spoke at the conference. So he might be somebody, you want to interview. Shows that this had a sort of impact on educational reform. And it came at a place that you would not normally associate with a lot of student protests, which was the University of South Carolina, Columbia. SM (00:01:41): Well, and actually one of my questions later in the interview, deals with the impact that the student protest movement really had on college campus overall, because there is a lot of questions based on, now we are into our third generation since. And first question I want to ask you, I asked this to all of the people I have interviewed is, how did you become who you are? I know that you went to Berkeley, you graduated from Berkeley, you read it up also that you were involved in the 20th anniversary of The Free Speech Movement. But who are you? How did you become a history professor? What was your interest? How did you link up with The Free Speech Movement? Those kinds of things, and who were your role models? RC (00:02:27): Well, I became interested in student protests because I was involved in student protests. I was a high school student at the end of the Vietnam era. So I participated in the moratorium against the Vietnam War. And even as a high school freshman, I was involved in that. And this is in New York City? SM (00:02:54): That was (19)69. RC (00:02:54): Yeah. That is right. And the students, it was in public high school, James Madison in Brooklyn. But there was so much overcrowding back then, that we were not in the main building. We were in an annex building about half mile away. And so myself and some other students helped organize a walkout, a moratorium day, where we were going to walk out of the building and go over to the main building and join the demonstration there against the war, which is what we did. So I got involved and I got involved in the anti-war movement, in part because my brother and my older sister were involved in it. But also because my next door neighbor had been in the Marines. And I used to correspond with him. And he came back disillusioned with the war. And that got me very curious about what was going on with the war. So I think initially, I was interested in it because of the war in Vietnam. I also was very much interested in the civil rights movement. There was a African American student at Madison, who was the first black student to run for president, was Cornell with Knight. And my brother was involved in sort of this campaign, one of the people helping to manage this campaign. And administration was very hostile to it. And I think there was an interest in the civil rights movement itself. And I think, I guess I have always admired people like Bob Moses and they're always [inaudible]. So I think it was through those things that I first got interested. And just as an undergraduate, I was an undergraduate at SUNY Buffalo, and there was a lot of activism there too, centered around the anecdote of- SM (00:04:37): Oh, yeah. Governor Rockefeller, yeah. RC (00:04:43): Yeah. And so I think the student movement of the (19)60s always interesting movement because in part, I came out of that. So I am always interested in the student protest, youth activism in the (19)60s that came in through that experience about trying to stop the war in Vietnam and trying to fight against racial discrimination. SM (00:05:00): So you were at SUNY Buffalo, and then you went on to grad school? RC (00:05:03): Yes at Berkeley. SM (00:05:03): PhD At Berkeley. RC (00:05:05): Yeah. SM (00:05:05): Did you go to Berkeley based on the fact that The Free Speech movement was there? Or you thought it was a great history department? RC (00:05:11): No. I think it entered in my mind, that I might do something about The Free Speech Movement as a study, but it was really mostly because the history department was really such a great department back then, was not so much because of Berkeley's... And the stuff that happened with my connection with The Free Speech movement, was not part of my graduate program, was more like what I was doing because I was a graduate student activist. I was one of the people helped to found the TA union. SM (00:05:41): Teaching Assistant union? RC (00:05:42): Yeah, at Berkeley. That was in the (19)80s, it was called AGSE, Association of Grad Student Employees. And then, let us see, that is me back then. And we were trying to organize on that. And then I was also involved in the anti-apartheid. SM (00:06:02): Oh, yes. RC (00:06:04): I was the editorial page editor of the Daily Californian in the (19)60s. So when I left editor, they blew up some of the- SM (00:06:14): Wow. RC (00:06:16): ...some of the editorials SM (00:06:17): Oh my gosh. Very good. RC (00:06:18): So yeah, this is back in the (19)80s. So anyway, that is the stuff that I was doing. SM (00:06:22): Yeah, the anti-apartheid, that was (19)87, I believe, was not it, the heyday of that? RC (00:06:25): Well, actually, a little earlier. It was actually (19)84, (19)85. Actually, the spring of (19)85 is when I first took off because it was a connection between 2010 anniversary of The Free Speech Movement, which- SM (00:06:39): (19)84. RC (00:06:39): ... (19)84. And this was the poster from that. This is all the- SM (00:06:44): Oh my gosh. Wow, what a great poster. RC (00:06:49): It was organized by a guy named Michael Rossman, who was one of the leaders of The Free Speech Movement. SM (00:06:53): Unbelievable. That is- RC (00:06:55): Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that is how I got involved with all this. I think, again, it is a kind of extension of my own background, but also just an interest in social change. SM (00:07:05): And now you are teaching and making sure that future generations understand their history and- RC (00:07:10): Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah. SM (00:07:11): ...which is real important. RC (00:07:12): Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I teach teachers too, so that is the other thing. This is part of the education school, and I teach in the history department. In fact, I am doing a course on the (19)60s now with Marilyn Young, who does- SM (00:07:28): Yeah, I interviewed her. Yes. Yes. RC (00:07:30): She does the history of the Vietnam War. Yeah. And I think also, I would say that, the attempt to try to get the people to remember what happened in the (19)60s and just to understand history of social protest more generally. So yeah, I have been involved in this, there was a project, actually, we were working on trying to organize the fifth anniversary, some events around the Port Huron statements, fifth anniversary-anniversary in (19)62. So Tom Hayden was here, and we're going to organize some events around that too. But yeah, that is really what I am just interested in. Teaching students history of, well, I guess not just the, I would say, I have also written a book on the thirties, on student protesting in the thirties, so it is not just the (19)60s, because this is, there is a-a continuum here, protests that is always going on in the United States. SM (00:08:25): One thing is a takeoff because it was my second question is, when you were there in (19)84 and you were a graduate student and you was involved in the planning of the 20th anniversary, what was the difference between (19)64 and (19)84, in terms of the optimism or the feelings of the leaders in (19)64? Because I know Mario Savio was still alive, and Jackie Goldberg and obviously Bettina and others. Where were they in (19)84, in terms of their feelings toward the university that they feel like they had accomplished a lot on at that particular time? What made that such a special event? RC (00:09:10): Yeah. Well actually, I will answer in a second, but just reminded me, have you seen the film, Letter to the Next Generation about Ohio State students? SM (00:09:16): No, I have not seen that. I went to grad school at Ohio State, that is where it was. RC (00:09:20): Oh, then you would have to see this film that is by Jim Klein, called Letter to the Next Generation. It is a film where, he has 1980s students looking back on students from the 1960s. And actually not 1960, but really cannot say, 1970. So you should probably interview him if he's still around because he did a whole movie about this. SM (00:09:40): Well, that was anti-war at Ohio State in (19)72, (19)73. And then... RC (00:09:43): Yeah. Well, because what he is doing, is he is looking at what happened to that generation in the (19)80s? SM (00:09:48): What is his full name? RC (00:09:50): I think it is James Klein. Just Google the book. SM (00:09:54): Klein? RC (00:09:54): Yeah. SM (00:09:54): Okay. RC (00:09:55): If you just Google the movie, it is called Letter to the Next Generation. Okay. SM (00:09:57): And I thought I was up on things. RC (00:10:01): No, it is a really interesting film. I always use it when I teach about the (19)60s because they ask, like what you are saying, about how the generations are different. Now, you were asking about what their attitude was? What the- SM (00:10:12): Yeah, and what did you learn? Obviously, you knew about it, but what did you learn in (19)84 that you did not know about what happened in (19)64, particularly by having that opportunity to meet Mario firsthand and the others firsthand? RC (00:10:27): Well, I think the main thing was just seeing the, first of all, I think one thing was impressive about them was, that they had maintained their interest in democratic change. They were still very idealistic. They did not advertise it like, we made history and you cannot. They wanted to empower people. They thought it was important to let the next generation know what had gone on and their generation. I think that Mario was very involved in the movement against US intervention in Central America. He was very concerned about that. Bettina had been very much concerned about that as well, but also very involved in founding women's studies and gay lesbian rights, woman's issues. Jackie Goldberg had been on the city council and the state legislature in California. These people all had ongoing concerns with social protests. And also the idea was, this is a lot more sort of deeper than taking over a building or something. It was not just bang, bang, bang, boom, boom, boom. It was really a lifelong commitment to trying to make America a more just society. And sort of understanding that I think was important for people. But also, I think it was that, in terms of the students in my generation, it was also seeing that, you had the possibility of making change. That this was not something that was unique to the (19)60s or it was not some brilliant genius that created this, but rather conditions were conducive to it and people felt like that they could make a difference. So I think, what happened at Berkeley, was we had this enormous rally and a series of events about the Free Speech commemoration in October of (19)84. And then I think it sort of startled people that, they could get so many students out because, at that time, the press had been acting as if those students are really all a bunch of yuppies and no one's going to be active anymore. And none of that was really true. But there was a lot of hype about it. And I think this showed that, hey, there is a big progressive community here. There is a big left liberal subculture, we can do things. And I think that fed into this activism against Reagan's imperialist policy of Central America and also this dealing that we could do more on the issue of anti-apartheid. And that was really something that the movement was really getting launched in DC and then Columbia University. Berkeley was not first, but then when to hit Berkeley, it was really big. And in part, I think because in the fall there had been this discussion about activism through these collaboration events. SM (00:13:12): What I like about your book and you talk about Mario, but you make, and your introduction and throughout the book, it is very important for people to read it, I think. I think Your introduction is great because there is two things. The media has a way of building up myths. And one of the myths is that when SDS split, with the weatherman and then the concept of the Black Panthers, some people said they were violent and some people said they were not. The media had a way of taking on the weathermen, as if this was the way the anti-war movement students were. They were all this way, this is the way. And so you make sure that, in your talks with Mario, that that is not true, that the majority of the students were not violent at the very end. And why has the media, in your opinion, tried to portray this generation the way it has? Just sensationalize things. RC (00:14:06): Well, I think a few things. One with the Panthers, I, there definitely was violent, there were wrenches that were very violent. And in New Haven, they tortured and killed somebody. The Bay Area, there was somebody killed. So I think there is, and the weather just a few blocks from here, blew up a building. So it is not that they are not sensationalizing that did happen. But it is a question of, how representative of the thousands and millions of people who are involved in this movement. It is like, yeah, if you have a demonstration and a hundred thousand people march not violently, and then a hundred people throw rocks, who is going to make the headline? So I think that there is an issue about... News is almost by definition what is new and different. And if you have had five years of people doing these large marches against the war, that is not considered news anymore. What is news is, when people carry a flag or blow up a building, that is what is considered news. And that is the story. I was involved in high school anti-war movement in New York City, and it never would have occurred to us to do anything violent. We did not think about that. It was not even a temptation because we just thought anything like that would did not make any sense. And most people would not think that made sense. So I think there is that. I think there is a way in which some of the stuff that happened, this agenda dynamic to it, seems like very masculine and Hollywood to do things that are violent. Or even the style of the panthers, black leather and black berets and there is something slick about it. In fact, there is this book by Thomas... You know this book, Sweet Land of Liberty by Thomas Sugrue about the- SM (00:15:55): I have that, yes. I have not read it, I have it though. RC (00:15:58): Well, what is interesting, by the way of example, he does not dwell much on the Black Panthers because he does not think they had much real impact in changing society. Whereas, if you look at the welfare rights movement, which did benefit lots of people, in other words, they got a lot of people out of poverty and they got government assistance of people who really needed it, but it was not big and flashy. Nobody was wearing berets or anything, leather and berets and taking guns out. And it would be just like that. If you try to depict that in a visual, you would have a bunch of people sitting in a bunch of rooms organizing meetings, which looks like, well, that looks boring, but actually it is helping poor people more than the Panthers did. So he highlights, I think there is statistics like that. And by the way, that movement was headed mostly by women. I think it was tied in with the Great Society's community action. Committees that, like you said, at a place like Philadelphia, 70 percent of the people who were involved in the leadership of that were black women. Now, most people who say in the (19)60s, if you asked them about this welfare rights movement, would you draw a blank? If you ask them about the Black Panthers, they would know that right away. But the question is no, which is more representative? Which is having more of an impact? And I think it is the welfare rights group. But I also think that, what is sensational, what is going to make headlines is what is unusual. It is not to say the violence had no role. You think about the big ghetto rebellions, there was not in fact, there was a kind of outburst of anger and violence that awakened America to some pretty terrible social conditions people were facing. But I do not think that is really... If you looked at Berkeley, for example, Berkeley in (19)64, The Free Speech movement was almost entirely non-violent and it was not even about Vietnam. An issue, if you ask students, they would not even know what it is about because, despite the name, they would think I must have something to do with Vietnam or something because it's the (19)60s, or the draft or whatever. But nothing to do with any of that, just about free speech that grew out of activism that is connected to the civil rights movement. Which was, at that point, pretty relentlessly non-violent. So I think, yeah, there is a way which the (19)60s gets dealt with, through one of the most sort of technicolor, exciting image. Not just violence, but also sex, drugs and rock and roll and thinking about the summer of love and all that counterculture. But if you look at the picture of the students marching to the Regents meeting of The Free Speech Movement, Mario is wearing a tie and coat and the woman are wearing skirts looking... The fact at that point, they were being baited as beat... Like the attack on the students' movement at Berkeley at that time was hip... The word hippie was not even used yet. It was still, people do not think about beatniks. So, it was like beatnik baiting. In other words, oh, there must all be in sandals and have long hair and beards and all that. And this is 1964, the beetles had just come to America, there was not really a counterculture as there would be later in the (19)60s. So, what I am saying is there are distinctive eras within the (19)60s, not just one era. And there's a way in which the easiest way to deal with something is like these stereotypes. And so I think that, there is a lot of obfuscation and a lot of misunderstanding in the (19)60s, because the way that is remembered is through these very dramatic late (19)60s images, both the violent ones that you were alluding to and countercultural ones that, again, it is not that it is based on nothing because there were groups like the Black Panthers and Weather Underground, but tiny. And the NAACP, had a thousand times more members than the Black Panthers. So why are we paying so much more attention to the Black Panthers than the NAACP? Or the same thing you could say about, with The Free Speech Movement is non-violent, so why is it very few people know it is history? It is in part because that is not the images that people have. SM (00:20:09): You bring up two other important points too. And I think when, in the book on Mario Savio and the others about longevity, when you talk about Mario, you are talking about a lifelong activist. He might have had the problems of the depression, some of the other things, but deep down inside his central core was rights. Even as you bring up all the time, the rights was a very important part of what the (19)60s was all about. And there were many people. And the media, again, oftentimes tried to portray that the (19)60s generation or the boomer generation, not just the activist, but overall, they went on to become yuppies. I heard that in Philadelphia, when I was living there, there is a whole section and a lot of them were making money on Wall Street. They were in their early thirties and so forth. So there was that business about longevity. And the other important point you bring up, which is really important. We know Reagan came to power because of the backlash, when he became governor and the whole thing. But this perception, the media again, that Reagan, the Reich came to dominance, so to speak. And what happened in The Free Speech Movement in the protests in the (19)60s, basically, I would not say it was defeated, but the backlash put America back on the right track, so to speak. And you bring up a very important point in the book that, yeah, there may have been a backlash, but it did not have an effect on the rights movement and all the movements. Could you kind of talk about those other two things that the media oftentimes tried to portray? RC (00:21:49): Well, I think that the shift to the right has been very powerful and it is very difficult to deal with, in other words, to overcome it is just that it does not mean the other people disappear. We tend to deal in very simple decade thing. The (19)60s was this, the (19)80s was this. People that have not died, they are still there, or there is a core of people who are still active. So it is very simplistic to think that they do not... The other thing is that there has always been a trend in American history, with officers such as [inaudible] talks about the cycles of American history going between liberalism and reform and privatism and conservatism. So that is nothing new. And the thing is that, the attempt of the right to bring back the (19)50s, or you want put it that way, which has always been the project. Look, you can say, the problem with the analysis, is that the assumption is that the way things are, is the way that they always will be. In other words, thinking when people were making those arguments about Reaganism or Bushsism, whatever you want to say, it was when they were in the White House dominating things. And they have had a lot of political success, so it's easy to think that that is really what matters. But remember that Obama, the election to be president would never ever happen if it was not for the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of the (19)60s. In other words, so you could just easily argue that, well, the right was just a blip on the screen and it is really the left that is making a difference because we have a president who is African American, which never would have been impossible before the (19)60s or without the (19)60s. But I think, the way I see it, it is an ongoing struggle. In other words, that the right tries to impose its own agenda politically and culturally in America. And there is a lot of resistance to it because a lot of things have changed because of what happened during the (19)60s. Women are not willing to be subordinated the way that they were in the (19)50s. There is a resistance when they try to get rid of, say, Roe versus Wade. Or if you think about the attempts to, every time the US intervenes abroad, there is much more resistance now than there would have been before Vietnam. So whether it is Iraq or Afghanistan or Grenada or Nicaragua, there is pushback in a way that there was not before. So the dynamic, in other words, there is always a right left conflict in the United States. The question is, who is winning and how that is going? And I think that what the (19)60s did was, it gave it a lot more, the left, a lot more resources and ideas about how to push back. So I think, that from my perspective, I think that the backlash events against the (19)60s is very powerful and very worrisome. But on other hand, look, why is it the rights always worried about Murphy Brown or whatever is going on in Hollywood? And this feeling like that there was a cultural revolution in the (19)60s that they lost, even if they take local power, that is why they are so furious, is that they feel like, well we took Congress back, or we took the White House during the Reagan and Bush years. Why is this culture still so progressive? Still so- SM (00:25:09): Good point. RC (00:25:12): ... defying conservatism because there were political transformations that came out in the (19)60s, but then there is backlash and there is also postal transformation in the (19)60s, and they had not been able to reverse all of that. So you turn on TV set now you are going to see, well, black folks on TV, you are going to see women on TV and roles that they would not have played in the (19)50s or early (19)60s. So there is a lot of things I think that the (19)60s changed in an enduring way that I do not think are ever going to go back. But I also think, yeah, there has been.... You know there is another book, Framing the (19)60s, where we talked about the way that the right has used the (19)60s over the years, have you seen that? SM (00:25:51): I probably have that. I try to keep up. I have not read them all. RC (00:25:54): Yeah, that is this one. He talks about the way that Reagan and Bush, all these guys- SM (00:26:00): Framing the... RC (00:26:02): Framing the (19)60s. ... using the (19)60s as a kind of whooping boy to try and basically say that we need to be rescued from the way that America was corrupted and ruined by this decade of disorder and chaos and violence. So in a way, it has given them something to run against. But on the other hand, I think, it strengthened the left in lots of ways that. In other words, what is the simplification is to think that, well, because we won the last election, there has been some great mandate and this huge change that, like Ingrid calling Clinton the Countercultural McGovern. And we were going to get rid of all the things the (19)60s wrecked about America. And basically overreaching and ended up getting kicked out of power because there was a lot of support, not from a government, but just for a different type of society where women have rights, where black have rights, where we're concerned about the general welfare and not just about private profits. So I think that this whole push to the right, has been in part, fueled by this reaction against the changes in the (19)60s. But a lot of people disagree with them and they do not win every election. How do you explain Clinton two terms, then Obama's? And I do not mean to make it just about Democrats and Republicans because it goes deeper than that. Clinton said that if you look back on the (19)60s as a disaster, you are probably a Republican. You look back- SM (00:27:34): [inaudible] RC (00:27:36): ...probably. I think there is something to that, but I think it goes beyond party politics. I think it is more about how are we organizing our values and our lives? And that I think on issues of foreign policy, that runs especially deep. The idea that the United States should not just go around pushing other countries around. And if they do that, then, especially in an aggressive way, there's going to be resistance here. And there has been. SM (00:27:58): It is like Bobby Muller when he came back from... I know Bobby quite well, he came to my retirement party and he said that one of the things he learned about being in Vietnam was, that when he came back, he knew America was not always right. And that was hard for him because when he went into the Marines, he thought America was always right. RC (00:28:17): Well, yeah. Yeah, I think that is true. I think that a lot of people were awakened to the idea that United States, on some level, is not that different from other great powers. And that acts in a self-interested way and sometimes this regards to the rights of other nations. And so the whole question of, when I talk to my teachers, I ask them, how are you going to teach about America's role in the world? Are you going to act as if the United States is just a benign force at all times? Or is the United States an imperialist power? That is a question that I think needs to be asked. Or if you think about Osama bin Laden, the United States during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, act like they were freedom fighters. A decade later, then they were terrorists. Is sort of like, well, there is lots of examples. Think about Iran helping to overthrow Mossadeq. And then you end up with the Shah imposing the Shah, and then you get the rise of the Islamic Republic and Khomeinism. In a way, a lot of these things are connected to stuff we did, or thinking about overthrowing Allende. And the idea that, after that you have Pinochet. A lot of times, by messing with other countries internal history, the way that we do, we get outcomes that are worse than what they started out with. So I think that, that is one of the things that came out of (19)60s is saying, well, look, we are not going to always assume that just because it is US foreign policy, it does not make sense. We are going to ask you, what are you doing? Are you respecting what this other country is about? And is the outcome worse than it was when you inherited it? SM (00:30:04): President Obama is damned if he does or damned if he does not. It is interesting, depending on who you read, supposedly he does not like to identify with the (19)60s. But people, his opponents, criticize him as being the epitome of the (19)60s, in fact, way to the left. RC (00:30:26): So there is always this ridiculous political dynamic in the United States, that anything that is even moderately left to center is seen as being... You see these books that are published that depict him as a socialist. Really on the cover. SM (00:30:35): I hear that, there are people who might, Facebook, some of my conservative students- RC (00:30:39): Or Gingrich, it is completely nutty. I think that, he is so moderate that, I think in a way he sees himself as a post-partisan president and wants to go beyond the (19)60s. So I think that, in a way, maybe one of his mistakes is not understanding, that this whole politics of backlash, that the right in this country's organized and a way they cannot even be civil about it. They have somebody saying, well, my goal... Even in a place and time, like the (19)60s, there is some degree of bipartisanship. You respect the office of the presidency. Here, just this week, they wanted to meet with them to talk about the budget, they are too busy. What I am saying to you is that, in a way, I see the way that he is treated, by the right, as kind of an extension of this unfriendliness towards black rights, towards civil rights. There is an element of that there. I do not mean it is just about race, but I think there is a part of that there. But I also think he is very moderate. I think of him as being... My perspective on him is that, he's been too much thinking that he can move beyond those... He wants to, it is admirable to get United States out of this mode of this left, right dynamic, but there is really no way to, because that is the way, the Republican Party is organized. They're organized basically, to wage class warfare on the poor and that is basically it. And also, I think to have this sort of imperial presence, and it is hard to disengage from that. But you cannot disengage from that if you do not understand or you are not going to articulate. Well, look, we need to have something that is like that, a new, new deal. We are entering into a period of liberal reform or progressive reform and be able to change the discourse. Right now, it is amazing to me, going around the (19)60s, I think there is a whole way in which... It is like Hoover's, it is basically that you are saying that you want to go back to small government, essentially the magic of the free market and deregulation. And that is what caused the crash in the first place. I have a tea party seat at my class, I talked to him about this small department. How do you explain, you think about the last depression we are in, what pulled us out was World War II, the greatest deficit spending in American history. So that was suggest that, the small government solutions that you are talking about is not the way to get out of it. In fact, when Roosevelt used a small government approach in (19)37, it caused a recession. He had a kind of [inaudible], he scaled back on these programs and he got this huge upsurge in unemployment. So I do not know, I guess what I think about this whole thing is that, it is kind of over the top, these attacks on him. On the other hand, I think that he is part of the (19)60s legacy and is resented for that reason. And even though he does not want to identify that way, and I think that is admirable in a certain sense, that you want to not have this partisan, you want to get out of this partisan, but you cannot because the people on the right, see him as an extension of... I think what you see with the right is, any kind of government dimension that is seen as... They do not make the sense between liberalism and socialism. RC (00:34:03): Any kind of government dimension is seen as... They do not make-make sense between liberalism and socialism. And so, they are nutty in that way. There is a big difference between someone who is liberal and someone who is a socialist and that is lost on them. So, I think that in my film, there is a lot of this discussion about Obama... Reflects some of these same issues except that he wants to hold himself above or away from this and it's not really working. SM (00:34:29): When you look at the boomer generation, do you look at the entire... Actually, there is 74 million people in that generation. People have written about the (19)60s, a very small percentage were activists. Depending on who you talk to, I said 15 percent and I have been corrected many times by historians. Thomas Power says, "Steve, 5 percent." But what I am asking here in this question is, if you look at the entire 74 million and, in your book, you concentrate on Mario and some of the new left, what are your thoughts on the whole generation as a whole? RC (00:35:10): Well, first of all, I do not think generations make history. I think people who are active make history. The American Revolution was John Adams. That estimate was a third of people who are opposed, a third were supportive, and a third were neutral. So, to speak about 1770s generation is not particularly meaningful because the Loyalists lost. The apathetic did not make much difference. The people who made the difference were those who were- SM (00:35:35): The few. RC (00:35:38): ...involved in the Patriot cause, so I think that is always true. History has always made by minorities. In other words, what kind of history would you write if you highlighted the fact that the majority of people were not involved. It would be history of inactivity, indifference. So I do not really think that is... To me, I know that argument. The same thing is true, Melvin Dubofsky made that argument about the (19)30s. He wrote an essay called The Not So Turbulent years. And there is a trilogy, or no, a two-volume work by Irving Bernstein called The Turbulent Years about the (19)30s. It's about the labor upheaval and all that. And he wrote an article saying, well, that is really got it backwards. Actually, I do not know if he still, but he used to teach at Binghamton, Melvin Dubofsky, great labor historian. SM (00:36:30): That is right. RC (00:36:32): Anyway, so he made the argument that what we really need to figure out is not why a minority in the labor movement was active and striking, we have to figure out why majority did not strike. And I do not think that is wrong. I think, yeah, we need to know both. So my feeling is, the boomer generation is probably more affected by the cultural changes of the (19)60s. More feminists, more egalitarian, less racist than... In other words, they were there. But like this book I am doing on the South, probably the majority of Southern students, no, definitely majority, were not involved in the student protests. And actually were kind of either indifferent or hostile to it, but still their campuses were changed by it. At the end of the... There is a book about, I mean we are doing a book, there is also a book that came out very recently, I think it is called Sitting in and Standing Up. It is by Jeff Turner at University of Georgia Press, about southern student protests in the (19)60s. And what he found, and what we found in his essays that we are looking at is that the college campuses of the (19)60s started out in the South pretty conservative places. If you were at a place like the University of Alabama, Georgia, there would be no Black students at all, very traditional gender roles, not much academic freedom. By the end of the (19)60s, of course with desegregation that had changed, but also because of the student movement, the anti-war movement had an impact even in the Deep South. So what I am saying to you is those campuses... Today, if you go to a place like the University of Georgia or the University of Alabama, I am sure there would be a woman's studies program, a Black studies program. There would be people who write about American foreign policy in a critical vein. As I am saying is that these institutions were transformed and became more progressive, even if majority people, majority students politically are just sort of mainstream. So I think people were changed by the culture and political atmosphere, even if they were not activists. I do not really... I just do not think that a good way to make history is just by counting numbers, just by counting how people are participating and how many are not- SM (00:38:51): I think some people that have actually kind of emphasized this for people that are trying to lessen the impact these people had by just concentrating on the numbers. RC (00:39:02): Yeah, and I would say that that is a way... You can never really do political history that way because politics is not made by... For example, when we think about 1961, are we concerned with the majority of people in Massachusetts who are not involved in democratic politics or are we trying to figure out what John Kennedy was about? He is one person, right? Well, he is one person who made a big difference because he became President of the United States. So there is a way in which if you really take the logic of that argument, then you are only going to do a certain type of social history and you are not going to look at political history. So it is not just about the (19)60s. As I said, you can the same argument about the Revolution. You can make the same argument about Secession. ow many people were actively involved in the secessionist movement? It was a minority, but it had this enormous impact on the South and on the country. So I do not think that the boomer... When people talk about the boomer generation as a whole, I would not expect any generation the majority would do anything. You are talking about just millions and millions of people. But the fact is that that generation gave birth to the largest mass movement of college student protestors in the history of this country and that is very significant. The first generation that really, a large percentage said no to racism and said no to imperialism, that is significant. That does not mean that a majority of people of that generation, if you look at the polls, majority of people were in the 18 to 21 age group supported the Vietnam War till very-very late. SM (00:40:38): That is right, (19)66. RC (00:40:38): So even beyond, there is that book by Wattenberg and all those, The New Majority that shows that. So it is definitely the case that we are not talking about a majority of that generation doing anything. SM (00:40:52): Do you like the term boomer? RC (00:40:55): Well, I think that is just reflects the baby boom. I do not have a particular problem about it. To me it is not the generation itself, that idea, it is just the basic demographics. It does not tell you all that much. I do not know. SM (00:41:10): Yeah, well one of the things [inaudible] we learned when I was in grad school at Ohio State when reading Harry Edward's book Black Students and some of Kenneth Keniston's books and so forth, is that the (19)60s generation was divided into so many different areas. And Harry talked about the differences between militants, anomic activists, activists, radicals and so forth. That was the first time I really learned the difference between them. And what he was basically saying is that the leaders of the (19)60s movements were oftentimes those born between 1938, (19)39 and (19)45. Because you look at Tom Hayden, you look at Mario Savio, they were in that (19)40 to (19)45 period and they were part of a spirit. But it is a spirit that- RC (00:42:04): Yeah, I think that is true probably for the earlier (19)60s. I think that with the... Remember that both Mario and Hayden were part of the founding fathers and mothers of the New Left. But if you look at the late (19)60s generation, they would fall into that later range. But I do not think, for me it is like saying when I was growing up in that period, I did not feel myself particularly identified as being a boomer. That term does not really have much all that much meaning for me, I think it is a question of the way I see in college campuses. Essentially, you have different subcultures that are either consciously or unconsciously competing to set the tone of their generation. So you have a more academic, more traditional, maybe more political, they're all different types of subcultures that are competing. And in the (19)60s what happened was a sort of more activist subculture really began to dominate. And that is to me what is significant. Not the demographics that it was the largest generation of young people. I think what happened probably could have happened no matter how many young people there were, I guess you could say because there were many more kids in college that had made it possible for this group to have a larger impact. But it is not necessarily so, if you look at the (19)30s, my first book was about student protests during the Great Depression. There was no boomer generation there, but they were the first generation to have mass student protests, the sort of depression generation. I guess what I am saying is to me that is not really the central fact of the era. I guess I would say that probably the fact that it was mostly more affluent era helped to make it so, but when people, you talk about the boomer, they are talking about boomers are talking about the size of the generation. There were so many young people because of the baby boom. And I think that is kind of, to me it is not really the central issue or the central factor that made this all possible. It is sort of the background demographic. And I think the way that it's talked about is, it is often a put down, the boomer generation are these... Because there is so many, they think the whole world is their generation and their self-indulgent and self-centered and all this stuff and I think a lot of that is kind of overstated. I do not think I hardly ever use that, even though I have written a lot about the (19)60s, it is not a term that I have used. I wrote also about student... The southern stuff I have written about is about the opposite end of it. It's about southern students resisting integration at one point. I did not get to finish it, but I was doing a book and I published some articles about the University of Georgia desegregation crisis in (19)61. And I was going to do a comparison of the desegregation crisis in the University of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi. And those students, they said that they were activists initially, they were active on the other side. They were active in resisting change. My article on the Georgia group was called Two Four Six Eight We Do Not Want to Integrate. It is about these white students who essentially rioted outside the dormitory of Charlayne Hunter, later on Charlayne Hunter-Gault, first Black student at the University of Georgia. And they were part of the same boomer generation that Charlene was, or earlier incarnation of what I was. But how is that meaningful? In other words, what does that explain to you? Also, the Young Americans for Freedom- SM (00:45:43): Yes, the brand-new book out on that too, by the way. RC (00:45:45): Yeah. Which book were you- SM (00:45:51): It is a brand-new book by a guy named Pre, Primo? It is really in depth, real thick book. RC (00:45:57): I have this book about, there is several different things, but there's also this Rebecca Klatch's book, A Generation Divided about- SM (00:46:04): Oh, I have that. RC (00:46:05): ...about the New Left and the New Right, looking at the... You see some parallels, but I am just saying if it is a generational thing that makes people progressive, then how do you explain this stuff on the right that is going on? SM (00:46:15): I will email you the- RC (00:46:16): Sure. SM (00:46:16): It is a brand-new book, just came out. RC (00:46:18): No, I had not seen that yet. So what I am saying to you, is to me, it is such a massive group and such a huge category. It does not explain too much. That is why I thought- SM (00:46:28): In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end? And what do you think was the watershed ruling? RC (00:46:34): When did the (19)60s begin? Well, there is a lot of people have different perspectives on that. People talk about the long (19)60s. I think that from my perspective, in terms of setting the tone of the decade, really the February of 1960 with the sit-ins in North Carolina, that is at Greensboro, that is really helped to set the tone for what happened politically in the (19)60s. And as far as when it ended, I think that that is more difficult. You could say that it ended with the Vietnam War. There's a lot of dispute about to what extent the social protests of the (19)60s actually ended because a time when after SDS had imploded and the anti-war movement kind of came to a screeching halt because the war ended, you had the beginnings of the feminist movement, you have the upsurge of gay and lesbian liberation, the birth of the environmental movement. So I think it is kind of a complicated question. I think that I tend to think of the United States as a culture that does not have these neat little beginnings and endings. The (19)60s ends as a political... The anti-war movement ended. But in a sense it was reincarnated again every time a new US intervention happened, it's like what's her name talks about this, she rejects the whole idea of the frontier. I am forgetting her name. Patricia Limerick. This is a book about the legacy of conquest. She is the founding mother of the New Western history. And she talked about how people... When does the frontier, when does it close? And she said, "Well, it opens every time there is a dispute about Indian land." Or in other words, her view is that the period ends when you have people looking back on it with... When they make up these sort of Disneyland type of tourist attractions about it. And you could say, well there is a Woodstock museum or something. But it comes back as soon as there is a dispute about land rights and there are. In other words it is like it all starts to come back again. But I think in terms of the larger dynamic, could say that there's a lot of different points we could say. Well, the right, really absurd. Was it the reelection of Nixon in (19)68? Could you say that Chicago and the reelection of Nixon in (19)68 ended the (19)60s? Well, I guess the reason why it is a difficult question is because the (19)60s changed so much and there were so many different areas. You think about legal history, political history, social history, cultural history. There is a lot of different manifestations of the change that the (19)60s made. And you take this Tinker decision about students having the rights in school. There have been a lot of decisions because the Supreme Court moved to the right, whether it is Bethel versus Frazier or any of the other decisions, the bang hits for Jesus one more recently. There is a lot of shifting away from those rights because the (19)60s ended with those decisions or the fact that they still have not thrown Tinker out. Is that so that there's still continuity? So I think you could say the same thing in terms of politics. Does the (19)60s end when Reagan got elected president, then is that really because he was a nemesis of them? Well then how do you explain Obama? But I guess the way I think of in terms of there being mass movements in the streets, that did end with the end of the Vietnam War. And so I think that Doug [inaudible] has an article about this whole question about did the (19)60s ever end? And if you have this concept of the long (19)60s, it could seem like, no, it never ends. But definitely there is a change in the way the politics are organized. There is not like massive... There are not mass movements and mass protests in the streets and on college campuses. And that really ended in the early (19)70s. So I would say probably that is how I would say- SM (00:51:15): The person that you co-teach the course with, Marilyn Young. Has she stated to you when the (19)60s began? Because I asked that question to her. RC (00:51:22): No, we have not gotten to that yet. I do not think I have [inaudible] what would she have said? SM (00:51:25): She said it started with the Beats. RC (00:51:27): Oh, the Beats. Yeah, we actually, we started talking about the Beats. But I mean, that is culturally right? SM (00:51:31): Yes. RC (00:51:31): So I think that I would agree that the roots of... There is a lot of different roots in the (19)50s that make the (19)60s possible. But I think politically I would say, again, that question when you talk about the (19)60s, you could also say, well, in terms of the court cases, you say the (19)60s began with Brown, right? In (19)54. SM (00:51:53): (19)54. RC (00:51:54): So I think it depends on what is it you are focusing on? Is it culture? Is it electoral politics? Is it politics in the street? Is it judicial politics? You would have different answers depending on which of those you are focusing. It is sort of like saying, "When did the Great Depression end?" People say, "Well it did not end until World War II." And I said, "Well macro economically that is true. But if you look at the immediate crisis like the farm crisis or the banking crisis, no, those ended much earlier." So I think that depends on which you were talking about. But I think that if you asked me as a political story, then I would say that it began with the idea of mass protesting, possible as a civil disobedience as a source of social change. It began with the sit-ins in began in Greensboro and it ended a little bit after the war ended. It actually began to cool right after Kent State, in terms of mass protest in the streets. That is what I would say. But in terms of the cultural dynamic and the spinoff of other movements it's a very gendered answer. If we think, well the anti-war movement is what made the (19)60s, then what about the feminist movement which really hit a stride in the (19)70s? The same thing, gay liberation and lesbian liberation, those are things that really took off in the (19)70s. The same thing as the environmental movement and then the upsurge of the anti-nuclear movement. So I think it is maybe a little too sweeping to say it ends here and begins there. But I think something did change in the (19)70s in the sense that they're being mass in the street’s kind of protests. SM (00:53:38): Since people are going to be reading these oral history interviews, I know what the Free Speech Movement is and so do you, but my question here is if you could just briefly describe what the Free Speech Movement was, what it was not, why did it happen? Who were the student leaders and why was this event so important for colleges in (19)64 and beyond? RC (00:54:03): Well, the Free Speech Movement was basically what its name said. It was a contest over freedom of speech initially, where the administration... It started as a kind of board dispute where the university ends and the street, the city begin. And that is a kind of interesting dispute to begin with because in a way, what that was about on the corner of the south corner of the campus is saying that you can have the right to do political advocacy if you are off campus. And they thought that the strip of land on Bancroft and Telegraph avenues was off campus. But then it turned out, they found out that some of the little political tables they used to do organizing were actually on university property, that that strip the land that they thought was owned by the city was actually partially owned by the university and part of it was owned by the university. So then it was violating this university regulation about political neutrality. But if you just think about that, what that means is there's more freedom off campus then there is on campus. The First Amendment will protect your free speech rights off campus but on campus, you cannot do political advocacy. And just think about what that says. I mean, the university is supposed to be a place where you have academic freedom and the free expression of ideas is treasured. And instead, we're saying that, "Well, if this becomes part of the campus, it is got the kiss of death on it." It is sort of like, "No, you cannot do protest here. You cannot do advocacy here." So that is a reflection of the lack of political freedom on campuses, especially Berkeley on campus, that is ever since the Red Scare of our (19)30s. There is a mini Red Scare in the Bay Area after the general strike, where in (19)34 the university put these regulations out about political neutrality that you cannot do advocacy on campus. And that is very oppressive. Basically, it was done to protect the university from being red baited by the university, by the right wing and the state legislature. But how can you have freedom in a university if you cannot have free speech? And how can you have free speech if you cannot advocate? They thought, "Well, you could talk about anything but you cannot advocate something." Well, that is a ridiculous distinction. It is a distinction without difference, there is no way that... Mario said, "You would have to be like a Solomon to be able to make that kind of a distinction." And it was not tenable. And when they got pushed back with, then it would collapse. But the point is that these rules were restrictive and it was reinforced by the loyalty oath and McCarthyism. And even though this is 1964 and the president of the campus, Clark Kerr is a liberal, he is still towing the line with these very restrictive regulations. And so, what really brought this to a head was students were very much affected by the Civil Rights Movement and by the civil rights protests against Barry Goldwater because they had the Democratic... The Republican Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. So students wanted to participate in these things. And then the university tried to clamp down when they found out, the Oakland Tribune reporter came and found out that this is not city property, it is campus property. So therefore the university, "Oh, we have to then stop this organizing." And the students said, "No, we know. Why should we be restricted in our ability to speak and our ability to protest." And the university was not flexible. And the university students began first very politely trying. That is another thing that is important. They did not immediately say, "Okay, let us take over a building." That is not the way people operated back then. They said, "Let us try to petition, this is unreasonable. Let us get the university to reconsider these policies." But the university would not reconsider. It was basically saying that we do not think that the university should be playing this role. And so they would not compromise. I mean, not compromise, there was really no way to compromise in the sense that you either are going to have free speech on campus or you're not. The university wanted to make these compromises, as well. "We will let you have these tables but you cannot advocate political action." And then they changed the position and said, "Well, you can advocate political action, but it cannot be illegal." Well if you are advocating action against racism and that leads to a sit-in, that is illegal. So you are restricting their speech, their ability to make the university a place where students are involved in trying to serve society can organize against racism. And the students felt that was wrong. And that in turn, led to social, to protests, to sit-ins. And that in turn, I think had several effects. One was that it showed students that even though you by yourself are not powerful as a student using civil disobedience as a great equalizer, you can as a student have power if you are organized together. So that is one piece of this. The other thing that I think that the protests led to was students, after they said, "Well, the university is restricting us and this is not right." Then they began to say, "Well, wait a second, why is the university doing this?" In other words, what happened was it began as a movement was about free speech, but it evolved into something else beyond that. Because what I am saying is what happened is once the free speech issue is surfaced, then it led students to wonder, "Well, why is the university doing this? What's wrong with the university itself that it restricts freedom of speech?" And they came to this conclusion that the university was too close to what they call the military industrial complex. And so, was willing to sacrifice freedom of its own students and faculty in order to ingratiate itself with the powers that be. And so in other words, it led to this whole critique of the corporate university, which today is very much in vogue amongst some scholars who would look at the way that the university's become so much... If you look at David Kirp's book Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line, there's tons of books this criticize the university for being essentially, almost like a business. Or Sheila Slaughter's book Academic Capitalism. There is all this critique of the university as losing its sense of mission. So I think that the point is that it started off as movement just to... Mario came back from Mississippi and no intention at all of launching a mass movement at Berkeley. They were not interested in protesting about the university. They were just intending to keep on doing their activism in the Bay Area. There was all this activism in the Bay Area against discrimination in the local stores, in hotels on Auto Row. They thought they would continue to do that. It was just because the university basically was trying to stop them from doing that by denying them their free speech rights, that they began to focus their attention from off campus to on campus. And then once they started to focus it on campus, they began to be critical of the university because why is the university repressing free speech? And what came out of this movement were several things. One is that it showed that the students could be effective. SM (01:01:15): Hold on a second. Mine is to prepare people to be administrators in higher ed. RC (01:01:25): Oh, that is interesting. SM (01:01:26): Well, go ahead. RC (01:01:30): What I was going to say is that then what happened was... What was significant of the Free Speech Movement was that it won. Most student protests lose, historically. They won. And they won in part because the students had a core issue that a lot of people agreed on, that people should have the right to speak freely. They won because they were mostly non-violent. And so even though it seemed the majority of people in California were opposed to the movement because all they focused on was how disruptive it was. They thought there were riots, there were not riots, there were protests. The students at Sproul Hall did not rush the building. They marched in slowly. It is almost like a formal ceremony. When Joan Baez singing We Shall Overcome and you are walking into a building, that is not like some hijacking going on. That is like a very public act of deliberate and moderate civil disobedience. Non-violent. So what the Free Speech Movement showed was that when students have a large grievance and organized in a non-violent way against it, and also when they start to try to appeal to the faculty, because the Free Speech Movement was not just a student movement. That is another mistake people make. Campuses are not just students and administrators. Very important are the faculty. And what was really going on during the Free Speech Movement and my colleague Reggie Zelnik's article was about this, it was the administration and the students were competing with each other to win over the faculty. And in the end, the students won over the faculty because the administration was so blundering and repressive and worst of all was at the Greek theater when they took Mario off the stage by his tie. And they tried to gag him, basically gagging him. The administration kind of discredited itself. And the students, the faculty eventually on December 8th with their resolutions sided with the Free Speech Movement. And Kerr looked back on this when I interviewed him, the president of the university, looked back on the revolt as a faculty revolt as much as a student revolt. And he was right about that. The faculty, it took a long time because the faculty had loyalty to the university and to the administration. Faculty did not take over any buildings. They are not going to sit in, they generally have more loyalty to the institution and to the administration. But in the end they sided with the students. So I think what it showed is that if you really organize people and educate them on a big issue, and you use civil disobedience non-violently and as a last recourse... In other words, there is another sort of stereotype of the (19)60s that student protest is all about you go take over a building. That is not the way things worked in the Free Speech Movement. That was the last thing they were trying to do. They thought they could win without that. Civil disobedience caused people to get arrested, suspended, it is very painful. It is not the first thing that you do. It is really the last thing that you do. And they only used it when they absolutely felt like they needed to. And so, December 2nd to 3rd, Mario gave his famous speech and all that. They did take over the administration building, but that was because they felt like nothing else had worked. And the faculty eventually sided with them I think because despite the fact that for its time it was very militant, they were non-violent. They had a really important grievance and they spent the whole semester explaining it to people. It is not like these big dramatic moments that you should really focus on when you think about these moments, it is the long, difficult and even tiresome and boring, not boring, I would not say boring, the long and tiresome process of educating people about the issue that you are working on. SM (01:05:27): Like Tom Hayden does constantly. RC (01:05:29): Yeah. SM (01:05:30): With his Facebook page. RC (01:05:31): Yeah, so what I am saying is that what the Free Speech Movement showed is that students can have an influence in shaping history and as long as they organize intelligently, non-violently and in a sustained way and remember that they have to appeal to people outside of their own group, which is what the students did because they brought the faculty along with them. SM (01:05:55): It is interesting that Clark Kerr wrote that book, The Uses of the University, which was required reading in our graduate program at Ohio State. And that is the outline of the corporate world that we are talking about here. When I interviewed Bettina she said she really did not like Clark Kerr, but then in later years there was some situation where they were brought together for some reason. RC (01:06:17): Yeah, he wanted to get some feedback on his memoir, I think. SM (01:06:21): Yeah. And she said, "I really like the man." He was not as bad as he portrayed and of course he was fired by Reagan. RC (01:06:28): Well, I think the thing is that Kerr was basically in a lot of ways an admirable person. He had worked with Paul Taylor and Dorothy Lang, a very progressive background. And if you look at his master plan for California higher education, it was about providing accessible, cheap, higher education to the entire, no, universal higher education. SM (01:06:54): Wish it was still that way. RC (01:06:55): Yeah, I know. So in a way, he was caught between the right and the left. I do not think he was a bad person. He just made some pretty big mistakes in handling the protests. But look at his overall career, he was about... And even the stuff he was talking about, I think he was slightly misinterpreted by the Free Speech Movement. He was not uncritical of corporatization at the university. If you read that book carefully. He does have a kind of celebrating tone, but he does have some sort of... In fact, he is sarcastic at point. He suggests that there is some language in there that Hal Draper took him to task for. But he is sort of saying that, you could prostitute yourself and go too far in the quest for profits, a university could. So he was not uncritical. Oh, and by the way, I forgot to say that once the Free Speech Movement had shown that civil disobedience and students could be this effective force for change, I think that paved the way for what happened with the anti-war movement. That in fact, the Scranton Commission on Campus Unrest talked. RC (01:08:03): ... that in fact, the Scranton Commission on Campus Unrest talked about the free speech movement as the Berkeley invention, which is mass protest, civil disobedience. In other words, it showed that, and just in the semester before you have got all this mass protest on the antiwar issue, that students could be a force for social change. And if they used these tactics. SM (01:08:24): And of course those tactics were the tactics that Dr. King used, and he would- RC (01:08:27): Right, the civil rights movement. SM (01:08:28): Yeah. RC (01:08:28): They were bringing, I mean, really the free speech movement brought the tactics of the civil rights movement, the early civil rights movement and the black student movement onto college campuses. SM (01:08:36): And the teachings and- RC (01:08:37): Yeah. Yeah. If you think about, for example, the sit-in movement, that was a predominantly Black movement in (19)60, (19)61. So, really the people who first, the students who first used civil disobedience on college, no, the first college students to use mass civil disobedience were black students mostly, but they were not using them on campus. They were using them at lunch counters. Was using them as a tool to get rid of Jim Crow off campus. What the free speech movement did was take those tactics that had been so successful off campus, and used them on campus. SM (01:09:05): It is interesting, when I interviewed the late Gaylord Nelson, the senator from Wisconsin, talking about Earth Day, he had a meeting with I think David, well, some of the organizers of the moratorium, and did not want to step on their toes, so there was a partnership there from the get-go. And the importance of the teaching was very important at the very beginning of Earth Day. And Gaylord Nelson wanted to make sure, and he worked with them. Yeah, I know Michael Rossmann, boy, I wish I had met him. In his blog, and I had been reading a lot of stuff before I came here today, he made a comment that really upset him towards the end of his life saying that, "The media has always portrayed Berkeley as this liberal school from the West," And he disagreed with that. He said, "It was not a liberal school. The students were what made this happen. It was not a liberal school. Why do you think we were fighting for these issues?" Your thoughts on Michael? He was really critical of the perception that the media portrays about Berkeley then and now. RC (01:10:08): Well, I think it is complicated. I think there was a... It depends on what you are talking about with Berkeley. There was a core of civil liberties-oriented faculty at Berkeley, who had resisted the loyalty oath from the McCarthy era, and they were the same core people. Some of those were in the same core of people who were resisting the administration, repression during the free speech movement. Now, it is complicated because Strong, the Chancellor, and Kerr, as the president, were also in the loyalty oath. So, those were on the protest of liberty side. So, it is complicated. I do not really think I totally agree with him on the idea that the faculty, the administration, that I think there were... I would say that Berkeley was a progressive place. I mean, look, it was the first, and Rossmann was a part of it even before the free speech movement, back in the late (19)50s, SLATE had been formed. So, there was a kind of progressive tradition at Berkeley. SM (01:11:08): It was (19)58, I believe. RC (01:11:09): Yeah, that went on. And before that it was called TASC, Towards a New Student Community or something. And I think that was made possible in part by the fact that, first of all, Berkeley was aspiring to be a national institution, which meant that it got really top talent in terms of academics. We had some very progressive faculty who were emerging there, some people like Michael Rogan in Political Science, Ken Stamp and Leon Litwack in History, Charles Muscatine in the English department [inaudible] the loyalty oath, and then became a great educational reformer. So, I think that there was a liberal and left subculture there, both on the student body and the faculty. And because of the quality of the place, there was a cosmopolitanism about it, and it was a tradition of the Bay Area that went back all the way back to General Strike, about there being, and there were progressive institutions like KPFA. And so, there is a sort of a left subculture out there. But there is also, I think what he meant was that if you look at the elections, like the student government elections, it was very rare that the left got anywhere. There was a big frat and sorority culture. It was in some ways like a typical Midwestern or Southern campus with a large traditional collegiate culture. And right on the eve of the free speech movement, in fact, I think it was Art Goldberg had told Bettina, "Oh, they just got defeated again in the student government elections." This is sort of like the left did. [inaudible] like, "Oh, well, now this campus is so conservative. We will never get anywhere." And that was going into this myth of this Berkeley being this ultra-radical place, where it was easy to organize. I think that is what Michael meant. In the early (19)60s that was not the case. There was a large, very conventional culture to the place that this insurgency was sort of beginning to challenge. But it was the idea that the average Berkeley student was radical. This is just not true. In fact, I did this article on the chapter in my book on the free speech movement about the rank and file. It's called This is Their Fight, and had the [inaudible]. SM (01:13:16): It is the paperback [inaudible]. Yeah. RC (01:13:18): Yeah, that is right. That looked at the statements that the students made to the judge just before they were sentenced for their arrests for the sitting-in the Sproul Hall. And most of the students were not radicals. They were very reluctant to sit in. They did not want to break the law. They did not want to violate university regulations. They were just pretty moderate. But they felt they had no choice because they wanted to preserve free speech. So, if you look at the number of people who had a radical analysis, saying, "Well, universities are schools of corporations, and we need to resist imperialism and racism," who had this radical critique. It a very small minority. And in fact, if you think about there never would have been a mass movement at Berkeley if it could not reach beyond the small radical core. It had to be able to speak to mainstream students and to moderates and to liberals. And that is really what the free speech movement was able to do. So, I think that is what he meant. In other words, the idea that the Berkeley is this other, and it is like something out of Mars or something and all these aliens, that is how he got this movement. No. You got this movement because he was able to mobilize what was in many ways not a very unconventional campus to really, in fact, if you look at Larry Levine, his essay and the free speech book. He was a faculty member. He had just come from City College in New York when he came to Berkeley in the early (19)60s. And the first thing, the first demonstration he came into contact was not a politics, it was a panty raid. And he was saying, "Oh my God, what am I getting into?" What is this culture like? So, I think what Rossmann was right about was there was a dominant student culture that was setting the tone that was not politically radical or even particularly liberal, but that the movement kind of challenged that and sort of toppled that. SM (01:15:06): What is amazing is that some of the things that were happening in Berkeley were also happening in Harpur and SUNY Binghamton, because Dr. Dearing, within a year after I graduated in (19)70, retired and went up to Upstate Medical Center because his health had gone down. He died actually three years later, but they fired Professor Liebman in the Sociology Department for leading a protest in downtown Binghamton. And when they had the anniversary of the class of 1970, which was my class, this past year, a lot of them were not going back because what's happened is they're building it all up is this, the (19)60s and tie-dyes. And to me, not taking the seriousness of a lot of the issues that were facing the campus at that time. And my high school, when I was in high school, a graduate of SUNY Binghamton was fired from my high school. And that is the reason why I think I really wanted to go to Harpur College, because if somebody is fired for... Because they thought he was a communist. And this is the mid-(19)60s. So, it is a lot of connections between Binghamton and Berkeley in terms of the kinds of students and- RC (01:16:21): Oh, sure. SM (01:16:22): ... And the kinds of issues. And the president who was respected, Bruce Dearing, I do not know if you have ever heard of him. He was respected, but they kicked their OTC off. And when all the residence halls became, when the fraternities became so big, it really disturbed me because the college in the woods right now in SUNI Binghamton is basically all frat guys. And I lived there, and we would not have a frat guy around. They had to go to Cornell to be in fraternities. We banned them. They were banned at Binghamton. They had had to go to Cornell. And so, it is a lot of stuff kind of linked. We were a much smaller school, but we were kind of in, our heart was here. RC (01:17:03): Oh, sure. SM (01:17:03): No question about it. Mario Savio, to me, I mean, you have done an unbelievable book, and I really believe more Americans and young people need to know about this man. I state here, and I just want to put it in here for the record, and that is that who was he? Where did he come from? And just briefly, how did he rise to the top? And what I really like about him was that his motives were totally pure in so many ways, because he was... We were raised in at Ohio State University in the theme of student development, overcoming obstacles in one's life. And to know that he was a stutterer, and to be able to stand up in front of all those people and say what he did. And then also what I like about many of the leaders of the free speech movement you're bringing out so well, it's not about me. It is about us. RC (01:18:09): Yeah. SM (01:18:11): And he did not care about a political career. He cared about an issue that was so, see, that is what I want. That is what to me was the (19)60s was about. Just your thoughts on Mario and- RC (01:18:21): Oh, yeah. Well, I think that Mario basically came at it from a moral position. He came up, he was the oldest boy in a Catholic home, and he was going to be, he had a religious sensibility. He was going to be a priest. And eventually, he did not go that direction. But I think in a certain sense you could see that same moral sensibility as expressed here. He had a very strong sense of right and wrong. And he felt that, particularly with the civil rights movement, he saw what happened at Birmingham where people were being attacked, kids were being, black kids were being attacked by police dogs and fire hoses, that this was really wrong. He felt both shamed and inspired by those protests, ashamed that America would do this and inspired to try to do something to help. And so, I think he had a very strong impetus towards to help those who were being oppressed. Even before the civil rights movement, he had been not before the civil harassment, before he became involved in the summer, he went to Mexico and did poverty work to help poor peasants in Mexico. I think that he felt that one had to take a stand to stop something that would have, to stop evil. And that is what he was really doing. He felt in a way the civil rights movement was, even though he was not religious anymore, he felt that it was, that racism was sinful. And that the attempt to rid of it, to get rid of it was almost like God showing His hand in the world. Even though he was not religious, he still talked about it way, kind of a post-Catholic way of speaking. He had not lost that kind of way of thinking about things. He was pretty broken with his church. And I think that when you think about Savio, that is really what he was about. It was saying that we had to take a moral stance to stop evil and to make democracy possible. And then he went down. So, he became active in the Bay Area civil rights movement, got arrested. When he was in jail, that was about the Sheraton-Palace to try to stop the discrimination in the hotel. And while he was in jail for that, he found out about this Mississippi Freedom Summer and decided, "Well, I am knew tried to go down there." And he did. And he went down there and saw, there, look, in the Bay Area, if you got arrested, it could be inconvenient. Hold on a second. SM (01:20:41): Yep. RC (01:20:43): Sitting in against racism, you can get arrested or possibly hit over the head or something. You could get hurt. But mostly it is about you could get arrested. In Mississippi, you're risking your life. When he was on his way down to Mississippi, in Oxford, Mississippi getting trained by SNCC and the cultural organizers, they found out that the three civil rights workers were missing, Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. And so, it was really clear from, Bob Moses said, "Do not kid yourself. They are not coming back. And nobody will think any less of you if you just decide, 'Look, I do not want to put my life on the line.'" And the amazing thing is, nobody left. They all went, because they felt like this is really the most important thing happening in America, if not in the world. We are going to stop this pattern of racist violence and decent and disenfranchisement. This is going to stop now, and we are going to help make it happen in collaboration with the black community. It is not that we, mostly white college students are going to save the day. We are going to show solidarity. And down there, this was a movement that was led by black people, by heroic student organizers of African American descent and former students like Bob Moses, and being supported by people within the African American community of Mississippi. And when he was there, he saw, I mean, this is a whole other level of activism because you are risking your life, but you are only there for the summer. Those African Americans who are down there, they are risking their life and their property and their whole futures in a way that is not just the summer. In other words, you go to sign up to vote, and you could lose your land or you could lose your life, and you could have this pattern of harassment that goes on for years, right? And so, what Mario began to see was this is a really a deep and heavy-duty thing. And they were talking about which side are you on? Are you trying to really make America a more democratic place, and what are you willing to do about it? And so, when it came back to Berkeley, and he had the memories of that, he felt when these administrations are trying to cut down the free speech area that made it possible for Berkeley to be a recruiting ground for this kind of activism, the idea is, "Well, look, we were not just kidding down there. That was not some summer lark. This is serious. People down there are risking their lives for their freedom, and you are going to tell me that you are going to stop me from doing this?" And so, essentially what it was about was the solidarity that you're going to take a stance. And also, there is no pretense. There's no jargon. It is very plainspoken. He called it a Jimmy Stewart kind of approach to oratory. We are not talking about the bourgeoisie or the proletariat or high theory. We are talking about just right or wrong, and this is wrong, and we have got to do something about it. And that was not just something that applied to Berkeley and to the free speech issue, but became a lifelong thing for him. That is, when you see people, he came, why did he, he really did not want to be a politician. He was not a politician. He was a brilliant philosophy and science student. He was meant to be a professor or an award-winning scientist. And he wanted to be able to focus on that. But it kept happening that things kept happening in society that he could not put his head in the sand. So, when Reagan is funding this terrorist war in Nicaragua, or the United States is supporting a government in El Salvador that has death squads, or the Apartheid, the United States is subsidizing Apartheid or the anti-immigrants, anti-affirmative action stuff was happening in California in the 1990s. He felt, "I have got to take a stand against this." Or even in his home university at Sonoma State, when he was, really the struggle that he died in the midst of, it was, if we raise these fees, like what is going on now, then the working-class kids are not going to be able to come here, and education should be accessible. So, I think with Mario, what it was really about was a feeling that, "I need to stand up for what's right." And I think that did have an effect on him as a person that I think that it helped him in some way. That was not why he did it, but it did help him work his way through. He had a very hard childhood. He'd been abused as a child. And I think that affected his speech. He had a very bad stammer. And in a way, the liberation of the students, people talk about the (19)60s, being able to find your voice. In a way that was what it was for him. He found his voice by trying to give voice to others by trying to help others be free of their oppression. He became, here you had somebody who could not speak as a child. And now he was a great orator. And to me, that is really symbolic of what the (19)60s at its best was about, was about standing up to help others, and in the process of trying to change and help free others, you are self-freeing yourself, because racism was not just about black people being hurt by it. It also hurt us as a society. It hurt whites as well. It hurt all the generations that were coming up, being raised on intolerance and hatred. So, I think that for Mario, and it also had to do with, it was just this idea that when things were, when something was oppressive and unjust, you have a responsibility to try to do something about it. Even if you are busy doing something else, even if you would rather be doing something else, even if it does not, if it is not good for your career and certainly not good for your health. And in a sense, he died. He lived because of it. In a way, he died because of it too. He died. He had been involved in all these anti-affirmative, in his defense of affirmative action, in challenging those valid initiatives against affirmative action and against immigrant rights. And so, he kind of exhausted himself in that and the [inaudible] battle, and he had a weak heart and he died in the midst of the struggle. His wife thinks that he was so compassionate and so concerned and so activist that you could say that he worked himself to death. Now, that may or may not be the case, but the point is think about how that compares to the stereotype about people from the (19)60s who sell out, who [inaudible] out their politics. It is the exact opposite of that. SM (01:27:11): Yep, [inaudible] RC (01:27:12): Yeah, he never cashed in on any of this. It was really about, "Look, we do not need some great leader to do this. We can do this ourselves." And that was another thing. That is one of the reason why he stepped out of leadership. He did not feel like, you should not need a celebrity leader. You should be able to organize movements where, if you are a good organizer, you will organize your way out of a job because people should be able to organize themselves. SM (01:27:35): That is the Benjamin Barber mentality. Benjamin Barber has written the books on citizenship and the nation that requires a strong president. Well, we want a strong president. But when you have stronger citizens, that is the greater democracy. RC (01:27:50): Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think that is the idea of participatory democracy, which Mario kind of embodied. SM (01:27:55): Here, I know we are getting out close to the end of our time here, and I have got, we are not going to finish the questions, but is there a connection between the free speech movement and the following events? And I will just list these events. Kent State, 1970, Columbia in (19)68, Harvard Square, the March on Washington in (19)63, the moratorium of (19)69, Earth Day in 1970, Chicago Convention in (19)68. RC (01:28:22): Well, I think that- SM (01:28:23): Any connections there between the free speech movement? RC (01:28:26): Well, I think that just the later events in terms of protest, the idea that you can make a difference by going out in the streets and protesting, I think those are all, but they're all very different events. So, I would say that I would not attribute everything to the free speech movement. I think that there is a kind of way in which there is this ethos of being able to make change through social protests that is connected in all these things. And the later student events you are talking about the idea that the generation, that young people can make a difference, that if you think about those later events you are pointing to. I think there definitely is a connection there. But I would not want to attribute every, in other words, I think if you think about it, the civil rights movement helped to make the free speech movement possible. The free speech movement helped to make the anti-war movement possible. The anti-war movement helped to make the women's movement, the gay liberation movement, environmental movements possible. So, I think there is a connection there between this sort of ethos of social criticism, social protest that the free speech movement helped to promote. But I would not say it was by itself. I think there was these cycles or this pattern of activism that when you get people in motion and they have an impact, then that in turn, on one issue, that in turn can affect them on other issues. SM (01:29:44): I will try to make these brief here, but one of the things about- RC (01:29:48): We can also finish on the phone too. I mean, in other words, we do not have to. In other words, we can always pick it up again. There is not really, you do not have to feel like you have to get it in. I mean, I am available. We can always- SM (01:29:58): Well, this is fascinating. Your students are very lucky to have you because I am a firm believer that students need to know their history, and they do not know enough of it. I have had too many students tell me that the Vietnam War was before World War II, and I have heard stories still that in high school, teachers, at least particularly those that were going to high school in the 1990s, that they do not... Their classes stop in the (19)60s. They do not go beyond. They stopped the history. It is like me when I was in school, it was John Kennedy stops at the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty or something like that. But the thing, this is a question that, because you talk about Allan Blum and the closing of the American mind. You have got the David Horwitz’s writing all these books because he went from a liberal to a conservative. And political correctness is something that was so prevalent on college campus in the (19)80s and (19)90s, and some say it is still there today. What are your thoughts on those issues? Particularly, I interviewed Phyllis Schlafly and Phyllis Schlafly and David Horowitz both believe that the student protestors of the (19)60s are now running today's universities, and they are also teaching the students of today. They run all the studies courses, women's studies, the black studies, the gay and lesbian studies, environmental studies, Asian American studies, Native American studies, Latino studies. They are all the liberals, the left from the (19)60s, and they are only giving one side. So, that is the Schlafly’s and the Horowitz’s. And then you have got Barney Frank, who is a Democrat. He wrote a book called Speaking Frankly, which I think is a very good book, way before all this issue of the environment. And he talks in there about the fact that after the (19)72 election where people supported McGovern, that the Democratic Party will never survive if it cannot stay away from the anti-war people. It has got to make the separation. The Democratic Party has to go a different direction. It cannot be the Teddy Kennedy types. It has got to be a totally different direction. So, here is a Democrat, powerful, even then, a gay Democrat saying that, "We must separate ourselves from the anti-war and the activists of the (19)60s within the Democratic Party." You have got Schlafly and Horowitz saying that today's universe, you have got political correctness saying that as a result of what happened, maybe starting with the free speech movement and the protests and so forth. RC (01:32:34): Well, let me tell you- SM (01:32:34): Gone the other direction. RC (01:32:35): Yeah, I mean, first of all, I mean, I would say this, that I think it is very simplistic to say the university is all one thing or another, just like I was saying before with the boomer generation. It is a very large, complex thing. I mean, on the one hand, what about, I mean, if you look at the University of California, it is a great example. I mean, BP had this huge center for corporate, as what's his name was saying, David Kirk was saying in this book on Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line that Mario, by talking about the corporatization of the university was being prophetic. A campus where with the dean of the business school is called the Bank of America Dean. So, the idea, what I am saying to you is that you could make, they focus on a few liberal studies. What about, who has the computer science departments? Who has the business schools? Who is heading the law schools? I mean, the idea that the university was headed by a bunch of radicals, then how could you explain the incredible corporatization of the university? That is such a simplification. The university does all these things that are pillars of the computer revolution, of corporate capitalism. To make it like the university's all one thing, that it's been taken over by radicals, is you are lopping off two-thirds of the university, and the ones, parts of the university that have most of the money. You know what I mean? Why would the universities that, if they are on the left, why would they even have business schools? Where does that come from? So, I think that it is such an oversimplification to judge. You are judging the entire universities by a few disciplines or departments that would lean to the left because of the nature of those departments or disciplines. I think that is really simplistic. I mean, I do not really think of the universities as, I mean, look, if you look, there is a whole literature about the universities, including this one. We had a TA strike that crushed the union. The universities are not being run by radicals. I mean, that is absurd. There is an influence in terms of ideas of people on the left and liberals, sure. That is the case. The majority of academics are liberals, but in terms of, it is such an overstatement to act as if the university is somehow part of the revolutionary left when the university, how do you explain all the stuff about corporatization? And look at the critique by Sheila Slaughter who look at the university as corporate capitalism embodied. I mean, there is a struggle. The university is a contradictory place. Some of the people who were student radicals have gone into academia, but there's lots more people who were never, like you are saying, the majority of people in the boomer generation were not radicals. So, the idea that they have taken over the university is really absurd. SM (01:35:22): Yeah. And my proposition and just your thoughts on this maybe, I have got two more questions, and we will end here, is that today's universities are afraid of the term activism, activists. Volunteerism is, 95 percent of the students are involved in volunteering. A lot of it's required, but a lot of them are doing it. And that is very good. Some people say that is activism. Well, I do believe that is short-term activism. I am talking about the mentality of the Mario Savio’s, the Tom Hayden’s, the Bettina Aptheker’s, which is, "It is my life. It is part of who I am. It is part of my very being. It is 24-7. It is not two days a week at two hours." And I think you are right on that. I think a lot of the people that run today universities are boomers who were not activists, who had the experience of being on campuses and seeing what activism does to a campus, knowing that we are in tough times. And if there's any protests, maybe students will not come to the college. RC (01:36:17): Well, if you look at the disengagement with the students, like Dick Flacks has got the study about California freshman. SM (01:36:21): I am interviewing him. Yeah. RC (01:36:23): Yeah. I mean, if the universities are about making students radical activists, they are doing a pretty poor job. Right? I mean, because you can run academic programs that just are about academics and do not have an activist ethos. So, I think that, if what David Horowitz and Phyllis Schlafly were saying, "Look, for God's sake, we have two wars going on," right? Two, not one, two. Where is the mass protest? Obviously, if the left had taken over college campuses and was there to build mass movements, they are not doing a very good job. Right? So, I think it is a very simplistic view. I mean- SM (01:36:56): Do you think they are afraid of that? Do you think that the universities, people may be the board of trustees or the type of administrators are afraid of activism because it brings back memories of the (19)60s? It could happen again. RC (01:37:09): No. I think it has been so long since they had a mass protest. I do not think that is something that is on their minds. I think that if it came, if it emerged, they probably would feel that way. But right now, I mean, there is also, remember there is a new generation here. There is a 21st century generation of students that is very influenced by computers that may not be, you may be thinking about this too much in a 20th century vein. In other words, that there is a whole new way of looking at things, and activism has been reduced to pushing a button on a computer, which does not necessarily really change things, but people might think that it does. SM (01:37:44): Brought a picture up. RC (01:37:46): That is right. So what I am saying, saying is- it is not necessarily the case that if there is activism, that it would take the form of the (19)60s, or anybody's worried about that, in a way. So, I am just saying I think that the idea that the university are breeding grounds of activism is, it may be in some ways a more interesting place if that was the case. But it is not true. On the other hand, there are books that show that, let me qualify that, there is this new book that came out by Mark Warren, Fire in the Heart. He looks at lots of people who are involved in [inaudible] activists today, and says that people who are activists, some of them did come through those programs that Phyllis Schlafly and those guys are complaining about. And I think, in other words, but that is only a minority. In other words, you can learn to oppose racism and become activists on the college campuses. You can. But that is only a small group that is. SM (01:38:40): Wow, this is interesting. I thought I was up on books. RC (01:38:45): Yeah. Well, yeah. SM (01:38:46): You are really up on them. My last question here, and I asked a little of this- RC (01:38:48): Let me just tell my student I will be right with her. SM (01:38:49): Yep. RC (01:39:00): So I do not lose her. SM (01:39:01): Okay. RC (01:39:01): Hey, how you doing? I will be out in about a minute, okay? [inaudible] Okay, sure. SM (01:39:04): Okay. What did the university learn from the student protest, particularly the free speech movement? What did the university learn from the free speech movement itself? And how has the university changed for the better? And what areas does the university structure still exemplify what the free speech movement was fighting all about in (19)64, (19)65? In other words, is Mario was here today in this room, and I was asking him this question, your response may be different from his, but would he be positive or negative? Or where would he be? RC (01:39:33): Well, actually, he did think that there had been some progress made because he was talking, in the last chapter of the book, he talks about Sonoma State, that the university was not all white anymore. And so in fact, he felt the university was retreating from being free in terms of money at just the wrong time. Just as the university was getting to be desegregated, and there were people of color coming, that all of a sudden it was thousands of dollars. And some people would say, "Well, is that an accident?" Back in the (19)60s when most students are white, it was pretty much free in most places, many places in the public universities. Now that it is probably gotten desegregated to some degree, now it is expensive. It is an interesting argument. So, I think in that sense, he would feel like he felt like there had been progress made in terms of accessibility to higher education. And also, I mean, definitely in terms of free speech, the university, now most universities allow students student rights, and even spread to the high schools through the Tinker decision. So, I think that had changed. I think in terms of the, but the basic issues about what the critique of higher education in terms of how much do we care about teaching? How much do we care about that function of the university serving the poor, that still has not, that is still there. In other words, that university is still about getting big money and trying to service corporate America and the defense establishment. Its top priority is not how can we wage a war on poverty? That is not what is at the top of the agenda for universities. It is like my university, where are they rushing to build a campus? Not in some starving Third World country, but in oil-rich Abu Dhabi. So, I think the idea is that the basic issue about what is the service mission of the university? Who is the university serving? That that has not really changed as much as people like Mario would like it. He thought the university should be a center of the attempt to make America more democratic and more egalitarian. And that would mean giving students of color and working class students more access to higher education. That would mean building an ethos among students that would think, "Okay, how can we change society?" And also if you are going into academics, how can you think- RC (01:42:03): And also if you are going into academics, how can you think critically about society? In other words like generating new ideas to make the society a more just, not just about demonstrating, but okay, what are we learning about our social problems through our studies that we can then act on later on? SM (01:42:16): I think course of this, that the whole issue of fundraising in higher education today is a major issue. We talk about links to corporations, but at the school that I just left, and I know this is the case at several other schools, they had cut back on student life activities and in some places, they are very observant of the fact that if a particular speaker or form or program could affect in any way, the dollar flows from donors, they are a little hesitant to support it. And so by they have ways of controlling it in subtle ways by cutting off the amount of funds. So they cannot bring in controversial speakers. And I think that is a big concern about free speech issues. It's done very subtly as we see racism still exists in our society in a very subtle way. RC (01:43:07): Oh, I agree that the universities do not want to... That dynamic is still there. What I meant about free speech was if students want to organize on an issue, people would know you cannot come down the same way that they did in (19)64. You cannot say that. So... SM (01:43:19): I have a few more questions, but maybe- RC (01:43:21): You can do it on the phone. SM (01:43:22): ... 30 minutes. 30 minutes [inaudible]. RC (01:43:22): Sure. Sure. SM (01:43:22): But I really appreciate it. (End of Interview) Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Robert Cohen Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Cohen, Robert, 1955 May 21- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource College teachers; New York University; Cohen, Robert, 1955 May 21--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Robert Cohen is a professor at New York University, where he teaches History, Social Studies, Education, and Human Development. He received his B.A. at SUNY Buffalo and his PhD. at the University of California at Berkeley. Cohen also writes books, most of which focus on either history or people as a whole. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-11-19 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.10.2016.40a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.40b 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. 199:21 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ee3b44e7d0e80e933c52cbf26cca2490.jpg b4feaffecf8b7b138fce7a3d1181bd96 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7f601bbdb30687ff8efc7d750f8cecb3.mp3 536dac3bfbec1c0fa095cff2e5d26b10 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-08-10 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Robert Jay Lifton, 1926- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Robert Jay Lifton is a psychiatrist, author, researcher, and educator. He studied medicine at Cornell University and New York Medical College. He works mostly on the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence. 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Kennedy; Vietnam War; Platoon; Catholic Church; Dr. Spock; Ronald Reagan; Healing; Vietnam Veterans; Cambodian Campaign; Activism; Civil Rights protest; Ken Burns; Civil War; Empowerment; Parents; College; Birmingham campaign; Ted Turner; Tom Hayden; Jerry Rubin; Timothy Leary.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">American Woman; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; SDS; John F. Kennedy; Vietnam War; Platoon; Catholic Church; Dr. Spock; Ronald Reagan; Healing; Vietnam Veterans; Cambodian Campaign; Activism; Civil Rights protest; Ken Burns; Civil War; Empowerment; Parents; College; Birmingham campaign; Ted Turner; Tom Hayden; Jerry Rubin; Timothy Leary.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 104:57 Subject LCSH Psychiatrists; Authors; War—Psychological aspects; Lifton, Robert Jay, 1926--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Robert Jay Lifton Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lifton, Robert Jay, 1926- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Psychiatrists; Authors; War—Psychological aspects; Lifton, Robert Jay, 1926--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Robert Jay Lifton is a psychiatrist, author, researcher, and educator. He studied medicine at Cornell University and New York Medical College. He works mostly on the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence. He has written and published many books on his work. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.81 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. 104:57 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/4e846b949da066a464a137e53b3099a8.jpg ce657287210898e75093237c11e264ec https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ce1fbd555aeb1e7ccd3d69ddbd1fc655.mp3 b3335531ebd7c225a3fccc6ac5005c7c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview ND Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Roosevelt Johnson Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 160:18 Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Roosevelt Johnson was a psychologist, counselor, educator and administrator. Dr. Johnson worked as a professor at Ohio State University, University of the District of Columbia in Washington, DC and John Hopkins University. He also worked at private counseling centers in the Washington, DC area and Silver Springs, Maryland. He received his Bachelor's degree at St. Louis University and Ph.D at the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana. Dr. Johson died in 2015.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15359,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:1},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16777215],&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;7&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;8&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;9&quot;:0,&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson (d. 2015) was a psychologist, counselor, educator, and administrator. Dr. Johnson worked as a professor at Ohio State University, University of the District of Columbia in Washington, DC, and John Hopkins University. He also worked at private counseling centers in the Washington, DC area and Silver Springs, Maryland. He received his Bachelor's degree at St. Louis University and Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana.&nbsp;</span> Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Baby boom generation; Post civil rights; Nineteen sixties; Nineteen seventies; Activism; Generation X; Kent State; Vietnam War; Black Panthers; Vietnam Memorial.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Baby boom generation; Post civil rights; Nineteen sixties; Nineteen seventies; Activism; Generation X; Kent State; Vietnam War; Black Panthers; Vietnam Memorial.</span> Subject LCSH Psychologists; College teachers; Johnson, Roosevelt--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Dr. Roosevelt Johnson Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Eden Lowinger Date of interview: Not dated -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 00:06 SM: Got to keep double checking this too to make sure this is working. Dr. Johnson, thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with me today. What I am going to try to do here is asked a specific group of questions and these questions have also been asked to other interviewees. Some of these questions also might look like they are repetitive. But the questions are asked, [audio cuts] certainly, and hopefully, if you have already mentioned something earlier, then we move on to the next question. But the boomer generation and the people the (19)60s and the early (19)70s have often are [audio cuts] that during this juncture in time, often being criticized by conservatives, by people along Christian coalition and other groups as being the reason why we are having problems in today's society. You hear it all the time on the news, even some of the so-called moderate Democrats, when they are looking at the issues of the breakup of the American family, the increase the divorce rate, the drug, the drug problems in American society, the uncivil dialogue sometimes that happens between groups, a lack of listening between groups. Sometimes people are trying to put this all into a capsule and going right back to that (19)60s and early (19)70s. And it was because of that generation, and how they were reared and how they acted, is now they have transferred into, this into their kids, and could you comment on whether that is a fair accusation toward the generation of boomers made up of 60 million people? 01:35 RJ: I am always I am always cautious about stereotypical and gross generalizations in terms of a generation. However, I do think that there are certain prevailing motifs, cultural motifs that go on, there is no question about it. If we look at the major forces in during that era of say, post-Civil Rights, and then after the post-Civil Rights and the switch, in terms of say, our moving to political impetus, and they end the orientation, and the theories that have gone on- political orientation and theories that have gone along with the subsequent election of Richard Nixon, which tended to [inaudible] in my judgment signaled the prelude to the switch to conservative. So then, I think that we got some gradations there in terms of say, there are some in terms of say some of the people who have emerged from the (19)60s, the post-Civil Rights Era, and also the political shift to conservativism, I am not so sure it is almost 33 and a third, okay, so if you really think about it that way, it is almost 33 and a third. And then I guess, the fourth estate, and that is the medium, with respect to the impact that is has had, and increasing the impact that it has had specifically during that period of time, so then it, the history is fascinating. And I am not so sure, I am willing to say that there is a large core, is according to which societal institution that you are looking at, at any given time, but I think there is a, if you may, an overarching type of influence, and an overarching type of motif, and, and collective thought. So, we got to, we got a, we got a kind of a universal cognition that is going on, i.e. let us go back to the impact of the Fourth Estate in terms of the media, and the fact that the satellite was put us up there. And then CNN became such a potent force, what I see as a core lessons of perspective, even if you go beyond the borders of the United States, about certain issues that are happening all over the world, by virtue of the cyberspace and so forth, which is again, the link, I guess you could say is that is that the Civil Rights, post-Civil Rights and then the era of conservativism, and then what you have that in fact, keeps all of this in a network, is the cyberspace. And with respect to the fact that everybody is seeing the same type of the daily account of present history being recorded, it is definitely influencing how people are thinking. So the media and the people who are writing for the media, in my judgment, are the, are people who have found, who themselves are part of- who are boomers, and therefore they come from that perspective, in terms of their cognitions. There have beliefs about certain things, their worldview, their worldviews, are have, they have to- if we accept that socialization is a real process, and I believe it is- they have an insight, say, like, be influenced by what has happened to them in their nurturance years, that is a part of their identity. So consequently, they are constantly referring back to what they have learned to be reality, their constructive reality is in fact are very similar, but I think that you will still find that is not a discrete dichotomous either-or in terms of is the boomers against the, not being the boomers. There are people within the boomer generation who are very conservative, people within the boomer generation who are in fact modern in terms of their political views, ethical and moral perspectives and so forth. And there are people who are extremely liberal. Okay, so then we got, I think this gradation. 05:58 SM: Make sure that my tape here it is. In fact, because it broke, he has invited me over to his house before the Congress starts again. 06:07 RJ: Okay. 06:07 SM: Because I have gotten to know him. I- most of my friends are liberals, but [laughter] Congressman Weldon, and Senator Fred Thompson, the two that I really, I really like those two. So anyways, as a take-off of that question, what do you feel has been the impact of boomers on America? Has the impact in your eyes been positive or negative? Or is it too early to say what that impact is? 06:33 RJ: First, you have, I have to accept the position that is only positive and negative. And that, again, takes us to the dichotomous thinking, which is fueling, I think, psychologically, societal psychology, if you may, I think that is probably keeping the momentum more exaggerated than it really is. Again, I see gradations, I look for gradations. I do not look for discrete categories of the dichotomy of either all or nothing. And that is, that is a part of democracy. So democracy, the life blood, as Seymour Martin Lipset said, of democracy is conflict. So, then it definitely keeps the conflict going, but I do not know if it, in fact, gets into a continual healing process at the psychological level. Now, I also think that we cannot, in fact address this question you know, in terms of gain, I am saying before I could really respond to whether it is positive or negative, I had to work it through, because I also am very much aware that the conflict, and the either-or- liberal or conservative, negative or anti-positive- is being, is economically driven, is driven by the profit motive. We cannot incite leave that out of our society, that negative news is, in fact, it is a very, it sells very well, positive news obviously does not sell very well, because there is not any one of the leading newspapers in in the world that reports positive news, people immediately go to what is the most heinous that they can find. So then what I think is happening is that the econ- that the political economy has co-opted people into making us believe that we have an issue, I will say negative and positive, I think without a doubt, if you look at a certain category, and that is the demise of the infrastructure within the United States, I do believe- and by that I mean, the highways, the cities, the universities that are in fact, say getting ready for the babies of the boomers, they are now beginning to say that we cannot build new facilities, but we will be able to bring the people on campus and then offer them course by computer, and so forth out of their dorm rooms and so forth or allow them to take it at home, through for example, the internet and so forth and putting up let us say, modems on the campus, around the campus, even exterior modems and things of this nature where people can work on a site. Now, if you take a look at that, and if you hold on nostalgically to what once was, in terms of the negative impact, the negative impact is the meaning that we are giving to it. If, for example, we are saying that we think that the classroom should be a-whereby there is a bonding between the professor and the youngsters or the professors and the graduate students- I do believe that should occur. But now if you think about the boomers being driven by the profit motive, which is you know, with a common vernacular and the patois, the bottom line, cut to the chase all of this language that in fact being developed by various and sundry economic systems, you say, macro and economically, the macroeconomic, the NSA and micro economic terminology that are used for social situation. So, people are being reduced in terms of downsides and outsides and read, outsourcing and things of this nature, the boomers by virtue of their being in leadership role, they have now begun to-to use these paradigms to deal with people. Okay? Now, if these paradigms continue to erode the infrastructure, and especially the moralistic infrastructure of the universal values, then we got to say it is negative. But when we in fact, say, like, take a look at that they can began to cause people, the pendulum to swing back toward the center, and people, to the extent can recognize that the boomers were the impetus for seeing swinging back toward the center, then probably serendipitously, the boomers are serving us a purpose to gain our right frame of mind on this, starting a new collective dialogue within our collective heads. Is this good? We are now beginning to ask these questions. 11:07 SM: This leads into my next question, because now we are talking about the children of boomers, which are, which are already on college campuses. And we will be [inaudible], you talk about the differences within the boomers, you know, we talked about the classification for (19)46 to (19)64, boomers. Well, I see even within the university when I am working with administrators who were still classified as boomers, they have not the [inaudible] knowledge of the impact of the Civil Rights movement, or what the war was all about back then, because they were a little bit too young. So, I sense that there is even strong divisions, like you said, there is conservatives and liberals. There is- 11:42 RJ: Within the boomers. 11:43 SM: Yeah. And the fact is that, you know, it is hard to classify over an 18-year period that these are the boomers, which is what society says we are doing something right. But can today- can today's generation learn from the boomers? What can the boomers teach today's college students? So 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, a period that were students, where people got [inaudible] and single minded issues, because there were big issues then. A lot of big issues where young people can get involved in. So many of these same issues remain, there are new ones. And the lessons of the past are either not taught in the schools or never discussed between the parents, which is the boomer parent and the kid. Please give your thoughts on the issues and boomers lives and how they can have an impact on students today. And I say this only because I, in my working relationship with students, I see two distinct directions that they go in terms of people of my age. boomers. Number one, they look upon that period as an era of nostalgia, saying, "I wish I could have lived them. It was such an exciting time. I mean, people were involved in Civil Rights movement, they were involved in the protests against the war, the environmental movement, women's liberation came about all but all of it seems like the movements and Native American movement, all of them seem to be around [inaudible] around the time when you were young, when you were in college, I wish I could live there." And others the other extreme, where students will say, “I am sick of hearing it, you are living in us nostalgic period. This is (19)96. It is not (19)68 or (19)69 anymore. And so, I am tired of hearing about it, we have our own lives, we have our own issues, but then we do not have any big issues, but I want to get a job I want to get through school." And so, they do not have the big issues. But they do have their own individual issues, which is getting, getting a degree and getting a job. And in some respects, we cannot always talk about all the today's young people that are going to college there is a lot of them going to trade school. So, what I am trying to say is, are the boomers. And are the boomers really talking about their experiences with their kids? Are they sharing what they went through, are they sharing the- those important issues of that time? And some still remained today, but it is as if they do not among the other young people. So I just want to know what your thoughts are. If the boomers are really being good parents, are they sharing what transpired and they were young? And in some respects are the generation X really listening? 14:09 RJ: Well, I am not so sure that the boomers are being good parents if you use the criterion of the pre-boomer period, okay, anti-boomer period there, meaning that if I look at- and I am a boomer, all right- and if I look at the relationship that my mother and father had with me, it was very impersonal. Or if I look at what I know, my peers say, who themselves were not supposed to make it at Southern Illinois University, for example, first generation college students out of predominantly Black schools, high schools and so forth. Well we got there and found out that we had better for example, communication skills as far as the written word was concerned that many of our I would say white counterparts who came out of great high schools of Northern Illinois and Evanston, Illinois and places of this nature, right. So then it got around big university town. So our parents had prepared to pass the baton onto us. So then we got to look at the multicultural and the multiracial groups of boomers as well. But I fortunately have an opportunity through the last over almost 30 years of teaching both Black and whites and in terms of, say, graduate school, so I have had an opportunity to make some assessments on it. And from what I see is that at some point in time, and I like to think of this boomer generation as the transitory generation too, they have seen they saw the transition, African Americans, for example, from Jim Crowism to public accommodation, whereby they did not have it. So that they know what, for example, a Jim Crow is, and they know what it means to be excluded. So, they can recognize inclusion very, I mean, very well, and they can recognize exclusion very well. But the babies of the boomers are not capable of doing this, Black or white. It has been superficially presented to them through the media, it is always on the cusp, it is never as intense as it is because the boomers experienced this. Okay, the boomers experienced the transition of going from lack of civil rights to the civil rights struggle to the fact that Johnson signed the 1965 Civil Rights bill. Okay, so consequently, they saw the transition. And therefore, they are dealing with reality is based upon a cognitive set that they have seen before, during the process, and subsequent to the change. So then they deal with impasse, and for those who have not. And on the other side of the reality construction, the parents, some of them actually got further away from their anti-boomer parent- I will say morality, and they therefore began to have technocracy, technocracy and post modernity in terms of their perspective on how they deal with their children, okay, so then therefore, they-they stay a distance from them, they do not have interpersonal relationships with them, they allow the professional to do the rearing, they will allow the-the they allow the media to do the rearing, and the peer group to do the rea- the rearing. What I have found, therefore, is that on the other end of that, and in between, there is a group that is trying to hold on, which the children do resist, I see a lot of those in therapy, whether that child is in fact white or Black, whether that child is rich or poor, liberal or conservative, they try to resist that interpersonal, because, say involvement, where that person who was involved in the (19)60s tries to in fact interface and deal with and rear that child with that experiential input in there, some of the children do resist to that. Some of the children do not. Now, it is therefore, a matter I guess you can say, of the idiosyncratic way in which the children themselves- and that is what we got to be very careful about- and that is each-each individual has an idiosyncratic child does of the boomer, has an idiosyncratic meaning that he or she will get to the world. Now what we got to do is base that upon it is not right or wrong is rational, or is it is reality. So, we in fact, deal with, whether it is rational, what the child is doing and believing, or whether or not it is a reality, what the child is doing, then we do not worry so much about behavior as we do about cognition. And that is where we got to begin to get the focus. And that is, is the self-hurting a self-defeating in terms of some greater moralistic, cosmos type of perspective, or is it in fact a self-helping, we got to, in fact, make that decision discernment. I go back to the university and college, universities and colleges are in fact beginning to acknowledge that that was something good about the whole notion of the hands-on in theory into practice, because of the of the of the, I guess you can say, the mushrooming of outreach concepts in every major college and university. So then, in that regard, if you take a look, now, everybody has a community clinic, or everybody has some type of outreach program, or some thrust to outreach and reaching out into the community in their curricula. And in fact, the business world is now saying that they want to buy into that. So, then that is that activism of the six. 19:44 SM: Yeah, we have a social work chair, who has raised kids and one is going to Spelman College right now in Atlanta and one is going to Howard- they are twins, and she has one coming up. Her husband is a judge in Philadelphia, and he is also on the board of trustees and interviewees. This [inaudible] West Chester University. And I asked her point-blank last year is that a general discussion if she has ever sat down and talked to her kids about what it was like to be at Howard in the (19)60s where she graduated? She said, "No." She said, "My kids have got enough problems today, with the problems of drugs, dealing with all the other issues of the day, why burden them with what-what it was like when I was young," I am sure they discuss some things. But- 20:26 RJ: But the issue is, would it have been a burden that that actually is cultivating another type of skill. In my judgment, now see I do not see that as a burden, she is assuming that the child is a victim. 20:38 SM: I am going to go in depth with her on that, cause she does not realize I am going to bring this up when we-we are doing the interview. But she, she is the chair of our social work department, Mit Joyner. She is a dynamic professor whose students love her. And I she is one of my close friends at the school. But the fact that that statement really shocked me and so during the interview is not going to be the beginning, when I am going to just interject my question and do a little more definition there. Because she might explain why. Again, this might be repetitive here, if you were describe the youth in (19)60s and early (19)70s, please describe the qualities you most admire and the qualities you least admire. If you were to just give a couple of adjectives of the things that you have most admired about them. What would they be and some of the things you least admire? 21:19 RJ: Their sense of dedication, they were dedicated. They were in fact, say like, inquisitive. They were courageous. Okay. They were well, they were willing to take risk. They were flexible. Most of them on college campus. And now you say the youth, if I was talking about high school, it would be an, and I was associated with an upward bound program, then but as well, and they were forward looking, they were without anxiety, they had a sense of hope. Okay, because subsequent to the Civil Right when the government provided to them a [inaudible] debt for hope, of hope, okay. And therefore, by virtue of the, even though the [inaudible] never really had the money, the concept was empower- psychologically empowering. The concept of, of the war on poverty was-was the was psychologically empowering. Now, I guess, therefore, the opposite would be some of the things I would have to say that in retrospect, retrospect, I would say that maybe that the youth were gullible, and maybe they went, because I believe that now, the amount of depression that I see, the amount of anxiety and type attacks and, and the amount of panic attacks that I see in people and so forth, and the fear that they have in trying to communicate with their children, all of these things probably instilled in them a lack of sense of hope, which is the origin of depression is when that when that hope turns into that is a loss, when one begins to lose that hope, then one begins to have a collective depression that is going on. Okay. So then, and when I- oh, and then I guess, in the [inaudible], this is in retrospect, I thought it was exciting then. But the freedom that they had in terms of not only in terms of relationships, and even very intimate relationship, the sense of a lack of commitment, though. However, the-the lack of commitment with respect to marriage, the lack of commitment with respect to promiscuous behavior, okay. And promiscuous thought patterns. Obviously, they were not that- I did not like the fact that they did get away from moralistic principles, I guess, it used to be that I did not like that about that group of children, which in fact then probably is causing, and in the, right now, some of the sense of the lack of identity that they obviously had when they thought about what they were doing. And now I believe that their parenting skills are actually fostering a sense of lack of identity in the babies of the boomers. 24:21 SM: Interesting observation, getting off the general questions here, because several people that I have spoken to have said when you talked about the boomer generation, especially in the area of the Civil Rights movement, you cannot even talk about boomers, they were too young. To talk, the fact that boomers were born (19)46 And a lot of the things that were in the Civil Rights movement in the mid (19)50s, late (19)50s, early (19)60s, they did not even- they were not old enough to really be involved, but certainly they were influenced as they got older in to the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. So, I have had several comments, say in stating that, if you talk about the boomers, you cannot talk about them really having hardly any; the effect on the Civil Rights movement, even the antiwar movement on college campuses, the majority of them were a lot of the older graduate students, I remember- 25:10 RJ: If we take now, we are saying (19)46 to (19)60, right? Now- 25:14 SM: [inaudible] those are people who were born between (19)46 and (19)64. 25:17 RJ: Okay, well, between (19)46 and (19)64. All right now- 25:20 SM: Bill Clinton's like, he is just nearing- 25:22 RJ: He is a boomer. 25:23 SM: 50. 25:23 RJ: Okay, right. 25:23 SM: That group is just turning 50 this year. 25:25 RJ: Right, I see what you are saying. Right. Now, on the other hand, if you think okay, (19)40, if you take (19)46 now, and they, I believe those people have a lot of- see the Civil Rights movement, actually, moved, moved from public accommodation against [inaudible]. I believe that the Vietnam War resistance movement, if you may, was an aspect of Civil Rights. And I think it prompted many of the demonstrations, the rallies the whole bit. Okay. The fact that Muhammad I believe spoke out in about (19)64, (19)65. Again, (19)65 at (19)64, no (19)63. He spoke out about (19)63 and (19)64, (19)64, when he spoke out and said about his being refusing to go to Vietnam, if I am not mistaken. (19)64, (19)65. Okay, now it will you think about that, that had an aspect of the Civil Rights movement. Okay, so I guess Muhammad Ali would have been considered a boomer, right? Yeah, he was. He is about 52 now, something like that. 50, or 50-50 or 51, something like that. Okay, well, anyway, he would have been considered that- he had a tremendous impact, the Black Panther Party, Huey Newton, okay. Let us say, Eldridge Cleaver. They had a heck of an impact upon the Civil Rights movement in the late (19)70s. I mean, the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. Okay, because they have moved from the feeling that for example, as a matter of fact, if the Panthers were around right now, they will be considered terrorists. Okay. It is no question about it, okay. If you look at the Democrats who have, you know, Students for a Democratic Society, and people like that at Berkeley, for all intents and purposes, that was (19)70, they had an impact on legislation in Congress, the (19)68 Civil- I mean, (19)68 convention in Chicago, okay. With respect to what Mayor Daley did, and how he controlled that particular, that was all about Civil Rights. It actually put law enforcement under the microscope, it began to make people start thinking about how you are going to contain crowds and not contain crowd. Okay, you have people in terms of the Hun- the Hungarian, say invasion and so forth. That was (19)63, no it was (19)66 (19)67. Okay, if I am not mistaken, not Hungarian. 27:59 SM: Poland. 27:59 RJ: Poland, okay. 28:00 SM: That was (19)68. 28:01 RJ: Yeah, (19)68. 28:02 SM: Alexander Dubček. 28:03 RJ: There you go. And yeah, okay. If you take a look at that, for example, then you had students on college campuses reacting against that, okay, and so forth, that what happened at Kent State in 1970, had a tremendous impact upon influencing policy. Okay, those, and when those white children got killed in their [inaudible]. Now, if you take a look at it, all of those youngsters were actually born since 19- that participated in that were in fact born since that period, (19)46. 28:35 SM: You are right [inaudible] the observations that I am getting so far. I am the boomers. For example, when you talk about what is the question I have coming up here, [inaudible] that question I asked with respect to the Vietnam War. What is the impact of boomers on that war with respect to ending it? Now, this is a commentary and your thoughts are very important here. I have had one person who said, "That is ridiculous. They did not end the war. The people that end- Richard Nixon ended the war" and [crosstalk] conservative, okay- 29:05 RJ: Yeah-yeah. 29:06 SM: Then I got the other extreme saying, and this is where I interviewed Jack Smith of ABC news a couple of days ago when I was down here. And then of course, he was in Vietnam. And he said that, "No, the college students did not end the war." One end of the war was the middle class Americans who saw the kid who's caught saw their sons coming home from Vietnam. And when-when Middle America saw that the war was bringing, was killing people and everything, they made the decision that they were against the war and they influenced their politicians. And that is why you saw the Frank Churches of the world who would not get on the bandwagon with the extremists on college campuses. Fear of not only losing his senate position in Idaho, but so what-what are your thoughts in terms of the boomers and their impact on the on those two movements, particularly on the ending of the Vietnam War, number one, and then their-their important role or not so important role in the Civil Rights movement. Now, you mentioned the Black Panthers, but in terminology, boomers. That is what I am trying to get at here and keep in mind you we are talking 60 million people here, of which some of the books they only about 15 percent were ever active anyways, in any kind of activism during this 30:21 RJ: Oh, look let me tell you what, I have, they had a tremendous impact upon influencing the Civil Rights movement. Because if you think about it, the Birmingham church bombings, which were in the (19)60s, those children that were killed for our exam- for example, they were boomers as well as the children who demonstrated. You see what I mean, about the policies, in terms of and who followed Mrs. Parks. They were not they were not your typical college student, but they affected public opinion. For example, many Gene Smith, and let us say, Donald Green, and those people who went to Central High School, for all intents and purposes, okay, so [audio cuts] [inaudible] The Supreme Court decision has been rendered, and everything, which is another major impact- is it on? 31:12 SM: Yep. 31:12 RJ: Okay. Here is another major impact. See, some of this was actually, it was actually subsequent to, that was an era there were a lot of young Black people who were in fact, boomers. And who were born right, even right, the right in that same era there. Okay, in terms of [inaudible] to (19)60, that the child in terms of whom Brown versus the Board was in fact, she was 26 or 27 years of age, you see, so then, and that was not- that was of international prominence, that decision will go down. But as in the famous canons of jurisprudence, forever Brown versus the Board of Education, that was a boomer child. Okay, that was at the center of that whole controversy. I mean, all that was a major Civil Rights decision was changed. It was it was the moral equivalent to the ending of Apartheid in South Africa. And a boomer child actually created that. Okay, now, and then if you take a look at, they had the [inaudible] boomers. Another thing in terms of Civil Rights movement. [Michael] Schwerner and [Andrew] Goodman, and, and [James] Chaney, the three civil rights mov- workers that were killed in Mississippi, and I think it was (19)63 or (19)64. Okay. 32:39 SM: (19)64. 32:40 RJ: Okay, fine. Now, they were boomers. They were in fact, they were not. They were like, I think what 18, 19 and 20 or something like that? They just barely, just barely missed it maybe, but for all intents and purposes, but here they were was showing coalitions at that time. And they were fighting, and that was a national prominent international peace that had international media down that end, and now just goes right on up to this the Vietnam War. While I believe that the mothers and the middle class really did, maybe they were the ones who wrote the letter, the boomers were the conscience, i.e. Bill Clinton, okay, that type of thing. And the boomers did not want to serve in that war. Okay, the boomers were trying to do everything they could to get-get school status of get out of the country, because they did not want to go to Vietnam. Okay, so consequently- and that was generally a draft dodger, new lexicons, you see what I mean, we are actually developed a new lingo, and that type of thing, right. And so, then that particular say, impact, the media did not focus on the middle class, because that was very unamerican. But the media did not focus on Kent State, they did focus on Berkeley, it did focus on, say, University of say New York, did focus on that, did focus on Michigan State, you see, and this type of thing, and all of the Black schools in the south, it focused on that. So then and about their opposition to the war, and actually the boomers highlighted another thing that, that when certain moral issues, are brought up, that Black students and white students coalesce even in historically Black schools and-and predominantly white school, around the immorality of something because in Jackson State in the same year, the same month that in fact, in Jackson, Mississippi, that there were, say nine or so students killed at Kent State, there were also the troops fired and killed on five or six Black students at Jackson. 34:43 SM: Right, in fact there were four killed at Kent State and I thought a few wounded and then there were two killed Jackson State. 34:49 RJ: Yeah. 34:49 SM: And I still remember the fact that it is a very sensitive issue that when you started talking about what happened in (19)70, you better talk about both schools. 34:56 RJ: That is right. 34:57 SM: And then the media has a tendency, and I know they did an article on this in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It was in the last couple of years, when they were celebrating past anniversaries that this this year, they made absolutely sure that the anniversaries of both of these tragic events were recovered because the- 35:14 RJ: So, the media are being influenced by the boomers too making and raising these moral issues. Okay, so no question about. 35:23 SM: Yeah, how do you respond to a person who might say a Vietnam veteran will say, "Well, you are only talking about the elites here. You are talking about those people, “Whether they are African American or white students, or Latino students who went to college, you are talking about the elites here, you are not talking about the rest of America of the boomers who never went to college, which is still the majority, the boomers who went off to war in Vietnam and never got a college degree, which was probably the majority. So how can you define that group of boomers? 35:54 RJ: That group of boomers as the one that were you, the most healing has to take place. Because they were in the fighting units in Vietnam, okay. And that type of line, the [inaudible] Eagles and the Marine Corps and that type of thing. Now, let me tell you, and they were also the labor force that geared up after Chevrolet started making shells in St. Louis, in the (19), let us say (19)65 to (19)70, they open up shell plants, and many of your major car producers went into developing, you know, shells for artillery, and so forth. Now, they-they did that, they were the ones that were doing the heavy-duty operation, or they were on the front line. Now, they, therefore when they came back, and also I think they are the most troubled Black and white, because they still are I still have men in my classes now who fight the battle of Vietnam almost on every issue that comes up in that particular classroom. And these are not the elite. These are students who are not supposed to even made it to college. But then let us go back to in terms of the drug problem. The drug problem is, I think, significantly impacted on the-the guy on the street, and right immediately subsequent to many of the GIs coming back from Vietnam, they were hooked. They stayed they state, I have had them in therapy and so forth. I am not talking about college students, they had to, in fact, use that to anesthetize themselves and the availability of it, they even talk about that they knew it was pretty much a national policy that they could get as much Vietnam, I mean, say heroin and get as much marijuana as they wanted to. The family, Agent Orange affected the middle class. Okay, that and it is still affecting the middle class, okay, in terms of that, and so even now, one of the things that is causing the prevention of that healing is that these issues have not been resolved. And we got another issue of that, where some of the babies of the boomers are experiencing the same thing with respect to the Desert Storm syndrome. Okay, so then and these are not college students. This is the run of the mill GI who is at Fort [inaudible]. 38:15 SM: So, when you again, a lot of my questions that are being taken off from some of the other interviewees really been reflected from a [inaudible]. So when a person who is college educated, but certainly Vietnam says that the ending of the war in Vietnam that was not because of what was happening on college campuses, is what was happening away from the college campuses, but the media portrayed it and everything- 38:38 RJ: The media was not going to go down on those college campuses. You see what I mean? It was not going to go down there. Think about that. As another thing, if you think about it, the Kerner Report, the Kerner Report documents all of this with the US, you familiar with that, right? And the US commission on riots and civil disobedience, which came out in (19)68, okay, when it came out, it documented all of it. What happened in Detroit was a lot of frustration in terms of the Boomers who were acting up the. What happened in in Watts, that were, okay, the-the lack of civil and legal recourse that were available to people, okay, all of these types of things that that unrest and so forth, and the still oppressive nature. But see, now get ready for this, the media then was getting ready to turn a corner. So what the media did, they even staged some things that were not true. The media had begun to recognize them. Remember I said early on an interview, that the media has been the cohesive glue that networks around all of this stuff together. And the media has changed and has been extremely, let us say vocal and in pointing this out, everybody knows that nobody likes to see little Black- little white girls get killed on college campuses. Okay, so consequently, you cannot say it was made a big deal. Now I will believe that Kent State was the most significant impetus in changing policy about the Civil- about the Vietnam war than any single incident. 40:19 SM: You are [inaudible] right on that one, because I can remember that even when I was a graduate student at Ohio State back and (19)71 and (19)72. By (19)73, [inaudible] changing- 40:31 RJ: That is right. 40:32 SM: The movement just [breath to indicate vanishing] 40:34 RJ: [inaudible] got elected, a Democrat, got elected governor for four years- 40:38 SM: Oh right, and then they voted the other guy back in. 40:40 RJ: And voted Rhodes back in. 40:41 SM: I know. 40:41 RJ: You see what I mean? That saying that. 40:43 SM: Amazing. 40:44 RJ: Yes, it was amazing, was not it? But again, and that conservative impetus has been with us, we have had only two Democratic presidents since then. And one of them was suspect, Jimmy Carter's suspect of having been a Democrat, okay, because of his very conservative policies. So then since that time, we have only had one a Democratic president since that time, in terms of a liberal elite, and of course, now history showing us that-that [inaudible] is not liberal. 41:12 SM: Very middle of the road. 41:13 RJ: That is exactly right. So then we see that. So then that era hit in there, and now who is keeping him in? The boomers, therefore, you would have to say a significant number of the boomers are in fact, keeping him in there, because that means then keeping him in keeping that-that conservative bent and look at this, there- the Newt Gingrich's and so on, and so forth. But I understand and that is what we got to do. But there is hope. The hope is, that is not either or, we got people all up and down the spectrum there in terms of say, their political bent. But in the final analysis, we would have to say that people made a fundamental shift in their, in their worldview, and that worldview became that we, that you must get, in effect, the bottom line in materialism. And I think that had to do again, with the impetus of the media, the media has infused that, the media is about selling. The media is not about in fact, say doing anything, but selling and getting people to buy. So then therefore, and as people saw, people want it. And therefore now they look at the conservative bent as having more money in my pocket and the liberal bent as taking money away from me and giving to someone else. So we went back to our media induced social Darwinists. You got to be more fit than the other person. And the way that you be more fit than the other person is the one that in fact, has all the marbles, who at the end of the game wins. 42:51 SM: Yeah, it is like, one of the terms that was used, I can remember when I was in college, and I was really proud of it is that we are the most unique generation in American history, we are going to change the world. We are going to make sure that everybody is equal, that racism is going to end. Of course, the sexism issue was something that was growing too with the women's, but it was the concept of equality, we cared about others, it was hopefully others beyond ourselves, yet, you had the enigma or the what some people might call hypocrisy of a slogan that was used in that time, and I can remember having it on my door at Ohio State University in Jones Tower- 43:32 RJ: Were you part of the problem or [inaudible] 43:34 SM: No, it was the Peter Max posters that were all over Ohio State at that time. And the slogan was "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance, we should come together, it will be beautiful." And that, that if you say that then some people will say, well, the boomers were no different than any other generation. They are into making money that you saw what happened in the (19)70s or the late (19)70s. And the (19)80s the "me" generation they were really only into "me," they were they were very selfish, making money getting a job, they were no different than any other group. This business about idealism and being different is a bunch of malarkey. So, I know that I have not- I still have the same ideals but I am kind of wondering if I am an out- if I am an outcast. Because money- 44:19 RJ: Good. If you an outlier, good. 44:20 SM: Money is money is not the most, never has been the most important thing in my life. And in but to some people it is. 44:27 RJ: Yes, it is, a whole lot of people. 44:29 SM: And that is what they say that the boomers as a whole were no different than any other group. They just wanted to raise families, make a lot of money have a car and a couple of cars and the whole works. What are your thoughts on the boomers being at that time saying that they are the most unique generation in American history? 44:43 RJ: I think they sold; I think a significant number of them sold out. Okay. And sold out to their, their principles of the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. Okay, and but I understand it and I can accept it because I have a fairly decent understanding of the process of socialization, and that is in terms of the conformity in the normal curve, okay in a normal distribution, and that most of the people began to follow what was being infused into them. We started to invite say, like, choose our majors based upon job prospects on college campus, we were not choosing our majors based upon what we wanted to do. And when you talk to people about what they what they were going to major in when they want to go to college, they said I want to I want to major in and probably businesses or something, something that is going to make me an awful lot of money, okay. They did not think about like, if you has asked people 30 years before then. And people would have said, "Well, I want to be a teacher," or "I want to be a social worker," or "I want to be an engineer," okay, something like-they did not want to be, they had to do what was going to make them a lot of money. So they were in fights, they coopted. And consequently, and I noticed that where else who logically would have believed that a whole institution that financed the home of boomer parents, the parents of boomers would have allowed without major hysteric the savings and loan association to be robbed completely dry. And then accept that the Resolution Trust arbitrarily now takes out their checks every month, 2 to $3, from every American who has a checking account or savings account, to pay for the savings and loan institution that was robbed, literally dry, to in fact, say pay for the money that was stolen from people and many people never got. But that was not a public outcry. Because the-the moral ethical belief made a tremendous shift to that whole notion of if you can get away of the 11th commandment is, do not get caught. That is where we are now. And that is the moral principle that we are operating on that now, I do not like that about the boomers. Okay, because now is nobody- I had an Iranian who worked for me about, oh, 10 years ago. And he said, you know, America is a funny place. Nobody cares what you do. Nobody is concerned about what your profession is or what you do. Everybody is concerned about whether or not you make a lot of money in it. Okay, and that is true. Nobody cares if you own like waste management now waste management company, if you will, in fact, waste management, which is just a garbage man in my in my here generation. If you waste management, you are going to be filthy rich, because that is a big issue now but that is all people concerned about, "Can I make money at it?" So therefore, like the youngsters who are in adult right now, and what we got ourselves to really think about this, now, the papers just reported the other day that, for example, drug abuse it uses up among the children of boomers significantly, okay, the drug policy office out of the office of the White House which ascended politically to a cabinet level position was in fact wiped out with the staff. That is why Lee Brown left and went back to Rice University. As a professor, he got a chair because he saw that Clinton was not doing anything. 48:34 SM: Down to 20 people, was not it? 48:35 RJ: Down to 20. 48:36 SM: 120 to 20. 48:37 RJ: That and no budget. They just had to put, they were coordinating and everybody else, it was nothing by the show and tell position. So then that goes along with the moral and ethical hierarchy that we have which the boom- now, the boomers are very tolerant of immorality. Because you got to just come to grips with that. The babies of boomers and the boomers are very tolerant of immorality, and they lack- the babies of boomers particularly, they do not have that work ethic that we had, that many of the boomers had or if you may the post-boomers, anti-boomers had. Okay, the generation the anti-boomers had, but they do not have that same work ethic. They want to make a fast buck at any way that they possibly can. 49:23 SM: Can you talk about the drug scene that the, what was happening in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, a Timothy Leary what his famous slogan there, "tune in to turn on turn out" or whatever it was. He said, so many of the boomers did that that they were kind of lacks. And so, the parents or the boomers today will say you cannot be judging us and our usage of drugs look at what your generation did, you think there is something? 49:49 RJ: I think there is a tolerance. You know, like, I see I see parents who know that their children are into drugs, and there is a certain resignation. That is going to happen. And it is not that they are alarmed about it like the parents of boomers would have been, they, the boomer parent is "I know what is going to happen." And "Well, my son and my daughter has a drug problem." And they kind of look upon it as a process through which they are going, they are going to go, and stages through which they are going to go. They just accept that as almost a rite of passage now. I do not see parent, I do not see most parents saying that, "Oh, Lord, I do not want my child to get into dru- Oh, my goodness, he is into drug or what have you. Well, you know, we are working with them and we are willing to spend $25,000, from the insurance company to send him or her for somewhere to dry out for 20, for 10 weeks or so or something like." They just for the middle class people, but in terms of for the less than middle class people, they see it as the one opportunity for making that buck. 51:00 SM: So that was in the intersection. That is why when you are looking at all of these issues, you just cannot just look at the issue [inaudible], you got to look at the economy again. You know, we have kind of the big sphere, that vision really causes these problems. Have you changed your opinion at all, say when I was a student at Ohio State University in (19)72, and in (19)96, and you change your opinions and all over the last 25 years toward boomers, you have taught a lot of students when you were fairly young professor when I had you I know back in the 28 or 29 it was [inaudible] Yeah. And you saw those students who were boomers and you saw many other boomers in the next 5 to 10 years that followed, and then you have also had the people of today. What are your thoughts on, I guess from-from a professor's point of view, you have seen them. You have seen them in class, but now students of all colors- what is your analysis of this these people? Have most of your students for example, have you been proud of most of your students? Have they gone on and lived up to the concept of you know, going on to education and making a career and what are your just your overall thoughts? 52:13 RJ: Ones that- I keep in contact with a with a number of them. And I have seen, it is a trend that most of them who thought they were going to work on college campuses and schools and things of this nature, social service types of job, use those positions to go into working with Xerox starting up their own consultancy firms moving into politics and things of this nature. And I do believe it has been power and money driven. Okay, I do not think that it has been altruistically driven, okay. As, now that is, that is one thing. I think it is still money and power driven. 53:03 SM: That is got to disappoint you, does not it? When you- 53:06 RJ: Well- 53:07 SM: Because when you teach in class, you are trying to extreme opposite. 53:10 RJ: Yes. But here is what I say. I think I understand reasonably well the whole socialization process. So it pleases me when I see someone like well, you remember Mac Stewart? 53:10 SM: Yes. 53:11 RJ: Okay. Now Mac, from what I heard is still at Ohio State is he is still working in student- well in University College as Assistant Dean, but I know other people who came through like him, who moved out and went in this- take Alex Moore. Alex got his degree and say, Student Personnel Administration, his PhD but went and started to work for boarding company in Switzerland. Last I heard he is in Ohio back in the international headquarters, in Columbus working for them. Now, if you take Carl Harshman, remember Carl Harshman? 54:00 SM: He was stocky. 54:01 RJ: Yes. 54:02 SM: Big stocky guy. 54:03 RJ: Yeah, well Carl Harshman has now an international consultancy firm and is a millionaire, and lives in a big exclusive area, and I am in touch with him frequently, you know. Carl it works in transitioning Japanese well I will say American owned say factories and what have you, for Japanese owned businesses. And he is coordinating that whole process of training workforces to move into say, for example, new products and everything with a big staff. He loves higher education and all that all together after working [inaudible] professor, and in fact, say like a vice president, but for Academic Affairs, at St. Louis University, and that is what he is doing. But I understand that okay, I understand it. It does not really disappoint me, I think because again, I am not so sure that some of these people, or Felicia Gaston got- do you remember Felicia? She got her, she went to [inaudible] got her degree, went to Ohio State got in student personnel and she has been with Xerox now almost 20 years. This stuff you see, I mean, and went way up the ladder to a regional vice president or something like that. Okay, so then it but that was the trend of boomers and a- the babies. Well, let us put it like this now. The babies are boomers’ children I am seeing in therapy now. Okay, they are angry as hell. The number one target of my therapy that I work with now is anger management and disruptive behavior. Okay, if they in fact are presenting as depressed or presenting as, say, with panic disorders or attention deficit hyperactive disorder, the one thing you can count on is that they are violent and angry. Okay, it does not matter what the babies are boomers now we are talking about the ones that are getting ready to go to college now. Okay, that those will be the babies of boomers. Right? 56:02 SM: Right. 56:02 RJ: Okay, so now they are in fact, they are typically identify as- white or Black- by their being extremely insensitive, object relationship oriented, not in terms of say human, but things. That is what I see now. 56:21 SM: Are they mad at their parents? 56:22 RJ: They are mad they would- some of them do not even know what that, but a lot of them are very mad. I have one anger management group on Saturday morning. And it runs the gamut from professional parent boomers or babies of professional parents to just the working mother. Okay, and the literature reports the same thing. And they are mad in terms of the idiographic, the specific- person specific ang- manage, say, anger, focus. The parents are very frequently a target of it. When you talk about nomographic, general nomothetic type of measures for them, they are it may run the gamut all the way from being angry about their future, to being angry about, say, for example, let us say about anger producing situations that are about getting along with peers. You see what I mean, provocation about getting along with peers, provocations about position- people in positions of authority, you know, they have just, have this profound sense. It is almost like it is a latent sense of jealousy that comes out in abject violence. 57:32 SM: Wow. 57:33 RJ: Okay, now, those are the those are the babies of boomers. And what is his name? Devin Bakker out at Cal- out of Colorado State University, he has found he has- he said, for example, that a co-presenting problem was generally now that is found with most people in therapy, [phone rings] whether it is depression or anxiety, or whatever, it is the issue of anger. Now, you have to have all the irrespective of where you go, there are anger issues in these schools that is tremendous. Getting back to the media, and getting back to the lack of nurturing types of parents that I am finding, okay. 58:17 SM: Which could be directly related to some of the qualities of the boomers so lack of commitment. 58:21 RJ: And, and the fact that the parenting role is unfair, see, they cognitively understand that "My dad is not here, he is not making money," or "My mom is not here, she is making money" and this type of thing. Or "My dad's not here, because, for example, my mom was doing her own thing, and she just got pregnant with me and there is no dad here." Or "My mom told my dad, I am you are going to keep me and I am going on about my way," or "I do not know who my dad is, I do not know who my mom is," or the grandmothers are raising the pre the parents of boomers are playing a significant role in raising the babies of boomers. 59:00 SM: I am seeing that too. 59:02 RJ: Yeah. 59:04 SM: It is uh- 59:05 RJ: Well, that is what I am saying that, for example, I think it is identity. It is an identity issue. And then we say we take it in targeted like that, then that means that we got to give them a sense of purpose. 59:19 SM: If you were to just say in they were the most unique generation, would you say they were most unique or they are no different than any other? 59:25 RJ: I do not think they really have that much different than any other in terms of the prolonged history in now and historical analysis. During this, this constricted contemporary, and I would almost have to say from the Industrial Revolution up to this cyberspace revolution or generation, I would say that they were adapting and are adapting to the way in which this unplanned let us say, ambience, in a global perspective, if you may wish the cyberspace is brought about, they are just inside being a part of that. So if you were to take the agrarian to the adult industrial and the industrial to the atomic and the atomic to the cybernetic, and if you were to take that, that group there from-from the what you will we just so happen to call it the boomers because, hey, what about if you made the Western expansionist if we want to do that, that was the whole movement that moved from go west young man, the [inaudible] concept from the agrarian to the industrial. So then you see, when we think about that, we could have called them something but we did not have the hook to put that on that the media gave us for the boomers that it has, and we did not have [inaudible] and we did not have other sociolog- sociologists, like that you see, and Max Weber, to have come by and given us these types of concepts to deal with. You see, so then that is what the conceptual incarceration we are in we are in fact, incarcerated in that concept. 1:01:03 SM: Good point. We are coming toward the end of this tape here. And then I am going to- we have another 30 minutes. 1:01:07 RJ: Yeah. Okay. 1:01:08 SM: Because of the um, we are going to get into some questions on Vietnam right now. You, I have been to the Vietnam Memorial three years ago now, I come down every Memorial Day now. I feel it is important for me to be there. I am trying to get a sense especially involved in this project, whether healing has really taken place, not only within the Vietnam [inaudible] population, but in the nation itself. Jan Scruggs wrote a book in 1982, the person who put together the Vietnam memorial, called To Heal a Nation. And so, I have looked at that I read that and a tremendous effort in terms of creating a non-political entity, where people can come and reflect it is the whole, you have been there, you have seen, the impact has on everybody, everybody, it affects them differently. They reflect them in some respects, as Jackson has said, they all reflect in somewhat of a different way, when they look at that wall. Their own- do you feel that the boomers are a generation that is still having problems with healing. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial did a great job of the veterans in some respects and families of veterans but do you [audio cuts]. Okay, here we go. 1:02:19 RJ: As I was saying that it may be in terms of why they were so inactive, is because if their parents were wealthy enough to give it give them, they were given everything they took so much for grant- they have been taken so much for granted. And if they were on if they were not, the social welfare system, gave them everything that they wanted, or they have insight, learned to deal with deviant ways of coping in society, that they are experts in dealing in deviancy. Think about it, you know, like, from the drug thing, to the prostitution, to the violence, to the gang banging and all of this stuff. These are deviant ways of coping with their pressures. To just simply actually-actually acquiesce to-to, to being a failure, to acquiesce being a failure is actually a deep deviant coping mechanism. [audio cuts] 1:03:32 SM: We just have to check on that, because your experience with [inaudible]. This might be seen- I only three more questions, and then we are done. 1:03:40 RJ: Okay, no problem. 1:03:40 SM: This may seem a repetitive question, but I think it is very important with the project I am working on again, that is why I am repeating it. Do you think it is possible to heal within a generation where differences in positions taken are so extreme? Is it important to try to assist in this healing process? Should we care and is it feasible? For example, during my many trips to the wall, I have been to several ceremonies of the veterans in the audience. Many of them have stated that they still hate Bill Clinton, they hate Jane Fonda based on the fact that they are wearing these badges that say "Jane Fonda bitch," they are all over the place. They hate those and protested the war and never gave veterans a royal welcome on the return to the mainland. The Wall was helping a magnificent way but the hate remained for those on the other side. Should an effort be made to assist in this healing beyond the wall, your thoughts? Are you optimistic or pessimistic? And basically, I guess what I am trying to get at. I know it is impossible to 100 percent deal as one person told me, is Dr. Silver, who is a psychologist up in Coatesville. He said “There is a difference between forgiving and healing. Healing, we can know a lot of veterans are healing from the war, but they cannot forgive.” So, do not misinterpret that the fact that they cannot forgive Jane Fonda or Bill Clinton means that they are not healing. You agree with that premise? That or do you agree that the efforts that the healing process should be trying to get beyond the need to forgive Bill Clinton because he was a young man at that time. And he obviously made have done something wrong in their eyes, but to constantly use hate someone; hate is a strong word. 1:05:12 RJ: Well, I-I do not believe that healing can take place without forgiving. Forgiving is atonement and spiritually, the only way that you can find say like, and this is psychological and spiritual, the only way that you can heal, which means to become whole is to, in fact, say like forgive, where you are giving the past a different meaning. As long as you are holding on to a past that has been self-hurting to you, and a past that has been troubling to you, then you cannot heal. And if you decide and the only person actually who can bring about that healing is oneself, one has to learn the process of change and the process of healing. And one of those things is that one has to in fact, let the past go. Do not allow the past to control your present, then you are in fact being healed. Okay, like for example, a good [inaudible] metaphor is if you allow us, you have an abrasion and it scabs, that happened in the past, it is in the process of healing. But if you in fact, allow yourself to pull that scab off, it takes it back to where it was, it was you re-hurt it again. So then the skin cannot, the scab cannot fall away, cannot harden to allow the skin to re- to become whole and is one. Okay, so this is what has been happening. I think with a lot about Vietnam, we think it is a it is a destination, it is a journey, the healing is okay, and I am in that process. The petroleum that drives that you to that journey is forgiveness. 1:07:06 SM: It is interesting, that brings up the whole idea that this is such a complex subject, that even when we talk about healing, the definitions are different. You as a professional, this other person is professional. 1:07:17 RJ: It does not surprise me because in my judgment, European men have a difficult time dealing with spiritual concepts, unless they are theologians. 1:07:29 SM: People will ever trust elected leaders again after the debacle of Vietnam and Watergate [inaudible] stress what effect is this having on the current [audio blip] it gets back to my question with Senator Muskie, and the fact that I can remember reading something that if you cannot trust in life, you have got to trust someone, you cannot, if you do not- 1:07:48 RJ: That is right- 1:07:48 SM: You are not going to be successful in life- 1:07:50 RJ: Which is true. If you cannot trust. 1:07:50 SM: In the long run. But there is a lot of you know, I still have that problem. I am very, not what I lot of people I trust, I mean- But positions of authority, it is always seems to be about power, its control, its takeover. It is never it is jealousy. It is you know, and I know, it is- that is part of what being a person is-is the politics of life. I know that for a fact that whenever you get into a certainly an institution of higher education, and certainly in the political reason it is and then after, and then as most boomers have done, they have grown up at a time when they saw their-their leaders assassinated, they saw political the nation come apart. They saw divisions that were so wide. And then then of course, Watergate just added on top of that you cannot trust the enemies list, you know, people looking into private lives. And you will see that extended into today with almost a George Orwell, George Orwellian philosophy of (19)84, that nothing is private, nothing is sacred anymore. Your whole private life is now on computers that can be bought. It is just an extension of the Nixon enemies list almost. You see a little bit of in the White House with the appointment, some of his people taking the Republican names, even though it may have been a mistake, someone was doing it. So, I am asking that basically, this whole concept of trust. We see amongst our college students today that only about 15-17 percent, according to last studies of entering freshmen are have any interest in politics or actually to trust any leaders yet there is interest in volunteerism is over 85 percent. So, on the one hand, we see students will obviously care about others because they are doing volunteer work. They care about others yet, maybe they do not see the sense that they themselves can be empowered. 1:09:35 RJ: Well, [crosstalk] they do see that they can be empowered, but the type of empowerment is obviously altruistic and not financial, and not and not receiving their empowerment is not giving which is, in my judgment, more probably more peaceful, more subtly and more if you want to talk about identity is more is more is coming and goes with whom you are more. And that you are defining yourself by what you are doing by using your talents to in fact help somebody else. 1:10:20 SM: That is happening on amongst today's college students. 1:10:23 RJ: Well, that is great, that is really great at that level, are definitely say that that is admirable, and probably in terms of the healing process of a generation, and the babies of boomers healing, maybe they are, in fact, say healing themselves. And in the process, maybe the boomers in their senior years will emulate what their children are doing in terms of reconciling. And actually, if you may, atoning by letting it go, what they have been driven by-by all these years for all these years. 1:10:57 SM: How do you respond on the fact that today's college students still do not vote? They do not vote. Boomers do not vote in large numbers. And boomers are the ones that are thought to have the 18 year old vote, the old slogan was a for going off to war, then we have to be able to vote, we are going to die in war at 18, then we can vote at 18. 1:11:16 RJ: Okay. 1:11:16 SM: Of course (19)68 was the first year that 18-year-olds could vote. So yet but, statistics show that boomers and their kids are both not voting. And the to use Dr. Benjamin Barber, who is- 1:11:27 RJ: Okay but look at it like this. But then what are politicians doing about voter registration, motor-motor voter registration, have you noticed they do not want it? Why? Because they- 1:11:37 SM: Jackson does, because- 1:11:37 RJ: Wait a minute but that is not, but he is a different type of politician, he is an altruistic one. That professional politician does not want that to happen. Okay, because they know if the people if those boomers who are not about the voting vote and have AIDS to the [inaudible], they tend to also be against the established politicians. Okay, and established politician know that that is a no-no, you do not want that type of person, even to vote in the poll, you want that opinionated, if you may, either-or type person in there, you do not want the thinking person in there, the boomers, the children or boomers, therefore probably going to register more as independents, rather less and less as Democratic or Republican, which is, in fact, again, the lifeblood of democracy. So, then what they are in fact, say perhaps going toward, and incidentally, not trusting the political process, maybe will be the existing the status quo political process may be is the impetus that is going to change it. 1:11:43 SM: [Inaudible] since the (19)60s and still continues here in the (19)90s. 1:12:27 RJ: [agreement] 1:12:32 SM: How did the youth in the (19)60s and early (19)70s change your life and attitudes toward that in your 20s when you were teaching? You saw some of them, you saw some in your classes, and then of course, you have seen them now, throughout the years. Have they changed your life in any way, the boomers you have come in contact with? 1:13:06 RJ: Yeah, they gave me more hope. They did. Okay, when I think about it, but the majority of them gave me hope. It was especially when I was teaching in predominantly white schools. They gave me more hope about-about the races actually doing things together in a common end. Okay, they gave me more hope in the sense of saying that race or that quality probably transcended race when it came down to mentoring. Okay, I definitely saw that. And also, incidentally, that is why because you remember that course I had up at the prison, remember? 1:13:53 SM: Oh, great course. 1:13:53 RJ: Yeah. Okay. So then, and I am still doing some of that right now. But I remember when we had all of the young white blonde girls going up there to [Inaudible] Reformatory, which was one of the big prisons there. 1:14:06 SM: Tiffany Brian? I forget her name. We went with me. I forget her name Bitty O'Brian? 1:14:09 RJ: Bitty O'Brien. I remember her. 1:14:11 SM: She was a shrimp. 1:14:12 RJ: Yeah, and- 1:14:12 SM: Four foot six! 1:14:13 RJ: -Susan Shillman. And all of them. You know, they all went up there. So and then we were seeing that, that they had a sense of wanting to do something. But now that was, and now we also had to take into consideration that I was blinded. I did not know what was going on over the School of Business. I did not know what was going on in school of education. I mean, not education, but engineering and that type of thing I was dealing with because here is the other thing, Ohio State implemented while I was there, they implemented the early experiencing program that before you could declare your majors for the undergraduate, you had to have two years of volunteerism before you could declare your major they were just implementing that, okay. So consequently, that whole thing when you think about that, that sense of hope that I think that they the sense of commitment that they had, that they wanted to do something. But now guess what. The people, many of those people decided to get out of education, many of them decided to get out of social work. Why? Because it was not paying enough money. 1:15:18 SM: Right. 1:15:18 RJ: But now on the other hand, the enroll and we even start disseminating, we started on, say, actually dismantling colleges of education. And now we see we do not have any teachers. So now we are having to re- get a resurgence in education, again, resurgence in social work, and so forth, okay. And people now a want those jobs and want those majors. I had a child in here the other day to tell me that he was really considering which is very African American young a very smart, what have you, and his dad killed his mom. And that is one of the issues he is dealing with about six years ago, and he is still dealing with it, but he wants to be a teacher. You know, I mean, and that is unusual to find a child now that says, "I want to be a teacher" or "I want to be a minister," or that "I want to be, I want to major in criminal justice" or something. Everybody is, "I want a lot of money. I want to be a doctor, I want to be a lawyer." You see what I mean? 1:16:15 SM: Right. 1:16:16 RJ: Even my two children, remember that? Lisa is I told you is an MD at Merck now, she just moved up there last month and from-from Glaxo Wellcome. And Marcus is completing his MBA, with a baby then, is completing his MBA JD at Georgetown, one more year. Okay, look at what they chose. 1:16:35 SM: That was the son that I met two years ago, he was going to go to Berkeley or Stanford. What happened to? 1:16:39 RJ: He is at Georgetown. 1:16:40 SM: Oh, he is at Georgetown. 1:16:40 RJ: Yeah. 1:16:41 SM: Oh, okay. 1:16:41 RJ: Yeah, he is going, his MBA. He has finished in more year, he will have an MBA and JD. 1:16:48 SM: Wow. Two more questions, and I swear we are done. 1:16:53 RJ: Okay. 1:16:55 SM: Again, this might be repetitive when the best history books are written on the growing up years for the boomers saying 25 to 50 years from now, what will be the overall valuation? I think you have covered that in what you have said before, but as a history major, political science, which was my double major as an undergrad, one thing I was always taught is that the best history books on any era or take about 50 years. History books right now on World War Two, [inaudible] the best ones on World War Two are now. And so, we are only like, 25 years out from that era, that juncture there is a lot of books that are written, you feel that-that is, it is, it is too early? 1:17:28 RJ: 50 years? 1:17:29 SM: Yeah. But do you think? 1:17:30 RJ: Is it too early now to say it is some good lookout? 1:17:33 SM: Yeah. 1:17:33 RJ: Well, I do not think that is really, we have not run a full course, I agree. That I really think that is, you know, because we almost got what would be considered modernity and postmodernity within that group. I mean, that group right there. So now with the books that is going to come out and look at the transition from that, in terms of modernity, and postmodernity, which will probably be another 20 odd years, those are going to be the ones that will give us the best account of this generation, okay. The boomer generation, I think it has not- certain conclusive, let us say positions cannot be taken now. Because this in gestation, I mean that the children will say a lot about how successful the parents will be. The children's success on the children's behaviors is going to make it is going to give people the empirical data about what was apparently collectively happening with the parents. 1:18:27 SM: And [inaudible], could you comment on the generation gap in the (19)60s and early (19)70s and the generation gap if you sense one between the boomers and generation X. Obviously, I could talk all day, [phone rings] this generation gap when I was there. When I was a young person, I can remember this taking that sociology class at SUNY Binghamton before I arrived on the Ohio State campus, to see Wright Mills' book, White Collar, talking about fact that the IBM mentality of everybody with a top hat, with a suit, with a car out in front, the [inaudible] in the house, that was what we did not want to be. Because remember, that was when the Multiversity. I think it was- 1:19:14 SM & RJ: Barker's book. 1:19:15 SM: -Coming out there. And the revolt was that we were not going to be carbon copies of what the university or what society wanted us and we are all going to go our different ways. We are going to challenge the status quo. And that was obviously the tension between the generation, my generation and my parents’ generation. And now you see you I have raised a few things about tensions between the boomers and big things on Social Security. Every but thing's being written now that stayed in the (19)30s. Because there was an ongoing war. We have had people on our campus from [inaudible] to third millennia wars, alarming today's college students about the upcoming war on Social Security between boomers and today's children. I mean, they are saying a war is coming even before the war has happened. I do not like that terminology, "war." But I do not know. But would you- would you agree that the generation gap is any different now than it was back in the (19)60s? 1:20:14 RJ: Yeah, I think that is a very good point. I think it was on less serious issues back in the (19)60s, probably we thought that they were serious then. But in the (19)60s is a generation gap was pertaining to things like about whether you are going to go to college, who has the authority, and to make these decisions, and that older people out of touch in a more defiant- it was almost is we have an and say, diagnosis, we have an oppositional defiant disorder, then it was a more of an oppositional defiant disorder. But now, I think is structurally, I think that was what was happening now is that the very structure on which society is built, it is causing a rift in the generation in terms of, if you may, the issue of entitlement, okay. If you think about the issue of entitlement, what am I entitled to at 65, and-and going in my senior years, that my, my daughter will be entitled to or not entitled to and her- and my-my oldest daughter- and her children, she is a boom, a well, just yeah, she was born in (19)64. So then, in terms of her child, what will her child be entitled to? And then in terms of the workforce, you see, the older group, the older the-the boomers are going to be phasing out of the workforce. And the struc- and then with the global economy, and that issue coming in there, and what do we do with our older people and people in need? I think we are talking structural issues here. We are not we are not talk- it is analogous to, "Oh mom and dad, how late should I stay out" or "Should I in fact, engage in sex?" Now, there is analogous to that, to now it is much more serious. And that is, "what do you think about an abortion? As opposed to, "Should you not," as opposed to "Should I pit?" or "Should I be going steady?" Now the issue is, you see what I mean? 1:22:24 SM: Yep. 1:22:25 RJ: What should I be doing? What do you think about abortion as a political issue? People are now being, you see what I mean, and that this is a generational thing, or better yet not so much about what am I going to do in terms of my career, but whether or not we should in fact, be in allowing immigrants to come into the country. It used to be just, hey, you know, America, come on over. Right. But now we got much more structural issues here. I thought that-that is hitting that the infrastructure, that is actually having an impact about what our boomers going to do, as opposed to that children are going to do. And then how will we sus- how will we sustain this, the Social Security system, if, for example, we are outsourcing the making of Nike shoes to Malaysia, and we do not have those people in the in the Social Security system paying in anymore to take care of the boomers who are in fact getting older. 1:23:20 SM: I had not even thought of that. And I know about the social security issue. But you know, paying all the wages of people outside of this country. And this money could be coming into the United States, and that could be produced here. And that would help the divisions that could not [crosstalk] 1:23:35 RJ: That is exactly right but I think I am seeing something structurally happening in five years, the states will, in fact, have to, in fact, come up with- I noticed this in Wisconsin last, week before last. We saw an awful lot of young Black males working in hotels, you do not see that around here. I mean, cleaning up and everything, because Thompson out there is getting, in order to get certain types of benefits work- you got Workfare out there. Everybody is working, doing something in Wisconsin. 1:24:05 SM: Tommy Thompson. 1:24:05 RJ: Yeah. 1:24:06 SM: [Inaudible] writing a book out too right now. Is that Megatrends? 1:24:07 RJ: Okay, yeah, you know, he was being considered, he was not ready to be considered for vice presidents, but he is apparently doing something out there. His administration is, and that is what Clinton has supposedly, you know, tailored this thing. But now when you start thinking about the global economy, and then you start talking about the workforce growing, okay. I mean, workforce dwindling, and then outsourcing your-your jobs to, to whomever to the global economy. And that you know, like, I forget the name in his book, but you know, like we got we are going to have producers of information, and then we going to with the internet and everything- Maybe it is Megatrends. A female wrote it? 1:24:13 SM: Nope. Well, yeah. Male and female. The husband wife combination. 1:24:25 RJ: Okay, right. Okay. I forget who they are, they have written. Yeah, but you get where I am coming from. That is that right now you see, we are going to have different categories of who is going to be producing information, who is going to be the transportation to get the product to where it wants to go, and who is going to be the person to manufacture, and who is going to be the person to sell. That was what we got to do. And so when you think about this, think about this, at the bottom line is profit, you going to the cheapest person every time. So then, but what that does is unless you would have these centers, these-these type of centers or focus centers, you were going to get left out of the loop. And I think that is, what is getting ready to happen to the children of boomers, unless we in fact, began to reconceptualize it. But in the final analysis, we run a possible core shutdown of the whole thing. Because if the children of boomers are not paying into Social Security, then we got a problem. They do not have anything to support the people who are in fact seniors and dying out, and then they will not in fact, say like when they get a chance to move on until that, there is nobody to support them. 1:25:59 SM: It is pretty scary. 1:26:00 RJ: Yeah, it is. 1:26:01 SM: It was got to be addressed. It was got to be more vision, talk about the quality of vision. In a political, I am like, okay, we are talking, spending at least up to five, seven years down the road. Nine years? 1:26:14 RJ: It is going to be a major problem. 1:26:15 SM: (20)07 depending on the politician. 1:26:17 RJ: [inaudible] 1:26:20 SM: This is my last question. And again, the youth of the of that era believe they could have impact on society and government policy in the (19)50s (19)60s and (19)70s, Vietnam [inaudible] legislation. Certainly, they were involved in nonviolent protests. And the many movements, whether it be the women's movement, the environmental movement, and the-the gay and lesbian movement, the Native American movement, even the Hispanic movement at that time, and all were thrusting around that era. Although some of the critics of say the civil rights movement is not of that era, it was way before into the (19)50s. But why is society resisting this today? And why in your own words, were the sons and daughters of boomers feel less confident about their ability to have an impact on society, less desire and seemingly less opportunity? Am I wrong in assuming this question? [Inaudible] of opportunity, and by saying, less desire? I think we have probably gone over all of this already. But it is, it is something that is plaguing me. And because I- am I wrong and assuming that this is even a problem? 1:27:23 RJ: You are, I think you are onto something, I do not see the same commitment that they can bring about if I am understanding, that they can bring about change and wanting to get involved as readily as their parents were because now, we do have, we have a resurgence, if you may, of the media projection is one of individualism. The need is one of collective action. That is what we have, that again, creates another ambivalence. There is a need for people to collectively and altruistically be involved in things. And the, and the notion is that if I can acquire it is kind of a cybernetic social Darwinism, again, that, for example, the fastest growing businesses in the world right now in the United States anyway, are home-owned businesses, okay. And so therefore, we believe that by empowering people now, is to have a laptop and a modem. And a lot of people operating under the notion that if you have a laptop and a modem, you can in fact, work at home and do whatever it is that you want to do. So, if you got your inner sanctum there within your home, etc., you do not have to be concerned about anything else. You outsource that to somebody else to be concerned about. That is what the notion is all about. Outsourcing is the concept right now. I do not want this problem, get a private, privatize. Get somebody else to take care of it for you. Okay, and that is what our children- our children are more attuned to using me now. I mean, the boomer's children are more attun- they are not afraid to come to council. Some of them are resistant, boys tend to resist more than girls and etc. But they understand using that outsource of information they are not- they understand using agents. I mean, a good example of that, look at all these mega dollar contracts, basketball contracts that these guys got in this last year. They do not know beans about but how to go down and sort of jump the ball up, slam dunk, but they got these. They got these shrewd lawyers who are in fact working to get their money through these guys talent, outsourcing, you got some you got some talent, outsource it, get the person get your talent person and go ahead and get it. 1:29:56 SM: The term I [inaudible] "outsource-outsource." Is that a terminology of the (19)90s? 1:30:01 RJ: Yes. Outsourcing is what is turning DC around, man. Here is what it is okay. Like it used to it used to be the whole notion of make or buy, make or buy decision when you in business, do you make the product or do you buy? All right, a bakery. Do you, if you and say you own giant, giant food stores right over here, do you make this cheesecake, or do you buy it from somebody else to make it a [inaudible] or let a contract? See, here is the whole notion now. Everybody got a contract. Okay, now, just like another biggest purveyor of this concept is the Pentagon got the biggest budget in the federal government. But guess what, the Pentagon does not make one thing or manufacture one thing. Everything is outsourced to, to contracts. 1:30:51 SM: Senator Proxmire, remember? 1:30:54 RJ: Yeah. 1:30:54 SM: The whole fleece award or whatever [crosstalk] 1:30:55 RJ: Yeah, that is right. Everything is so now this down to this level right now, okay. And so forth. My son, musician, right. I mean, he also is into, he has his own band, and he is going into production, he was not going to entertainment law. Now, he has a couple of contracts on Department of Interior to put on concerts and parks in the DC area. Here, well he is doing one tonight and one tomorrow, everything is outsourced. When you in fact, say like need now, do you know one of the biggest businesses that are going on? Not owning a temporary agency to provide temporary accountants, you can provide temporary home care for your-your aging parents, you can provide temporary, a secretarial service, now you can do provide temporary anything. So, then the people do not have to run human resource departments anymore. You have not seen it probably at Westchester? Nobody, in fact, has a janitorial college. I mean, a university around here, or this building. This building does not have a maintenance person, it has, it outsources, it to a company that provides it. 1:31:13 SM: Yeah, that was what happened at Westchester. 1:31:54 RJ: Yeah, that was what happened at the university of DC. They do not have the same char-person anymore, taking care of who was on the staff. You do not have that overhead for the fringe benefits and all the rest of the stuff and you do not have to deal with unions. 1:32:22 SM: That is another thing that the children have to deal with. Because though even Sears Roebuck is hiring only part time people as opposed to full time. 1:32:28 RJ: Yeah. 1:32:29 SM: And all the money you are going to make is going to be based on what you sell. 1:32:33 RJ: Right, commission. 1:32:34 SM: And the dead days for all business. And then, but not giving coverage, medical coverage to employees, is one of the basic incentives for doing this, it is about cost saving. 1:32:44 RJ: That is right [inaudible]. 1:32:47 SM: I have done here with the exception of the fact is, do you feel you have made an impact on American society? This question will be asked to all participants in the interview process. And as a follow up, do you feel you have made a positive impact in the lives of boomers and the members of the current generation called generation X? Some people said, you know, I cannot [inaudible]. Well, I will let you answer that. Just-just your own thoughts. 1:33:12 RJ: Well, by virtue of my former students, standing contact with me, the feedback that I get [audio cuts]. I fortunately am in a good position to get feedback from my people that I have been in contact with, I still stay in contact, believe it or not, I have a couple of youngsters that I was dealing with-with an Upward Bound project back at University of Illinois before I even got my PhD, that still stay in contact with me and attest to they are having gotten some from the way I operated and the way I operated, inspired them. I have undergraduates from when I was an academic advisor at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville of a few people whose still contact me, one young lady call me recently she got a doctorate and when she came into town. She was here for I think, a funeral. And she called me and I had her as an undergraduate student, and she was still talking about the way I operated as an academic advisor in these- one of the ideas developed a concept called intensive academic advisement for high risk students. When I was at Southern Illinois, at Edwardsville and she was talking about how that feel, how that helped her. And I was home for a class reunion, for my high school classroom. And a lady approached me at church and said that two of her sisters yet talk about me as being their academic advisors and both of them are very successful. And now and when they were there working on their, on their degrees at Southern Illinois Edwardsville about and when we were introduced in church that Sunday, she said that she heard my name and she wanted to come up and say to her sisters have told her about me. Now that is almost 30 years ago, right? And then of course you is an attest- you are in attestment to that. I think I have made a difference. Carl Harshman is an attestment to that, that I think I ma- made a difference. Mac Stewart is in attestment. Everly Bank, do you remember her? 1:35:33 SM: Was she there when-? 1:35:34 RJ: She was a heavyset young lady. She were- 1:35:37 SM: Was she there in (19)72? 1:35:38 RJ: Yeah, she was kind of quiet. And but she was kind of obese. She went on and went to University of Minnesota and gotten a PhD. And Everly has been at about 10 different university in the last nine years. She has gone away to California someplace now, but just loved the universi- Jackson State University where she was vice president of this type of thing. And she has I have kept in contact with her over the years, you know, and Bill Pickard, I do not know if you remember him. Bill Pickard was working on his doctorate there at Ohio State at that time. And he went into business and owns a couple of McDonald's in Cleveland, Ohio, and another one in Detroit. And get ready for this. Bill is the state chairman of the Republican Party for the state of Michigan, very wealthy guy now, right. He is in contact with me, right. [laughter] This I mean, he is extremely wealthy. I mean, I am not saying he just got a little money. 1:36:40 SM: Right. 1:36:41 RJ: He is making buku dollars, okay. So, then that is, that is how I get some of the feedback then around here. Since I have been in this area. A lot. I mean, hund-, literally hundreds of people who have gotten their degrees out of our department at-at-at UDC, and a Master's in Counseling Psychology, they are now in working in DC government, heads of departments, the chief of police in, for example, chief of police in New Orleans, is William Pennington, he got his degree out of my department, I worked personally with him setting up some programs and things when he was here over the juvenile division, right. And now he is chief of police in New Orleans. So then in that regard, and he got a lot of outreach, and he got the community policing thing going on here, you know, that type of thing. So yeah, I think I have made a difference. 1:37:36 SM: That is very important. And I can admit, the fact that I am sitting here that you have made a difference in my life, because I say, well, you know, when we were-were, I think the best thing that ever happened to me was when I broke my arm before I came to Ohio State and had to start late, remember I was supposed to start in the fall. And I was supposed to have, I think [inaudible] Silverman, I think supposed to be my advisor, but because I came in January, you became my advisor. And I will never forget some of the meetings we had during this. But I can never forget some of the meet- [audio cuts]. I am not sure where we were here, but you look at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, about the healing process. Do you feel that? From your own perspective, not only someone who's a scholar and intellect, a professor, but someone who has seen a lot of people and lived through that era of the (19)60s and (19)70s, the Vietnam War. Do you sense that the healing has taken place within the Vietnam veterans, and then within the nation itself between those who are for or against the war, the tremendous divisions that happened in the country at that time? 1:38:46 RJ: Now, we were saying and as I was saying, you know, like, I think the last term I use when the conceptual incarceration in the boomers, okay, and the same thing is true with respect to the Vietnam issue and healing. It will heal. Right now, the motives for it is not healing by people who control the media is that it is still, it raises a lot of controversy. So, then people in the media go after things that are and book publishers go after things where people are still struggling to get the healing done, cause that pain will cause them to pursue some remedy. Like you were mentioning a man who did not make the eye contact, that was a negative coping antidote that they have had, well, let us say interpersonal social skills, it is an antidote that they have had to develop probably to keep their pain down, okay. And it they have very idiosyncratic reasons for not looking at people and so forth. Now there are people who are hustling the Vietnam War thing. I still I mean, the memory of the other Vietnam War thing is still being hustled by a lot of people. And you got to understand this is a capitalistic society, we always talk about this being a democratic society. I believe that when Abraham Lincoln said in the Emancipation Proclamation, and that he was going to give everybody 40 acres and a mule that was not just for [inaudible] folk. What that was, is that everybody has really believed in a way, and I certainly believe that, when you do not get your 40 acres and mule that is promised to you in the form of a degree and a job and a, two hot, two cars with a chicken in the pot and this type of thing, people going to figure out a way to get that 40 acres and the mule, you understand what I am saying? So therefore, we have to look at some of the motives behind keeping the Vietnam War, as in fact, say aroused, arousing and as provocative as it is, were there not the media, the healing would take place. Like for example, in suppose we have Armistice Day parade of 1946. In New York, everybody still remembers that, that brought closure to when the boys came home, you remember that concept? There is a concept, when the boys came home, that brought closure to World War Two. But the fact, but if we did not have the television, the immediacy of the television, how many stories have been made even the whole doggone thing about that the guise of Forrest Gump of Forrest Gump was a takeoff on the Vietnam War, and the whole process of healing, and so forth. You just name it, you got so many different movies, and so many type books and everything. People are hustling that concept, okay. So then everything in America is about capitalism, find a way to capitalize upon. If you cannot, and a lot of people are driven by this, and this is a little dirty secret that we do not, in fact, say like, bring up. But any doggone thing that we do in this country, there is only one motive that a whole lot of people have in doing it. And that is their hustling. 1:42:09 SM: Making a buck. 1:42:10 RJ: Making a buck. Now, let us go back to whether or not- I have been down to the wall, and I went down to the wall with a group of people from home. That is the only other, that is the only time everyone that comes very [inaudible]. And the reason we went down there is because I had several friends who came to visit, they wanted to see the wall. And we knew some people who were killed. And so we wanted to see if we could find their names, which we did. And yes, so therefore it is very moving. It provokes in you, it arouses any emotion within you. But in arousing of the emotion, just like all memorials, that is what they are supposed to do. They are supposed to make you remember. And so then some people have discovered, just as people had discovered with respect to, some people have even discovered with respect to the China thing is it called the Turner Diaries, is the guy who wrote the book with respect to the whole thing about terrorism, and they believe that Timmons- Timothy McVeigh read this book, and this guy is a professor- 1:42:17 SM: I think it is Turner Diaries, that is right. 1:43:06 RJ: The Turner Diar-, okay, everybody got a motive. Why would you want to write a book like that? You see, you want to write a book like that because it sells. Okay, there could be no other real motives. I mean, so then you got to, and why does the publishing company publish a book like that, because it sells. It has no redeeming value. So, we got a lot of stuff out here, that is that is and the boomers are halfway responsible for this. Because the boomers do believe in this, obviously, they have been coopted into believing it. And that is, if it is in fact, about so called free speech. And if it is, in fact, a marketable commodity, you do it. But there are a lot of marketable commodities out here, that we are, in fact, say like, probably going down a blind alley on, that we need to begin to take a look at a little bit more. So, but now, as long as we have the time, the immediacy of the internet and the immediacy of let us say the cyberspace it is going to be very difficult healing the- this thing for the next 20 odd years or 20 or 30 year, but I think Senator Muskies point was very well taken. We are still fighting the Civil War. We are still fighting the revolutionary war in this country, okay, this type of thing. So that healing has never occurred, I mean, has never completely taken shape. Okay, and you know, there is one book out that has said, and turns that the Hare Krishnas of all people wrote "Dope Incorporated." Have you ever seen that book? 1:44:55 SM: No. 1:44:56 RJ: Okay, well, anyway, it came out about 25 years ago, and they said in no uncertain terms that Great Britain was one of the major problems, in terms- and documented it pretty well- of the major reasons why we had such a drug problem in this country, I mean a drug problem this country and Great Britain, while it does have a drug problem, not as bad as here. And they actually did some-some research to show this, okay, but now the point is, so now that means about what I mean there I am simply saying that America, Great Britain has suffered in the US of A and got it was fight and all over the country now, that it does not commit any major troops or anything like that. You see what I mean? So, they are still fighting the Revolutionary War by in fact, one analysis, allowing the US of A to in fact, go around the world and police the world, fuck them. 1:45:46 SM: Yeah, good point. Going to make sure this is working here. [audio cuts] What are your thoughts on these former leaders of the left who have now totally condemned their past, are writing books like Cora Witts and [Peter] Collier, who decided that what they did in the past was totally wrong. And so, they have written books like "Destructive Generation," basic, condemning anybody that was ever involved in the left in the movement. And we have seen, I have seen quite a few of these books coming out recently. It is part of the, I guess, a good way of attacking the boomers in that era, and those who are involved in those types of issues. 1:46:25 RJ: Well, but I think it is also a part of becoming, if you may, going from one stage of the realization stage into the examination stage it is a process of growing old. It happens that people think back and reflect on things that they have done. So psychologically, what is happening there is there is a kind of a catharsis that is going on, cleaning out one's mind, giving it a different giving some things that one has done, it is a kind of a repentance, okay. I do not think that it can ever be helped. I mean, as Muhammad Ali said, great philosopher, a man who thinks the same way at 50, as he did at 20, has lost 30 years of his life. Okay, so then in that regard, I think it is it is impossible for one not to completely alter one's thoughts, by virtue of the process of living is a process of change, and one who invite things identically and does ident- well, if you think identically the way that you did at 20, if you do at 50, as you will at 50, then obviously, you going to act the same way. But if you alter that, and then so then therefore, some people are feeling that same pain that we are talking about that some of the people from Vietnam have experienced, they [inaudible] for documenting it, now I am not against people writing books, but I do know that there are some people who do not let things die, because, for example, they are hustling, okay. And there are some people who do it for a legitimate healing purpose. And that book that that person is writing probably is-is beneficial to other people who are still feeling the pain, because they do not have the medium to say it. So when they read it, they can, therefore cathart themselves, they can vicariously cathart. 1:48:22 SM: Good point there, how am I trying to hustle with this book. 1:48:24 RJ: That is okay. [Inaudible] 1:48:26 SM: The basic premise I have in this book is, I had not even thought about that I just want to do something to create better understanding, where you get a wide variety of perspectives, and to not be judgmental toward any individual that I am speaking to, is to let the others read these interviews, and let them judge to know that people are still thinking about it trying to create a better understanding between those who are for and against the war. Also, to try to understand where conservative liberals think today and how they are somewhat judgmental toward an entire generation. Where in reality, there is much more, you can never generalize anything, because it is a very complex issue- 1:49:05 RJ: That is right. 1:49:06 SM: -As everything is. What I am trying to do here in this next segment is to just give you some names of some individuals who were obviously well known to all boomers, they may not be known to some of our gen X people. But just some basic comments on your thoughts, whether you feel these people were positive or negative influences in America. And also secondly, what your thoughts might be in terms of how boomers may look at these individuals, not only then and now, the first two are Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda. 1:49:37 RJ: Again, from one perspective, they, they were very important during the early (19)70s, and so forth. But now, they tend to add credence to my hypothesis that we are, in fact driven by the buck. Because especially Miss Fonda, who has married one of the richest men in the country and one of the most powerful men in the world, and so forth. And she has all of her little mechanisms- she is selling her name. She is, that is her hustle, okay. So then so then therefore, I do not hear her talking, she may be using her money I therefore I cannot say she may be using her money to support social causes, rather than her making trips to Vietnam and places like this. She could very well be doing that. I do not know. But demonstrably now what I see her doing all the time is in the ballpark eating ice cream with Ted Turner. So then, and I have incidentally, I have one of her treadmills in my house. Okay, which is a non-motorized one. So I think it was a good treadmill. I like it is somebody telling me my doctor was saying one thing about Jane Fonda's treadmill is that they do not have any motor to break down them. And that was absolutely right, it was a darn good investment. So then I do have that. But now and Hayden is now doing his political thing. Is that right? In California, 1:51:01 SM: He is going to be at the convention this next week as a delegate for California. 1:51:04 RJ: Okay, fine. So then he decided that he was going when we, as a child, you act as a child, and when you become an adult, you throw those childish things away. So, then I got to say that I that does not surprise me. For a person who is rational, I do not expect that they would not fight, c'est la vie. Hayden would be more of an example of a person who, in fact, in my judgment, decided to keep his-his cars out for public scrutiny. It is a little bit difficult when Jane Fonda marries for example, as I say, somebody like Ted Turner, but I do not know what they do behind the scenes. See, I just do not know that. And when she is out front with marring him, and then all of a sudden, she retreats, apparently, I do not keep up with her daily itinerary, okay, so I cannot say. 1:51:54 SM: How about Lyndon Johnson? 1:51:56 RJ: Lyndon Johnson will always be remembered with a positive legacy, in my judgment, in terms of giving the little guy a shot, okay. And I think that he will singly in history go down as a president, to have done more to try to give the African America before we had all the other minority- a shot at a piece of the pie. I think he will go down in history as being a great politician as well, there is no question about it. He was a great politician. I think Lyndon Johnson, however, though, will be used by conservatives. And as he has been used now, there will be programs of the Great Society, the two that I know is still going on are Head Start and Upward Bound, okay, the rest of them have just devolved, been all wiped out. And they were designed to give the-the less fortunate people in our society, the more oppressed people in our society, an opportunity to get ahead. There is nothing like that anymore. So he, Lyndon Johnson's the thought of him still for the boomers who were committed to civil rights, and to human rights, still has a very special place in their hearts. 1:53:26 SM: But he was also caught up in that Vietnam trap, you know, the Vietnam War. 1:53:30 RJ: Yes. Yeah. In terms of the Vietnam War, it was obvious that it-it caught it was a precipitating event that caused him to actually resign from the pres- I mean to not seek the presidency again, okay. It is no question, and I think his failing health as well. But I think in terms of the historical period, that he could only do what his advisers were telling him to do. So then, therefore, it is just a matter of taking it and placing Lyndon Johnson with anybody else, and they would have done the same thing. 1:54:05 SM: How would you put John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy? 1:54:10 RJ: Kennedy always, but well both of them gave the aura of, gave the impression that they, too were for change. That is what I think they will both be remembered by. And they were also they gave the aura of the emergence of the of the, the emergence of the importance of youth in making decisions and playing a role in our society. And I think that that aura has, in fact continued on because before JFK, age did not appear to be that much of an issue about Presidents. But now that is definitely an issue and it has stayed with us for a long period of time, okay. So then and again, it was hoped, because here was a Catholic and a young person, and someone from New England who in fact could get to be president. So they get and his, and also it kept, it certainly kept with the both of them the whole notion that nepotism is a reality. 1:55:20 SM: How do you, this is a brief takeoff. That, that John Kennedy in particular is more of a pragmatic politician, and unless he was [inaudible] political pluses getting involved, for example, in the [inaudible] that was initiated by Harris Walker, who basically made that recommendation, and then, and certainly African Americans linked up with him, but he did not make a whole lot of decisions unless they were pragmatic. And so that was- he has been criticized as someone who was more pragmatic, sometimes Bobby Kennedy is looked upon as someone who was really evolving at the time in (19)68. A true compassion was really in Bobby as opposed to John, who was more pragmatic. You see that in between the two? 1:56:01 RJ: Well, we, Bobby for was not, Bobby was not inside the beltway type of politician. And maybe in Boston, he was okay. He was getting a B, I think, operating at that level, but he was kind of a hatchet man, kind of cruel. You know, in other words, and crude, I should say, kind of crude, and supposedly very cool, too. I mean, for people who knew him that he did not pull any punches, and so forth. So consequently, I think you are right there, he was an idealist at that point in time. But now another thing, while JFK was said to have been very practical, if you take a look at history, JFK is actually-actually was the driving force behind affirmative action, you will actually find that in terms of, he was getting ready to sign the executive order. He had, in fact, I am trying to think- was it Shultz? Whom was in fact say like, working under him at that time. But in June of (19)93, he was getting ready to issue the executive order, in June 22 (19)63. And he was actually kicked off our formative action, they actually use that word. And, and three months, four months later, he was assassinated. Now, a lot of folks do not know that, that in fact, it came into reality in terms of affirming, believe it or not, under Richard Nixon, when-when it was actually signed, it has never been a law. That was when most, you know, everybody always says affirmative action law. It was never a law. It was an affirmative action, an executive order 110243 or something like that. Look it up. But now, but JFK was the impetus behind that, all right. And if you take a look at that, then, so he had a lot of ideals, that while he was he was practical, and so forth. And he was sage, and he knew national politics, itself. And he will always be questioned about some of the decisions that he made, especially the Bay of Pigs thing, right. And that type of thing. He is always going to be suspect in history. And I do not, I do not know if, for example, 50 years from now, I really do not know if history is going to be good to JFK, okay. Because of all of the things that we do not know about the assassination that is eventually going to be known. 1:58:31 SM: That is right. I think it is supposed to come out in the year [inaudible], a long way off. 1:58:35 RJ: That is a long way off. 1:58:37 SM: It will be revealed then though, if the family is okay-ed it to be revealed. In fact, I think Teddy Kennedy is now the subject, I think Teddy Kennedy knows more than anyone, but he is you know, not going to reveal it to the world. 1:58:49 RJ: That is right. So, then I really do not think right now, what our perception of JFK is going, is now is certainly going to change once all of that all we know and all is known about that. That assassination is revealed. 1:59:04 SM: A couple other people here and I got quite a few of them, Huey Newton and Angela Davis. Now let me reflect that at the end I have had different commentaries from different individuals. Some people's whole slogan, you have heard this term, "Everybody has their 15 seconds or 15 minutes" [inaudible] what you comment, I have had one person who said that [inaudible] society at that time [inaudible] radical and Angela Davis, even though she was smart, and an intellect, is a communist. And I think what the term is, they had their 15 minutes of glory and that was it. How would you rate both Huey Newton and Angela Davis? 1:59:42 RJ: I think to, they meant different things to the Black intelligentsia, the Black intelligentsia boomers now, okay, see them as heroes. I am not so sure that they made that much a differen- and-and that a white intelligencia saw them as hero. That is right, I think it is a class thing here. I do not think that the- and the media, of course, they were exciting to follow and this type of thing. And but obviously, Huey Newton had a lot, and we are going to find out something else about that, it is questionable as to whether Huey Newton was killed the way he was killed. Huey Newton had very significant political implications in the state of California, among the Black intelligentsia. Huey Newton was in fact, when he was killed, had just I am told now, had just received a PhD. 2:00:44 SM: Yes. within about three to four months, and I have the book- 2:00:48 RJ: Was he going to get it or had just received it? 2:00:50 SM: I think he had his PhD. 2:00:51 RJ: Yeah, he had jus- yeah. 2:00:52 SM: And he was caught selling drugs? I could not I could not see the contrast. 2:00:55 RJ: No. 2:00:56 SM: Does not make any sense. 2:00:57 RJ: No, that was probably that- that was probably, that was very suspect. Just like we were saying about, I cannot think of, AD was that Martin Luther's brother, AD King? 2:01:09 SM: Oh, yes, the yes. 2:01:10 RJ: Yeah. Yeah, there is something suspect about that. And there is something suspect about what happened to Huey Newton. But Huey Newton was a very recognizable name and face in the state of California. And with his getting that PhD, it would ascend him to possible to the statute of Willie Brown, it would have. Huey Newton had more name recognition in the most popular state in the country than Willie Brown, among the black intelligentsia, and people of East LA, and, and people of San Diego, that whole Boomer generation there. So therefore, it was a reason why Huey Newton was killed. 2:01:11 SM: Yeah, who drowned. Of course, he was living in Oakland at the time. 2:01:55 RJ: Yes. 2:01:56 SM: Yeah, I can remember that, I can remember reading that he was shot to death walking down the street, and that did not make a lot of sense. I just, I could not, I just made no sense. And that was where right and that was the end of it. 2:02:08 RJ: I mean, that is the way to go, okay. Did it pop? 2:02:11 SM: Oh, no, that was [inaudible] 2:02:12 RJ: Okay. Okay, so now- 2:02:14 SM: And Angela, she is teaching the University of California Santa Cruz. She is there now as a full professor. 2:02:19 RJ: Okay. Now, again, Angela Davis. First of all, if people never did completely understand communism, and they do not know just how much communism we have going on in this country right now, when you really think about I think they were making a move yesterday was a major move and moving further away from communistic, if you may, economic principles in terms of welfare, but it is still limited. Communism is-is what Angela was, in fact, advocating for that time. And what is actually going on in this country is not that far away. We have more communism right now in the USA than they do in Russia. Right now. Okay, with the state provides more to people right now. See, we take away one thing, and that is when the state is providing that is the communism right. So, when you take away for example, one day, you take a wel- when you change your welfare laws, and you take them and you turn them around, but the next day you provide for universal medical care, Medicare, a medical-medical insurance, so then for all intents and purposes, you are just trading off one for the other. But and then you say you actually going to give a block grant to the states to run their welfare system for the bill that Clinton signed yesterday, that is nothing but typical communism. Okay, so then in that regard, it is another one those conceptual terms that incarcerate people to bring about, they keep this this conflict going. That we must have to have democracy. Because if everybody start saying, fire up the furnaces, we got a problem. Okay. I mean, I am talking about people got [inaudible] five departments for all the liberals, [inaudible] no, we should not have a one. So that is what the Founding Fathers, I think, did do in that great constitution, which is not a voluminous thing. And that is it provides to ensure that there is conflict. There is conflict. 2:04:25 SM: That is, seems to be getting stronger and stronger. 2:04:27 RJ: But guess what, you can never have a totalitarian state like that. 2:04:32 SM: That is right. 2:04:33 RJ: As long as you can keep conflict going, you will never have a totalitarian state. So many of the Supreme Court decisions that have in fact, say precipitated the area of one constituency, made another one feel good, and vice versa. So then in that regard, that is really what democracy, the lifeblood of democracy is conflict. 2:04:54 SM: And I will never forget when I was in California, the Bakke decision when that came out, I think in (19)79. Wow. The conflict was out there in the press and everything that happened at that time. Or the affirmative action decision in California right now. Yes. 2:05:10 RJ: Okay. And that is, that is bringing about a lot of conflict. But you have to live a while to get to where you can understand these things, okay. 2:05:19 SM: Well, and there is this I think there is some truth to this fact, too, that the more you know, the less you know. 2:05:23 RJ: And the more questions you write. 2:05:25 SM: Yes, definitely. Timothy Leary. Anything, your thoughts on him? 2:05:31 RJ: Hustler. [laughter] 2:05:35 SM: He has got a brand-new book out by the way. 2:05:37 RJ: Bless his, may his soul rest in peace, you know- 2:05:40 SM: His ashes are going to space, I think. 2:05:41 RJ: Is that right? 2:05:42 SM: Yeah, part of his ashes. 2:05:44 RJ: That was his desire? 2:05:46 SM: Yes. 2:05:46 RJ: Okay. 2:05:47 SM: I saw, I think the next space capsule, well his ashes are going to be going up there, in a satellite [inaudible] will be permanently up there. 2:05:54 RJ: Well, I, now that, Timothy Leary never really appealed to me back there in the early (19)70s I guess it was. It never, he really never appealed to me because I thought that it was almost like carnal knowledge. Okay, that he was taking advantage of young minds. Okay, for a self-hurting reason. I cannot see how spacing out on acid was going to have any redeemable effects on anybody. Okay. I mean, even on a chimpanzee or on a cobra or what have you is just not going to in fact have any-any human- a Cobra differently. But if you just put him out in the wild and give him an acid it would not have he could not de- or she could not defend him or herself. So consequently, I just never really got into that. And I think people use that to actually as a subterfuge to-to be in denial. Okay. 2:06:57 SM: How about people like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin? 2:07:01 RJ: I think they served a purpose. I really do. I think that they are being at that convention, and what have you in (19)68. That convention was very important. That convention made people look at law enforcement and the power of people like Richard Dale. Okay, and in terms of say, the they were part of democratic society, Students for Democratic Society, were not they? What were the- 2:07:27 SM: They were the hippies. 2:07:28 RJ: They were the yippies, okay. 2:07:29 SM: Youth International Party. 2:07:31 RJ: Okay, fine. I think that they made people again, in terms of the role that they played, not just for in fact, say, getting away and moving to the hills and things of this nature. And so far, I do not think that that was necessary. I think it made people think about the alternatives. But I really do think that the that Abbie Hoffman and Rubin and the kind, and the publicity, they got in New York-New York, Chicago, and in that (19)68 convention, I believe that it actually had some impact, because it got international attention. 2:08:04 SM: How do you respond to the criticism of them that they never grew up? For example, Jerry Rubin although did change and was actually doing quite well. And say Ronnie, that he died doing something illegal, jaywalking in Los Angeles, he got hit by a car. But Abbie Hoffman killed himself just outside of Philadelphia couple of years back and he only had 2000 in the bank. He should have been very rich with all the lectures he had done, books he has written, gave, had given all his money away, wrote a note that when they found them that "No one was listening to me anymore." And that was why he killed himself. Now, I when I saw that, I says, "Is that symbolic of the boomers?" or at least those who were involved, no one has listened to them anymore. Or, or maybe a lot of them have gone on with their lives, but a lot of just a lot of those issues. Nobody has listened to those issues anymore. Some of them that still exist. So when you look at the death of an Abbie Hoffman, he was more true to his cause than Jerry Rubin who went into making a lot of money, whereas Abbie Hoffman went underground. 2:09:07 RJ: [Inaudible] 2:09:09 SM: Yeah, and then and then he was a Hudson, he was doing [audio cuts] 2:09:16 RJ: He was a, his testament was, in his last will and testament, "I want you to remember me as a spoiled brat," you know, he, and "I get people to listen to me, so I have a temper tantrum," and the temper tantrum was, I kill myself. 2:09:33 SM: That is a good observation, because somebody said that. Another person said that too, that. But do you think that getting apart from him, that some of those issues that were happening in the late (19)60s early (19)70s, that he, that maybe that message signifies our truth, that no one is listening anymore. In other words, there is no more racism anymore, or it is not as bad as it was back then. So, let us you know, it is, it is still got a long way to go for improvement. But it is not as it is not a major issue today. So thus, let us not, so that I think that is what he was trying to say there. 2:10:11 RJ: Well, it is still a major issue. And unfortunately, probably what he had done was that he was playing to the same crowd. And the same, reading the same data and recognizing that there were other forms of, of these issues. And if you look, if he had looked carefully enough, these are universally issues, even the issue of racism biblical antiquity, literature will in fact say, show you that racism was a reality, you know, years before Christ. So consequently, it will be a reality years and eons after we are in Saigon. So then, provided there is a world. Okay, now, that is a question. I mean, in terms of the environment, that is a very significant issue. So then, but he was not getting the responses probably that he got at one time because people are so bread and butter right now. And that is by being bread and butter. I mean, people just are not articulating, it is just like being a subscriber to a cable channel. It is so much dog- I mean, to a cable network of televisions and satellite- you got so much to choose from now. So, it is no sense in talking about did you see I Love Lucy last night, because hey, that is a stupid question as anybody now, okay, why. Because it got so many darn choices. 2:11:34 SM: That is right. 2:11:35 RJ: But see, it used to be you had to, at one time you see mom and dad all looked at the NBC channel. But even I just think I am not even getting into ABC. I remember what it was only NBC. Right, then that was CBS and ABC. So you had three, then it was a UHF channel. But now, now, it is stupid, everybody got so many other things that they are consuming, that he missed the boat, that he had begun, he was still believing egotistically that he was the center of the universe. 2:12:05 SM: That is a good point. I got quite a few of these here, Richard Nixon. 2:12:13 RJ: Well, Nixon, interestingly, apparently is perceived as somebody very significant in history. And the reason I said that is when I looked along his gray side when they televised his film, first of all, he as the president was ostensibly disgraced. And when they had his funeral in San Clemente, they had all of those debates or dignitaries that he ever knew and who had ever been anything in Washington, and all the networks carried. Okay, now that says something about it, about Richard Nixon, the man. It is no question about it, that he was on an ego trip as well. But interestingly, from a perspective of an African American man, Nixon is going to, history will show in terms of the chronicle, that African Americans made more progress under Nixon than any other president. That data are available with respect to housing, with respect to jobs, with respect to money, with respect to the SBA with respect to the 8(a) project that was developed to give Black people, at that time that was before it was women and minority was for Black people. Okay, this section 8(a) of the Small Business Act of (19)69 or, I think it was or (19)71, it is going to show that, okay. Black colleges did better under Richard Nixon than any other president. A lot of folks do not know that. So he was so slick, that he could have he could have things going. And that was why he had the name Tricky Dick. Okay, he has things going that history is going to be good to Nixon on. And that Nixon also, in fact, is going to show that he did in fact, have, he started this whole thing of over coordinating dealing with China and the, the Soviet Union. Okay, he is going to get credit for that, all right. So then we look at it realistically and empirically, I think history is going to be good to Nixon. If you look at what it meant to Black people at the time, I am not sure that how much of this did not ride in on the crest of the waves from the residual of Lyndon Baines Johnson, okay, because, and I could have insights on that. But now in the way he was operating, apparently, in the White House, it was obviously criminal what he was doing and he knew it and that was why he had been invited to go ahead and resign rather than be impeached. Okay, so now there is no question about that, he overextended his power is no question. But it does appear as though he was actually making a resurgence. People were giving him a lot of credit and so forth for the things that, calling upon his ambassadorship, free will ambassadorship that he was-was capable of doing. But at the time that he was in office, most African American and significant number of American people really were suspect of him. He never was completely really trusted. 2:15:17 SM: Those enemies list, remember the enemies list? 2:15:20 RJ: Yeah, I know. [crosstalk] on there do we start talking about empirical growth and development and things that happened, history is going to be good to Nixon. Things happened when he was president. 2:15:34 SM: He had that amazing quality of [audio blip] all throughout his life and towards the end. 2:15:40 RJ: And given and giving and getting things done. Nixon, things got done under Nixon. That was just very interesting. I think history is going to be good to him. 2:15:53 SM: A lot of people here include George McGovern, your thoughts on him? 2:15:58 RJ: Too good. Okay. McGovern was seen as I mean, it was a backlash, that McGovern was always a very intellectually astute man. I think he had an excellent mind. Had was a, was a great senator, South Dakota, right? 2:16:20 SM: [agreement] 2:16:21 RJ: Great senator from South Dakota, excellent for representing his state. But not for in fact say like, I mean for, now this the way I saw him, but not in fact say, for representing where America was at that time. Americans were still ambivalent about the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was, it will be seen that it ended under Nixon, you know that. So consequently, Nixon was on a roll at the time. And McGovern was seen as too weak to middle cla- so I was in Ohio at the time. The people in Columbus, they just saw him as a very weak person, and I am talking about white and Black, predominantly white people. I saw him in my judgment as being very weak. And they did not want that perception of a leader at that time, okay. And they did not want an intellect that that at that time. The economy, or we were coming off of, it was unsure, and they were taut and nothing we had to wage and price stuff. Remember that? Yeah, when they froze wages and froze prices at the store, the inflation was zooming. You know? 2:17:32 SM: I was at the Columbus airport when he came there because I just graduated from Ohio State and was that my first job at Ohio University at Lancaster. 2:17:38 RJ: Okay, yeah. 2:17:40 SM: And I remember driving out to the [inaudible] driving out to that airport with [inaudible] I could not see him. He did not even hardly leave the plane area, got off, spoke and then he took off [laughs] but I remember that as plain as day. Eugene McCarthy. Intellect, extremely bright, too bright for the public. Or to understand. He was even a poet, you know? Yeah, he wrote poetry, lotta folks did not know that, okay. True. Good senator. For representing what was that- Wisconsin? 2:18:16 RJ: Minnesota. 2:18:16 SM: Minnesota. I knew it was one of them, okay. Right, [inaudible] this senator for representing that body of people. But the Americans could never buy into anybody that genteel. Let us see, Martin Luther King Jr. 2:18:32 RJ: History will be very good to Dr. King. He did he represented hope for the country. He is a, he is a credit to America will always be in a credit to America. His philosophies will at one time be quoted just as Mahatma Gandhi's or Chairman Mao, I think that there will become Qingyan philosophy school, that will eventually get there. And I think that is in fact, what were young African Americans will eventually open up in terms of nonviolence in everything that they do, that that is going to catch a hold. And he gave again, he had a lot of theological impact with respect to his outreach ministry, caused all churches to in fact be different and to put, and caused the Vatican to look at things differently. And also, his ministry. And the and his leading the ministry redefined what a minister is supposed to be about. And furthermore, he will always be remembered as the champion of human rights. I think that what he did for human rights, is-is probably not, is underrated in terms of, of the movement. If you look at solidarity, and if you look at the slogan, and if you look at the [inaudible] raids, and you know what I mean, and that type of thing, and if you look at their singing We Shall Overcome and things of this nature, that has become the battle cry for everybody who is perceived to have been say, oppressed. So the human rights movement was, was spawned from that Civil Rights movement which Civil Rights, and Martin Luther King will always be remembered synonymous. 2:20:29 SM: As I said, from going in his church down in Atlanta, the embodiment of what he was all about, and certainly what his dad is all about. I am sure a lot of churches had the same feeling. But the Ebenezer has to know that. We are all appreciated. We are all equal. There were no judging of anyone. And certainly, Reverend Robert could be proud, and certainly Reverend Victor, King has got to be in his glory. Seeing the Reverend Victor there, that young minister and [audio blip] coming minister, in fact there is several of them. Barbara Jordan when she died, you may have seen the funeral on C span. The minister in Houston, Texas, what a young man he is, the early (19)30s out of New York City, who was not, was her minister, and one of the most important qualities that she possessed is that when she came to that church as she was a, well, she was a well-known figure that could have sat in the front pew. But she wanted to be treated like [audio blip] that was what they came into. She had these great qualities about her, but she was a petite. [audio blip] 2:21:31 RJ: Wow. 2:21:31 SM: Queen of the people, she was of the people. So, just a couple other names, and we got a couple of questions that end it here. Robert McNamara, just a few thoughts on it, obviously some of these people are. 2:21:43 RJ: Well, Robert McNamara. Great rhetorician, had an excellent mind, will not be remembered as a great secretary of defense because of the Vietnam War. Okay. On the other hand, was extremely persuasive, had awesome power. Okay, with respect to the Johnson administration, and so forth, and Johnson, right? Yeah, he was the Johnson admin- he will, but he will not be remembered as a great secretary of defense because the Vietnam War, but had a lot, had the ability to handle a lot of information, which was persuasive and kept the American people kind of ambivalent about whether they ought to support the war or not support the war. You know, he was a, if you remember, the one thing I remember about him that he reminds me and maybe Ross Perot picked up some things from him was that he was so good with charts and graphs and things like that, you know. 2:22:52 SM: To the General Motors, because that was where he came from. 2:22:54 RJ: Yeah. 2:22:55 SM: And the- a whiz kid at General Motors. 2:22:56 RJ: Right. 2:22:57 SM: Of which, if you read that book, four of them killed themselves, committed suicide, of the original 10. [audio blip] Wizkid General Motors, where they came from, because he [audio blip] have the money in that position, why he went to, became Secretary of Defense to earn what? 50, 60 thousand, well he already made his money. But it was interesting that the four of the 10 killed themselves. [audio blip] Hubert Humphrey. 2:23:24 RJ: Great, again, great senator from Minnesota, too genteel for the country. At the time that he was coming out, people he, he was victimized by the ambivalence again, that people had about the Vietnam War, and so forth. He was victimized because he was trying to succeed I will say JFK, and I do not think that, you know, at that time, he just was history, the epoch in history where he was, did not allow him to in fact say, like, do what I think he has the potential to do. But then again, I do not think that he was ever, he was not electable in Calif- I mean, California was not going to be for him, Ohio was not going to be for him and things of this nature. He was a good senator, but he was not the one that dealt, he was not going to be able to operate on a on a national stage. 2:24:27 SM: How about George Wallace? 2:24:28 RJ: George Wallace, he repented, but I am not so sure he would have repented, if in fact, say like he had not been made a quasi, let us say, invalid. So then he did nothing good for the country at that time. I do not see any redeemable value that George Washington played for the country during that he was divisive- 2:24:55 SM: Wallace, not Washington. 2:24:56 RJ: I meant as I said, I mean Wallace. Yeah, you know what I meant, yeah, okay. George [laughter] George Wallace did at that time, okay, so consequently, that is one of the character traits that I would have to look at in terms of saying so called national leaders. And he was very divisive. He was a racist. Wherever he is now he is a racist, it is just that he is not, he is probably trying to in fact say, like, repent by virtue, obviously- he is still living right. 2:25:28 SM: Oh he is not very well. 2:25:29 RJ: No, I know, but just barely hanging on. Yeah. So then in that regard, wherever he is, now, he is at the core, I would like to think that he has forgiven himself and therefore is not a racist right now. Okay, he did make some statements that suggest, I read somewhere a few years ago, that he was not a racist anymore and this type of thing. But he was hustling, that was what he was doing. He found him a concept on which he could hustle and hustled that racist concept. 2:25:31 SM: Yeah. How about the Berrigan brothers and Dr. Benjamin Spock? 2:26:06 RJ: I think the priests- both of them were priests, right? 2:26:09 SM: Yeah. 2:26:09 RJ: Okay. I think they were committed to what they were doing because they took some real chances, in terms of being involved in actually violent demonstrations, were not there? 2:26:20 SM: Yeah, and they were responsible for burning the draft cards. 2:26:23 RJ: Yeah, I remember that. And then dumping blood somewhere, or at least some bolly blood, I do not know, if it really blood in some, one of the draft stations or something. I think they were very committed, okay, to what they were doing, and that they and to, in fact, go against the edicts of the church to do it, the Catholic Church. I think that they, that showed their commitment. They therefore would have to say, would be considered as somebody that did have an impact on ending the war. And but of course, you could say that they also had an impact on people having a bitter taste in their mouth about the war. Okay. Now Dr. Spock provided this catechism that insight, in my judgment, a lot of parents, he has reversed his field now. This permissiveness that he talks about and advocated. He has now run a recent talk shows as well, I have not read anything that he has done. 2:27:19 SM: He has a book out in 19, uh, came out a year ago, hardback. 2:27:23 RJ: Okay. Have you read it? 2:27:24 SM: No, I have not read it. They say he has, he has changed [audio blip] 2:27:29 RJ: I think that he was misguided. In terms of say, he gave people some real deleterious advice on how, about child rearing. There is no question about it. This permissiveness that we know of now, and what some parents are still hung up on, okay. Really did foster a lot of their misguided thoughts. 2:27:50 SM: How about Muhammad Ali? 2:27:52 RJ: Will go down in history as one of the greatest fighters, obviously, but a great humanitarian, who was extremely courageous. And because he was one of the first, he was the first public figure that spoke out and said he was against the ware, okay. So again, and that was very much, that was 19, I know I will not forget it, that was (19)63. When he was saying whenever he was drafted, he preempted the war. And when he was drafted, said that he was not going to go, if I am not mistaken, it was about that time. 2:28:27 SM: I think it was, I am not sure the exact time- you are right, though, everything- I am not sure the exact time he came to Columbus. When I saw him in Columbus. And when I was working at Ohio University, he had been stripped of his title. 2:28:39 RJ: Yeah. 2:28:40 SM: And he came to- 2:28:40 RJ: He came back. 2:28:40 SM: -the daycare center and he spoke at the Ohio theatre and what [inaudible], because man, the people of Columbus, well the sort of nature that that city was, they did not come out in large numbers. 2:28:42 RJ: No. 2:28:42 SM: I was there in an upstairs area, he was paid $5,000. It is a memory I will never forget. He spoke as a really good speech about his protest against the war in Vietnam. He did not talk hardly anything about boxing or anything, it was all about the war. And after it was all over, he took the $5,000 that he was paid and said, "I do not want anything here. You can take it." And that is the person he was. 2:29:11 RJ: And people never saw, they saw the flamboyant side that he was, but if you look at some of his history, and what have you, he had a heart of gold. Okay. And everybody saw him and but not everybody else has repented on him. History, the current contemporary history is being good to him and I think it is going to even be better to him, as was attested to his being selected to light the charge at the at the Olympics. Okay, I think that was symbolic of just how much the world loves Muhammad Ali. 2:29:44 SM: He is the most recognized person in the entire world. 2:29:46 RJ: That is right. 2:29:48 SM: John Kennedy is probably the second or third because they Kennedy and Muhammad Ali's pictures, like in villages all over the world in the smallest places. And when you think of it Kennedy, has been dead since (19)63. And Muhammad Ali has been out of the limelight since the late (19)70s. That is just amazing. I, you kind of wonder too what, if Muhammad Ali did not have Parkinson's disease, and he was able to speak, he would obviously be [inaudible] more mature, what he could be doing and helping today's society. I want to make sure I got a couple of key questions at the end and I want to make sure I do not use all of [ inaudible] getting down there. And that was my last, couple other names here, you can just, just a couple of brief words on all of them, Spiro Agnew. 2:30:06 RJ: Yeah [inaudible] No redeeming values [laughs] as I can see a whatsoever to the time that he was in office except to make people see how bad it could be. 2:30:46 SM: Okay. Sam Ervin. 2:30:49 RJ: Great man, I was very always intrigued by his simplicity. And that he could speak volumes with very, very parsimoniously and his use of a southern parable. And the way that he would always have kind of a self-demeaning type of humor about him, that lets you that will allow you to know that he has already seen where you are coming from. 2:31:18 SM: One of the important things, I got a couple of books by him and one of them is signed. And that is, that he was against integration. 2:31:26 SM & RJ: At one time. 2:31:28 SM: So, when you look at this, this senator who really no one knew about until sort of the latter part of his life, and see some of the people, there people always, that is another thing about today, you always got to find the negative in something, you can never, you cannot be perfect. 2:31:43 RJ: That is exactly right. 2:31:44 SM: John Dean. 2:31:49 RJ: John Dean was, he was at that time, I guess you could say, he was what you would consider where most boomers were at that period in their lives, and that is doing whatever was necessary to acquire power. And that was why I saw him, that he was being used, that he in fact cut a deal to save his neck obviously, as most people will do. So that is not anything that bothers me. 2:32:24 SM: [Inaudible] doing it now. 2:32:25 RJ: Yeah, that is exactly right. Cutting a deal to save his neck. And, but on the other hand, obviously very bright. Okay, but it was he had him a hustle and he was trying to get the best out of it. 2:32:39 SM: How about Daniel Ellsberg. 2:32:40 RJ: He had a lot of redeeming value in my judgment. He took he put his career on the line for what he was about, okay. And he knew that they were that there was going to be a backlash. The president cannot even get to a job in Washington, if you are blackballed. You know, it is just that powerful. If you blow the whistle, believe me, right now the president cannot get you a job. So then when a guy decides to do that, the only way the President gives you a job is that he says "Yes, I am going to put you on his staff or one of his [inaudible] staff, or get somebody somewhere else to give you a job" but you, it is hard to in fact say, once you a whistleblower, is difficult to get a job in the city. 2:33:27 SM: How about Barry Goldwater? 2:33:33 RJ: Goldwater I do not think was as bad as people thought he was when he came across as if though he was a, you know, a butthole. But I do not think he was as bad as people really thought he was at the time. I am not so sure history is going to be that bad to Goldwater, okay. When-when it was finally written, and people read it and do they interpretations. And if they look at the type of man that Goldwater was, and he did give a lot of himself to Arizona and things of this nature. He was very partisan, obviously. And that respect, he may not he was not-not going to be good for the country. But I think that is some stuff prior to his becoming Senator it is more speaks more about him, than when he became Senator. And his running for president was obviously about public relations disaster. 2:34:31 SM: [Audio blip] 2:34:39 RJ: Kind of say for example, I guess you can say that she was charming. She may got the she got the title of being kind of the, I guess you can say the maid of women's liberation and so forth, but in a way she was she was charming just enough to take away some of the credence from the women's liberation thing. I always thought that she was kind of manipulative, and that she really was not as staunch a feminist as she projected. 2:35:21 SM: And Ralph Nader. 2:35:24 RJ: I think Mr. Nader has done a lot for consumer protection. I really do, and for consumer causes. He lives what he preaches, he lives in a rooming house, you know. 2:35:34 SM: He does? 2:35:35 RJ: Yeah, he has. 2:35:36 SM: Where does he live? 2:35:38 RJ: I do not know where he live, but I know this. He lives in a boarding house. He has done this for the last 30 some years. He does not. I do not think he owns a car. You know, this type of thing. So, he is practicing what he is preaching, okay. So consequently, I got to in fact say there is some substance to a man that is practicing frugality, and right, and what have you, and living as I do not know what he does with the money that he makes, whether or not it gives it back to charity or what have you but he certainly does not seem to be in fact say-say [inaudible] 2:36:12 SM: I think that is all the names I had in the last, little area here is just mentioning Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and musicians of the year and the impact they had on boomers. 2:36:26 RJ: Well, I think it was a fad akin to rock music- I mean, rap music. I think that the youngsters nowadays, who will into rap music, is will always have an affinity toward it, because it was the music of their era. Just like for example, the Temptations and say the Four Tops and the Supremes were to me. You see what I mean. Therefore, I think it would be that affinity and drugs have always been a part of the modern musician's life, so then we do not really see it, and we almost kind of accepted that they are going to get caught up in the drugs and that some of our favorite heroes are going to in fact succumb to it, just like right now. Of all of the original Temptations are dead, okay. And-and I do not think any of them, Melvin Williams died last year, year before last, the one that had to base voice. And-and I do not think he was, I do not believe he was 50. He may not have been 50, but now okay, the rest of them all gone. And because they were alcoholics and things and Jerry, not Jerry but David rough and you know, was-was that is crack addicts up there, Philadelphia. 2:37:42 SM: Yeah, I remember that. 2:37:43 RJ: Yeah. 2:37:44 SM: Yep. Here, we got a little bit left and I still got another tape if we go over here. 2:37:50 RJ: I am going to have to cut it now see because, I mean after [inaudible] I am going to have to make it I got to get back home to my- I tell my wife I would be back by that time, okay. 2:38:00 SM: What is the lasting legacy of the boomer generation? 2:38:02 RJ: I think, I really do think it is going to be kind of the, probably it is going to be the, the freedom the "I" and the "me," is and that is the infamous one that it will have. The quest for the freedom. I think I think it will get a bad rap about how their children are turning out. I think that they will, the boomer generation is going to be overall seen as-as being a poor parental generation. I think they will be seen as being money hungry. You know, like yuppy. Okay. I think the yuppies is in that generation, is not it? 2:38:58 SM: Yeah. 2:38:59 RJ: Yeah. So, I think they are going to be seeing- 2:39:00 SM: Younger. The younger boomers. 2:39:03 RJ: The younger boomers? 2:39:04 SM: Not so much the older ones. Yeah. 2:39:06 RJ: Yeah, if you take [inaudible] from (19)46 to (19)60, right? (19)64. To (19)64. Those are the boomers. Okay, now, if you take that group, and if you take a look at them from what I have in fact saying, they are going to be yeah money hungry, money oriented. That is how I think we are going to see it, power hungry, self-centered. 2:39:39 SM: Is that the-the activism that took part in the boomer generation has transferred to their kids? 2:39:48 RJ: I do not think that children are active at all. Maybe the most sedentarian social issues of any generation. Well since-since Brown versus the Board- well, that is it, that is two generations [inaudible] they-they are they are the children are definitely less active, socially active than their parents. 2:40:09 SM: What do you think it is when their parents? What-what? 2:40:13 RJ: Parents, they have not had a need. (End of Interview) Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. 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Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Roosevelt Johnson Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Johnson, Roosevelt ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Psychologists; College teachers; Johnson, Roosevelt--Interviews Description An account of the resource <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Roosevelt Johnson was a psychologist, counselor, educator, and administrator. Dr. Johnson worked as a professor at Ohio State University, University of the District of Columbia in Washington, DC and John Hopkins University. He also worked at private counseling centers in the Washington, DC area and Silver Springs, Maryland. He received his Bachelor's degree at St. Louis University and Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana. Dr. Johson died in 2015.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson (d. 2015) was a psychologist, counselor, educator, and administrator. Dr. Johnson worked as a professor at Ohio State University, University of the District of Columbia in Washington, DC, and John Hopkins University. He also worked at private counseling centers in the Washington, DC area and Silver Springs, Maryland. He received his Bachelor's degree at St. Louis University and Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana.</span> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource ND Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.179a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.179b; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.179c Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 160:18 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7e2bbb66895cfed9b18c9779f5589c99.jpg 478af761d19d0de05e7a18eb1f77e2e7 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/2c0c0c6bd7763cb3a56561c19e9f3bf2.mp3 31bc8a61633b8734bcb313bf4a1a87ba Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-08-22 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Rosalind P. Petchesky Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky is an American political scientist, and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the founder of the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group. Petchesky received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Dr. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky is an American political scientist, and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the founder of the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group. Petchesky received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 93:26 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Judaism; Microeconomics; Vietnam War; African American; Barack Obama; Afghanistan; Newt Gingrich; Gingrich activism; Economics.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:16370588}}">Judaism; Microeconomics; Vietnam War; African American; Barack Obama; Afghanistan; Newt Gingrich; Gingrich activism; Economics.</span> Subject LCSH Political scientists; College teachers; Hunter College; International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group; Petchesky, Rosalind P.--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Petchesky, Rosalind P. ; McKiernan, Stephen Subject The topic of the resource Political scientists; College teachers; Hunter College; International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group; Petchesky, Rosalind P.--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky is an American political scientist, and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the founder of the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group. Petchesky received her Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.93 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 93:26 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/24a5eb43622c1e0395ef5b94a0274609.jpg d1ec8b16e7af6cc9f36f4e9e253fb935 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/785040015d959e656dd2cb4265cb0b0b.mp3 2384887ef3a5c573cbfacfd9c4fae785 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 3/10/11 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sidel, Ruth Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Ruth Sidel is a scholar, author and educator. Dr. Sidel received her Bachelor's degree from Wellesley College, and both her Master's degree of Social Work and Ph.D. from Boston University. She is a professor at Hunter College and has also published several books. &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13309,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:1},&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;7&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;8&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;9&quot;:0,&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Dr. Ruth Sidel (1933-2016) was a scholar, author, and educator. Dr. Sidel received her Bachelor's degree from Wellesley College, and both her Master's degree in Social Work the Boston University and Ph.D. from Union Graduate School. She was a professor at Hunter College and has also published several books.<br /><br /><br /></span> Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Civil Rights Movement; China; Women's Rights Movement; Political corectness; Civil Rights Movement; Anti-war Movement; Black Power groups; Baby boom generation.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:769,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0}">Civil Rights Movement; China; Women's Rights Movement; Political correctness; Civil Rights Movement; Anti-war Movement; Black Power groups; Baby boom generation.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:31:33 Subject LCSH Scholars; Authors, American; College teachers; Hunter College; Sidel, Ruth--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Ruth Sidel Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sidel, Ruth ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Scholars; Authors, American; College teachers; Hunter College; Sidel, Ruth--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Ruth Sidel is a scholar, author, and educator. Dr. Sidel received her Bachelor's degree from Wellesley College, and both her Master's degree in Social Work and Ph.D. from Boston University. She is a professor at Hunter College and has also published several books. 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 2011-03-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.206 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 91:33 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7f1520358a95f7bb880f09d988a4d3f7.jpg 763b251611ddc0f776bee2000df05736 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/345c91f792401939442e6340f42a4a0e.mp3 f987f0cf40c62b0e8b950e3bf3d660da Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview ND Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sally Roesch Wagner Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner is an author, lecturer, and activist. She was a founder of one of the country’s first Women’s Studies programs and one of the first women to receive a Doctorate in the United States for work in Women’s Studies. Wagner received her Bachelor's degree and her Master's degree in Psychology from the California State University in Sacramento. She also received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness (Women’s Studies) from the University of California in Santa Cruz. &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:5039,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:1},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;8&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner is an author, lecturer, and activist. She was a founder of one of the country’s first Women’s Studies programs and one of the first women to receive a Doctorate in the United States for work in Women’s Studies. Wagner received her Bachelor's degree and her Master's degree in Psychology from the California State University in Sacramento. She also received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness (Women’s Studies) from the University of California in Santa Cruz. </span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 158:01 Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Women's Rights Movement; Drug Revolution; Baby boom generation; Racism; Beat \nGeneration; Activism; Kent State; Vietnam War; Anti-war Movement; Feminism &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:7101,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:1},&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;7&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;8&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Women's Rights Movement; Drug Revolution; Baby boom generation; Racism; Beat Generation; Activism; Kent State; Vietnam War; Anti-war Movement; Feminism.&nbsp;</span> Subject LCSH Authors, American; Lecturers; Civil rights workers; Women's rights; Women's studies; Wagner, Sally Roesch--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. 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Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Sally Roesch Wagner Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: Not Dated --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing one, two. Sure. That is very good. All right. SW (00:00:04): Okay. SM (00:00:04): And when you think of the (19)60s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? SW (00:00:28): A door opening into the future. SM (00:00:34): Explain. SW (00:00:35): And then closing. But the door stayed open long enough that we learned how to get inside. We saw a vision of what the world could be. We saw the way that people could be with each other personally, and also a vision of how the social structure could be transformed to create new human beings. SM (00:01:10): When you hear, and this has always struck me, as a person who is a boomer, when you hear people like Newt Gingrich in 1994, when the Republicans came to power, and George Will, I am just using them as examples, who oftentimes in his writings, anytime he can take a shot at the boomer generation, he will do it, is oftentimes is the breakdown of American society that a lot of the problems that we have today, they blame on that time, that era, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, the young people, the drug culture, the sexual revolution, lack of respect for authority, the antagonisms and the deep divisions. How do you respond when you hear people like that? SW (00:02:04): They are absolutely right. They are absolutely correct. And it is sort of like, yes, we did that. One person's breakdown is another person's breakthrough. And I think that the analysis that that sort of the facade of a happy family, the facade of a generous and just country, the facade of all of us being the same cracked in the (19)60s. We smashed that facade. And breaking through that then opened the door, we were in the center I think in the midst of a cultural revolution. But I think that it is a cultural, political, spiritual, personal. It is a revolution that I am not sure there has ever been one like this in the world. I know my background really is studying the 19th century, and it is very reminiscent of the mid-19th century in terms of radical reform movements all springing up simultaneously and feeding each other. And I think that in some ways they opened a door and saw a vision into the future, and they set the blueprint for the 20th century, and we know are setting the blueprint, or the 20th century, the (19)60s set the blueprint for all the work that we are doing now. And what is interesting to me is that the people that opened that door and saw the vision now are institutionalized and making institutional changes. Because at some point we realized, and I think this was the strength of the woman's movement, we realized that there were no personal solutions. And if one's to point, I do not know if we ... Point to the one major brilliance of the woman's movement, I do not know if there was one major and is such a powerful transformative engine, but one brilliance of it was women are not messed up, we are messed over. And we actually used the F word, but it was the idea that we were tranquilized. Then it was a more primitive tranquilizer, if you will. What was it then? That women were constantly, if they were unhappy with their situation, they were put on tranquilizers, on meds, and they still are today, but probably in greater numbers. But what we realized was as we began to share our personal stories and break down the personal isolation that we felt, we began to understand that it was not our personal problems, but that it was institutional. And I think that was the moment of understanding that there had to be systematic, systemic, institutional changes before we could create a just world, before we could create an equal. SM (00:05:42): One of the questions that I always ask, and just general questions about the boomers, is when boomers, boomers are defined as those individuals born between 1946 and (19)64. But I have also noticed if you know anything about the (19)60s that a lot of the leaders were born in (19)42, (19)43, (19)44, 45. So a lot of people do not like these, got to define a generation and limit it to these particular years. But the question that comes up often is longevity. And this is oftentimes a criticism we hear today toward boomers who are now reaching 62 years of age, first year of social security [inaudible] this year. The front liners. Is did they carry their ideals and beliefs beyond that period when all these movements and these feelings that change can happen, that we can be make a difference in this world? And which was really part of the (19)60s and even in the (19)60s is really up to (19)73, (19)74, and then so much happened after that. But can you separate female boomers from male boomers and just the experiences you have seen of female boomers, have they carried their ideals into middle age and older age, or had they fallen by the wayside as many men had done in careers and making money and raising families? SW (00:07:10): I belong to an organization called Veteran Feminists of America, women who were active between (19)60 and (19)73. And what happens in the meetings of that, some of the gatherings that I have attended in this group is that women sit around and [inaudible] about are we the only feminists left? These young women, they do not have any idea of feminism. They are not part of the movement. And then I talked to my students at Zurich University, 18 and 19-year-old women who are reinventing feminism and they wonder if they are the only ones or what happened to all the feminists from before. One of the things we hope to do at the Gage House is to do more intergenerational things. The things we have done have been really effective. And what is interesting is that I teach 19th century at Syracuse University, 19th century women's rights history. What my students really want to hear about is my experience in the (19)60s. So I do back and forth. I talk about what the first wave women did, how far they brought it, and then where we took it, and then here is where you need to take it and make those connections. But we still alive and kicking, are we still? See, I think part of it is a masking. Elizabeth Katie Stanton understood that if she started out her lectures with a story about her grandchildren and her fat, little sausage curls, white hair, she could do the most radical thinking and say the most radical things. On her 80th birthday they had this huge celebration and it was, what was it? It was some big gathering place in New York City and there were thousands of people there. Now this is the moment when she could have said, "Thank you all so much. I am so honored that you are here." You know what she said? Yeah, we were going to get our right to vote pretty soon and we have made some inroads on some of the things that we need. All we need to really do now is look at going after the real enemy, and that is the church. What we need to do is the Bible was not written by God, it was written by man out of his love of domination. She wrote in her women's Bible that year, and she said, "What we need to do, because it is a manmade document like the Constitution or other men made documents, we need to change it to meet the times. So we need to rewrite the Bible." This is on her 80th birthday, and one of her mottoes became, I shall not grow conservative with age. But taking my direction from her, the ideas that come out of my mouth have not changed. If anything, they were more transformational than they have ever been, but I have lost the language. I have dropped the language of division in some cases. I mean, feminism is a word obviously that needs to be held onto, but there was a lot of jargon that we developed that is as unappealing to me as academic jargon. What you essentially are doing is creating a separate isolated group that does not know how to communicate with the masses. So my process personally has been to unlearn academic speak and to write in the language as accessible as possible. My audience has been my grandson for years. He is now 25, but he was my audience when he was 10. If I could not say it in a way that was understandable to him, I needed to go back to the drawing board and make it accessible. So someone listening is going to go, she do not talk like the (19)60s, she do not look like the (19)60s. I know. Adopt protective coloration. And what that means is exactly like Elizabeth Katie said, this gray hair is my passage into passing. It is like I belong to the Rotary Club, and as a Rotarian, there is all kinds of possibilities of making connections with people. And what I find is that the ideas of the (19)60s just simply makes sense. And if they are presented in a way that does not frighten people or that does not create separateness, join my club and you have to accept all this. And I have learned a lot of this from my grandchildren and from younger people to speak in a language that really... I mean, I seriously go through this process with my grandkids every time I am with them. I listen to their music, I watch their movies, I go shopping with them to see what page they are on with that. I ask them to bring me up to speed technologically. And in the process of that, I learn what they care about, what their issues are, what their vision is, what they want to see happen in the world. And I take direction from that. SM (00:12:42): When you look at the boomers, again, one of the things that was awful often another criticism of the boomers is that even though they were a generation of 70 to 74 million depending on what book you read, is that only really only 15 percent really participated. So you are talking about 85 percent that were not involved in any capacity and in the anti-war movement, the women's movement, the civil rights, the environmental, gay and lesbian, all the movements, and people like to use that as a criticism. But I have always looked upon it as a positive because when you consider 15 percent of 70 million, that is a heck of a lot of people. But have you heard that criticism? SW (00:13:32): Yeah. SM (00:13:33): And often- SW (00:13:33): And it is silly. SM (00:13:33): And actually they may even be doing it today's generation, they always try to put percentages under. SW (00:13:38): And it is percentages and invisibility. How do you stop a revolution that is already in progress? Well, you deny it is happening. And today it is going on, bingo in front of our eyes. And what is wonderful is that I think because it is under the radar screen, the advantage of it is that there is this whole infrastructure that is being created, that once the old tumbles, the infrastructure will be in place. Everything from what we eat to how we interact with each other, to how we live in our houses, to how we... I mean, the infrastructure of the important stuff, how we educate, that is in place. And when the trappings fall off, if we survive, I think the infrastructure is tight. But there is a couple of things about that. The silliness of, come on, how many people made the American Revolution? That was a disgustingly small- SM (00:14:41): Very small. SW (00:14:43): ...Of leadership, and it was not diverse. Now the (19)60s was more diverse, but what is wonderful about the movement today is it is so diverse and it is so multidimensional that nobody can get a handle on it. It cannot be destroyed. It cannot be sought out and systematically deconstructed or attacked the way that the government attacked the (19)60s. You identify the leaders. You place drugs in there, you send out bogus information about them, all the stuff we know the government was doing now through COINTELPRO. We know that the government systematically, and we know that they systematically murdered the Black Panthers at the same time that they are destabilizing governments all over Central America. I mean, now that was in the (19)60s. Shocking news that was like, could it really be true? Could it really be true? And we had to have it proven to ourselves every way until Sunday before we believe it, I think. But we were the canaries in the mines. We were the ones who were saying first, it is going on, it is going down. And I think now that is general knowledge. But I think the other thing about the (19)60s and about it being a small percentage, Samuel J. May, who is one of my favorite dead guys, I love this guy. Somebody, I think it was Garrett Smith, said, "Heaven is sweeter with May's presence." After he died. Samuel J. May was one of the most principled, thoughtful, progressive men that I have ever known. SM (00:16:41): When did he live? SW (00:16:42): 19th century. But he wrote a book after, he was the Unitarian minister here in Syracuse, and a good friend of Matilda Jocelyn Gages. He wrote after the Civil War, a book called Recollections of our Late Great Anti-Slavery Conflict. And he is furious because people did not step forward when they should have, including the Unitarians. And he names-names of people who voted the wrong way on the issue regularly. And his contention is there never would have been a civil war if enough people would have stood up, and especially if the churches would have opposed slavery. And so he is holding the, as a minister, he is holding the church's feet to the fire. But the standard thing he talks about and that everybody that does 19th century anti-slavery history talks about, is that after the Civil War, everybody's home was a station on the Underground Railroad. And similarly today, everybody was involved in the (19)60s. And my question to people who say, "Yeah, I was there." Is can I see your FBI file? I should have brought mine. SM (00:18:03): I have never gone down to look at mine. I know one of my friends did and he was very disappointed because he said it was all marked up and he could not read anything. SW (00:18:14): Yeah. SM (00:18:14): He could not read anything. SW (00:18:15): No, mine is about this thick. And I take it in and show my students. I did the FBI and CIA both, and I really encourage you to do it. You need to do it for this book. You need to ask for your FBI file to see if you have a record. And it is really important. And my kids looking at it, it really helped them to frame what was going on during that time. And I take it in to show my students. They are so afraid, they are indentured servants today because they are indentured to their parents. If they are at a private college like SU, and their parents are investing that much money in their education, they have to perform and they feel like they are very constrained to do anything. And I say, "Look it, there is life after, and you keep doing it. You keep doing it." But I think it is this idea that everyone after the fact wants to jump on the bandwagon, but what it felt like to be in that moment and the fear of it, my kids will testify to that. We had to leave our house two weeks before Christmas because the local newspaper in Sacramento, the Sacramento Union, which no longer exists, it was a very conservative paper. They did a front-page story on an underground newspaper that we were doing, and they got it confused with, we had gone through a split and then there was Weatherman, and they said that the Weatherman paper was being published at the house where we were. SM (00:19:55): Oh my gosh. SW (00:19:56): So at the end, they basically say the cops cannot do anything. The judges are too liberal, their hands are tied, the newspaper is preaching drugs and murder, and it is published in a gray frame house on the corner of 23rd and L Street. Was like- SM (00:20:15): Wait- SW (00:20:15): ...When it was a call for vigilante action. So no, going through that kind of a fear thing with two little kids and then having the FBI come to visit, and having the FBI try to talk... The FBI went to the landlord and tried to scare him about who I was. I had never broken a law. I opposed the war, and was part of an underground paper, but the kind of political... To live through that kind of... I developed asthma at the age of 26, and it was purely from the pressure, the fear of that time. Now I am white. Imagine what the Panthers were going through at that time. And so for someone to come along now who did not put themselves on the line and say, "I was there in the (19)60s." Really offends me. I think it is a deep offense to claim a part of something that you never really put yourself through. SM (00:21:21): That is the same thing about veterans who are lying that they served in Vietnam, because that has been a big issue. Stolen Valor, which was the book that came out that Vietnam vets, they kind of hid themselves when they first came home. And now it is very popular to be a Vietnam vet. And well, we have even seen Joe Ellis, the great historian, why? Why would he lie to his students at Harvard about him? And he has got a Pulitzer Prize. People were shocked, of course, he is such a great historian. He admitted his wrong and he is back. But it is interesting, you raised some really good points there. Talk the talk and walk the walk. And that is the most important thing. SW (00:22:01): And that is a real important connection that it is like I feel like I am part of... I am a veteran. I belong to the Veteran Feminists of America. And I think it is important we call ourselves that because we have battle scars from being in the front lines of the feminist revolution and the anti-war activist's the same thing. We carry, and I do not mean to put my work as extremely important. I was not arrested. I was in a number of demonstrations, but I did not do CD. I had little kids. But I think to put a perspective on it, is to look at people claiming once something becomes sort of in that they were part of it, whether it is the innless of having fought in Vietnam or the innless of having fought against the Vietnam War, it diminishes the work of those who actually were there and doing that. SM (00:23:13): Those are very important points. And when you look at the boomer generation itself, what would you list as some characteristics, some of the strengths, qualities that both male and female and all ethnic groups had at that particular time? Just their strengths and maybe some of their weaknesses. SW (00:23:33): I think an openness to new experience. I left the conventional marriage. I was raised in a Republican household in a small Midwest town. My parents were high in the church, my dad was a banker. And the openness to change, the recreating ourselves, could not have done it without the support of each other. There is nothing individual about the revolutionary. And it was a leaderless movement in many significant ways. The women's movement really just emerged spontaneously, through spontaneous generation. We were all doing the same stuff all over and sometimes did not even know it until later. But I think that openness, a willingness to really go through major changes. A connectedness, a sharing, a creation of community, understanding ourselves out of the individualism of the (19)50s as community creatures, as creatures of community. And then as in the 19th century, the influence of Native Americans is extraordinary. Extraordinary. My work is on the influence of the Haudenosaunee women on the women's rights movement. And I am doing a longer book now on the influence generally on the basics of life on Native Americans. I mean, other people have done a lot of this work. I am focusing it specifically on women and looking at it through that dimension. But I think in the (19)60s there were ways that, as the movements sprang up and the connection between them, the learning from each other and the outsider voices coming together and sharing experience, I think there was a significant Native American influence on our sense of who we are, creatures of community rather than individuals. And I think that some of the weaknesses were a joy, another strength, joy. The marijuana for me was an opening into a world of spiritual that I did not get in the congregational church in Aberdeen, South Dakota. It was that passing of the roach in community that you took one puff, you did not Bogart, you shared with your neighbors and you experienced. It took us out of the framework that we were in as drugs have always done, psychedelics in a spiritual way. Once the mafia took over and once the neighborhood drug dealers were driven out by the big drug dealers, and once the paraquat was sprayed on the marijuana in Mexico, and once people started, and most significantly for me, once people started smoking marijuana by themselves, that was the end of the drug revolution. A lot of people that I knew got really injured by drugs and got strung out and it was not all good, but there was a moment of spirituality with it, a moment that opened us to another dimension that we sure as hell did not have growing up in the (19)50s. SM (00:27:51): Do you feel, I am going to get into the question on the (19)50s in a minute. Do you feel the feelings that a lot of boomers had, including [inaudible] and others, even when I was at Binghamton, that we were unique? We were different than any other generation in history, but I kind of already knew a little bit of history because I knew what went on in the (19)30s and there were a lot of student protest movements at that time too. And so I knew we were not unique in every way because there was an anti-war at that particular time. But that, do you think that is a weakness or a strength? The uniqueness. I have gotten unbelievable responses to this question when I asked. The boomers thought they were the most unique generation in American history because they were going to change everything. They were going to end... They were going to bring equality, they were going to end injustice. They were going to be the cure-all to all the ills of the world. They are going to bring peace to the world, love, brotherhood and all the other things. But in reality, that has not happened, so. SW (00:28:55): Well, it has not happened yet. It is still in process. Revolution, I think we were essentially right, but I think our timetable was off. We believed in instant revolution and they do not happen that way. SM (00:29:14): That could be a weakness, the concept of instant revolution. SW (00:29:17): Yeah. And I think that was, we were wrong about the timing. The thing about seeing ourselves as unique, I think was both a strength and a weakness. And as a strength, I think it allowed us to break from tradition and create our own path. And that is what I think is young people are doing that and continuing to do it and have continued to do it from the (19)60s. I mean, the punk movement in the (19)80s, that was another wave, another reinventing. And now into the fourth wave of feminism and feminisms, each group of women coming from a different culture, finding their own description of and their own way of feminism. And that uniqueness, that sense of we are doing something different, we are, was part of the energy that drove us. But I think there is a pain that comes in when you ask that question, because I go immediately to some of the meetings when some of the old lefties who had been hanging in there from the (19)30s and (19)40s when we would be in a meeting with them. And the arrogance of youth, the arrogance of what do these people have to teach us anyway? I mean, now I hang out with dead people all the time. Because I learned so much from them and learn constantly about vision and endurance and focus and the perspective I need. When I was arrested for my grandson, when he was born at the Seneca Army Depot, I did CD by myself as Matilda Jocelyn Gage because I had to do it quickly. I had to get back to teach two days later. So I had to do it right then and there was not anybody else quite ready. There was one woman that thought she might, so they arrested me and I was dressed as Matilda Johnson Gage and gave her name, but I had a picture of Michael in my clothing and they strip searched me and all that stuff. But Michael was right there by my heart. And when I was in the detention area, they kept me for about several hours and I was handcuffed and it gets uncomfortable after a few hours and was not the ones that I could... When I did CD at the Nevada test site, I could slip my hands out, because I- SW (00:32:03): ...slip my hands out because they handcuffed me and I had on a thick, you know the trick, you have on a thick sweater and so you pull the sweater up and you are out of the handcuffs. I went back and got arrested a second time, but once was his gauge and once was his [inaudible]. But anyway, so when I was arrested and I am by myself in this holding tank and this is in the (19)80s, (19)84, and I cannot sit down because there is no chairs or anything. And I am standing and it is hot and I have got this 19th century costume on and my hands are behind me and I do not know what the hell's going on in the other room. And I am getting a little nervous. I am really isolated. There is nobody with me, nobody is singing strong songs with me, like you need to when you are doing CD. And then there was a moment when one of my hands I realized was reaching back to Matilda Joslyn Gage and one of my hands was reaching forward to my grandson who had just been born. And I thought, I am just a conduit. That is all. I am just the conduit between the past and the future. I am just passing through. And in that moment, I knew who I was and what my place was. [inaudible] ever known, ever known in life. And that was one of those transforming moments. My grandson now has become the person that I am passing everything on to. He is my favorite person in the world. He is a writer and we write together, we are doing some projects together, but he has grown up with the idea that his grandma loved him so much that she was willing to be arrested to make the world safer for him. And the only problem with it is that I have two other grandkids that have been born since, and I have not been arrested for them yet. And so at one point my daughter said, Alex thinks that you love Michael more than you love her because you have been arrested twice for him and you have never been arrested for. So what I am doing with them now, they are teenagers, is asking them to think about what issues they care most about. And I am not going to do it while I am the CD or the ED of the Gage Foundation, but when I finish this work, then I want them to have something that they want me to make a stand for in their name, in their honor. SM (00:34:46): That is beautiful. SW (00:34:47): And Michael actually wants to do CD of the Nevada test site again, since they have started underground nuclear testing. SM (00:34:53): You remind me so much of just in the conversations I had with Daniel Barry and Philip [inaudible] and Elizabeth McAllister from Jonah House down in Baltimore. We never saw Phillip very much because he was in jail most of the time. I took students down to Jonah to meet Elizabeth, but I can remember at school some of the Catholic workers that were just secretaries in the department could not understand why I was taking students to go meet these terrible people who would go to jail knowing that [inaudible] had, not Daniel, he never married, but Philip and Elizabeth had three kids at home. Well, and they got mad at me just because I was introducing them to them and they did not like their lifestyle and they were not being good parents. But when the students met them, it was an experience they will never, ever forget. It was about commitment, it was about risk taking. And it was also what Dr. King used to always profess for those in the nonviolent movement is you oftentimes have to pay a price for your beliefs. And those prices are you must be willing to go to jail. SW (00:36:09): And Matilda Joslyn Gage said, you must be willing to give up parents, family reputation, and you will not see the end. You are planting the seed and those who come after you will enter into the harvest. SM (00:36:25): Wow. That is her right there, is not it? SW (00:36:29): That is her. Yeah. And this is her granddaughter, Matilda Jewel Gage. This is a woman that I worked with for 17 years, organizing her grandma's papers, taking her, recording her stories. She remembered her grandmother. And this is me as a graduate student at the University of California. SM (00:36:54): Oh yeah, I saw that. Yeah. I have been out there. SW (00:36:57): Writing my dissertation on Gage, and I was standing on the front porch of the Gage home the first time I had ever been there. Came on a research trip. And I keep this here because I remember that young woman standing on those steps being photographed by the Fayetteville historian, local historian, and thinking this house should not be privately owned. It was privately owned, and this needs to be, there is so much history here and this woman is so important. This house needs to be open to the public. Never in my life thought that I would be the one to do it, but when the house started becoming rental property, I came back every year to kind of check on it and do lectures here and keep in touch with Gage and the upstate radical reform. Dead people that I love and hang out with. And as the house was starting to go downhill as rental property, something had to be done about it. And so I moved back here and started the Gage Foundation to raise the money to save the house. And as we sit here, the house is owned by the Gage Foundation and the restoration will be completed by the end of next month, by the end of December. And then we start doing the interpretation. And this is a center where the ideas of Gage will... The (19)60s, the reincarnation of the 1850s and (19)60s and (19)70s and (19)80s. The ongoing struggle for justice is the story of that house. And that is my life's work. My legacy. Gage has been my life's work. SM (00:38:50): Is there a biography? Has there been an in-depth, like there is a brand new one out on Elizabeth Katie Stanton. SW (00:38:56): Not the long one. I have not written it yet. There is one out that is not very good. Gage and I wrote a short piece. What I will do when I finish up this work, you know how hard it is to be doing and raising the money to do this house and also doing the restoration and keeping everything going with programming and everything. I do not have much time to write, but I have started at the suggestion of Ken Burns, script writer, Jeff. Cannot think of his last name. SM (00:39:35): He was in Philadelphia last week, Ken Burns. SW (00:39:39): And his script writer. I wrote the faculty guide, Not for Ourselves Alone, you know the story of Stanton and Anthony and I was in that film and... Is it Jeff Warren, who writes all Ken's scripts, he suggested, well, at the opening, at the grand opening of the house of the film at the Waldorf Historia, I sat with the folks from Florentine Films because I had gotten to know him when I did the faculty guide. And Jeff said, I sat by him and he was kind of a quiet guy, and he said, I am sorry we did not include more about Gage in the film. And I said, yeah, I wish you would have. And he said, well, not having a biography was the problem. And I said, well, now the problem is that with Stanton and Anthony becoming one word with this film and becoming perceived as the leaders of the movement and you do not bring a third one in. If I write the biography, she is going to be this non-sequitur out here and it is going to be, oh, that is really interesting. Now let us get back to the real story. He said, do a triple biography. So I have got about a half a book written just from their childhood, looking at the differences between these three women. SM (00:41:11): This leads into a question on the tape. I will turn it over here in a second. But the question of movements that that is another quality, but what I consider to be a strength of the (19)60s generation is the involvement in many movements and the creation of some of the movements. Of course, the Civil Rights Movement was already ongoing. And then of course the Women's Movement, the Gay and Lesbian Movement, the Chicana Movement, Native American Movement, the Environmental Movement, they all kind of looked, and the Women's Movement. They all kind of looked to the Civil Rights Movement as an example and a role model. SW (00:41:48): That was the only one I really wanted to get because... SM (00:41:51): On the movements, a lot of these movements came about women, one of the big sensitive issues in the civil rights movement, and I know this from reading a lot about Dr. King, was the sexism within the movements and African-American leaders at that time. But even scholars have come to our campus have talked about it. It is a very sensitive issue. And obviously in the anti-war movement is the same way that women were oftentimes treated as second class citizens. There were the Dorothy Heights of the world. There were people like that that were a little different than a lot of them. But so those two particular movements kind of looked at women's secondary roles and I think away a lot of students of the (19)60s or people that studied it, looked at, well, the women's movement came about as a result of the bad treatment they received in the anti-war movement. So they went off and created the women's movement on their own. Could you correct that myth? Because there is a lot of perceptions out there that since women were not treated equally in those two movements, they had to create their own movement. And then looking at all these movements, because Native American Movement was very important, [inaudible], we have had several scholars on our campus talking about that particular movement. Certainly Ward Churchill's been a controversial figure with things he has written. But even the Native American, the Chicano movement and the Gay and Lesbian movement, and of course the Environmental Movement and Earth Day, he said, what is the truth in terms of what I just mentioned about the break and the creation, that was the greatest impetus for the movement was the way they were treated in civil rights and the anti-war movement. And where is the link between women and boomer women in particular, in all these other movements? Were they male dominant in the Native American movement, in the environmental movement? I know you think of Gaylord Nelson, who I interviewed for this project and Dennis Hayes, but I do not see any women that were in the organizing group. And I see Russell Means I see these male names coming out in just about all the movements. And just your thoughts on... SW (00:44:06): I think there is so many different paths to so many different directions to come at to begin to look at what is going on in the center of that question. So let me just come at it from a couple different ways. One, the 19th century movement came about because women were excluded from the world Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 in London. That is the simple answer. And the simple answer is that the same thing happened in the 19th, in the 20th century. Women were, as you said, second class citizens in the civil rights movement. And there is some truth in that. That is the simplest level of explanation. But I think beyond that, that once you get a sense of liberation, once you get out of the box and you start seeing this is what it would feel like to be free, you realize that you are not free. And so I think it was not just male, female, the race dynamic entered in each of those movements in the Women's Rights Movement, the Gay and Lesbian movement, while gender entered into all the ethnic movements. The contradictions begin to become apparent once you are in motion. If you are in stasis, if you are just sitting tight, if nothing is going on like the (19)50s when there was essentially not a strong movement of change, those contradictions are not as apparent. But once you are in motion, and the truth for me personally, from that comes when my daughter that I just got off the phone with Beth, was at a women's rights meeting with me, women's liberation meeting in (19)69 probably. And we were talking about what do we need on campus? What do we want on campus? Well, we should get a childcare center. Well, how are we going to do that? Well, let us get kids to come in and take them into the administration building and the administrators will then see the need for it. And well, not too many of us have kids. How are we going to get kids? Well, let us rent them, let us see if we would rent kids. And everybody is laughing. Beth comes up to me and says, I want to talk to you. SM (00:46:40): Okay, there you go. SW (00:46:47): So Beth comes up to, and there is like tears in her eyes and she says, I want to talk to you. And I said, sure, honey, what do you want? She said, no, and this was a child that I did not know, and there was a change in her. We went outside and she said, you are talking all the time about women being liberated from men. You are talking about women being, I cannot remember her exact language, respect and being their own people. And now you are talking about renting kids. If you are going to talk about renting kids, I am no longer part of women's liberation. And I tried to comfort her. She said, no, it is like you got to listen to me. And that was the start of my kids forming a children's liberation group in Sacramento. And they lectured, they came up with a bill of rights of children. We formed an alternative school, the Sunshine Children's Collective, and the children were involved in the decision-making process. We would be in a meeting altogether and the kids would say, kids caucus. And they would go outside and go gather themselves and come back in and say, the children demand that. And they would say, you are treating us in this way and we do not like this. This is what we want to have happen. And that changed the way that I did, how I raised them, everything that happened with them, we ended up dividing our money each month after the bills were made and they made their own decisions about their own money. And then it is like once you get the concept of liberation, you immediately apply it to your own life. And I think that is the deeper truth that happened with each of these. And the wonder, and I think the strength of it was that I do not think that was an uncomfortable or an unfortunate or a problematic part of the movement at all. I think that was the richest part of the movement and continues to be. Where we in the woman's movement are constantly looking at our racism. And it becomes a working principle. Is racism at the heart of the woman's movement in the 19th century? By 1890, it was, and that is a story we tell at the Gage house that is not told elsewhere. The racism of the conservative women was allowed into the movement, and it was allowed to reign. And so in those parades in the teens, 1912, 1913, the Negro women are marching at the back of the parade if they are allowed in at all. And the white women are in front wearing white. I will never appear in white in any sort of reenactment or anything because it is an absolute call to white supremacy. And the movement was making the argument give women the right to vote because white women outnumbered Negroes and immigrants and women's suffrage is a way to maintain white, native foreign supremacy. Now, that is a truth that has to be faced head on. The racism and movement in the (19)60s needs to be faced head on and acknowledged and that is how you work through it. And my work became, in the (19)80s and especially in the (19)90s, I started doing a lot of work with Native American folks, just being friends and figuring out, ended up moving back to South Dakota for a time, take care of my dad after my mom died and did workshops on racism and cultural awareness with Lakota friends. And that has been a real training ground for me, recognizing the depth of my own racism. And for me now, it is like become a recovering alcoholic. I negotiate my racism day to day, but I wear it out there. It is not like I am not racist. Yeah, I am racist. I live in a racist culture. So denial is a way of avoiding it. And I think we did a lot of denying in the movement. The men did a lot of denying of sexism. White women did a lot of denying of racism. White men did a lot of denying of everything. And I think that the power structures, once we began to understand this is all about who has the power, and of course men are going to be sexist unless they are fighting it. And of course white women are going to be racist unless we own it, acknowledge it, and deliberately work against it. And I think that was the strength, was the confronting of all of our prejudices that were built on systems of power. And not just prejudice, but the power to maintain those. That is what racism is. It is not just prejudice, it is the power system. And so examining those power dynamics and I think realizing they have to be destroyed. And ultimately you have to remove power as a concept. SM (00:52:16): I think what you are saying, you remember Dr. King gave that speech on Vietnam. He was criticized in the African American community, but he saw the whiter picture. He saw all colors yellow over in Vietnam and black here in the United States. And so that I can remember the movement, the anti-war movement in the late (19)60s. And I think Kent State is the epitome of it in terms of that African-American students did not want to be seen or had their picture taken at that particular protest. And I think it was mostly it was all white students. And there were very few African-Americans at that particular time. They were separating from the anti-war movement and they were going strictly toward the civil rights movement and toward issues of racism whereas the white steels were continuing to be involved in the anti-war movement. So there was a big break at that time too. And the historic moments like Stokely Carmichael standing next to Martin Luther King, your time has passed. And the debate between Byard Rustin and Malcolm X, which was another one, your time has passed by Rustin, who was from Westchester, we had a national conference with him. He was one of those rare individuals that put white women in positions of responsibility in the march on Washington. Because Rochelle Horowitz, another great female leader, was a young, early twenties person who was in charge of all the buses coming in. And he was not very good at giving direction, but he had inherent faith in young people. And he went to President Kennedy, and I think it was President Kennedy asked Byard Rustin, who was in charge of all of the buses and everything? Oh, Rochelle Horowitz. He had never heard of her, but he was proud of her because she was given a heavy responsibility. So you can make a very relevant point here. What question that comes up that is a very important part of the interview process and that is this healing. Now, I want to read this to you. I have to read this to make sure I do not miss any point here. I want to preface this by saying several years back I took a group of students to visit Senator Edmond Muskey down in Washington. This is about a year and a half before he passed away. And he had just gotten out of the hospital. He was not feeling well. He had seen the Ken Burns series and he talked about it during that meeting. And we were able to get these meetings with the former senator because I knew Gaylord Nelson and Gaylord helped us meet nine senators. I am a big fan of Gaylord Nelson, former senator from Wisconsin. But here is the question, do you feel boomers are still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore this nation apart in their youth. Divisions between black and white. Divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. What role has the wall played in healing the divisions, not only within the veteran population, but in the nation as a whole? Do you feel that the bloomer generation will go to its grave, like the civil war generation not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made this statement "time heals all wounds" the truth. And I just want to say that I have asked this to everybody, and I have had unbelievable responses to this, but I will mention what Gaylord Nelson said to me. He said, people do not walk around Washington DC on their sleeve that they have not healed. But in terms of the body politic, it changed Washington and the United States forever. That is the way he responded to it. But just your thoughts on the healing. Is there an issue still in this country on this issue? And should we care about people going to their graves with still issues? SW (00:56:18): I think that I cannot speak for what everybody is experiencing. I can speak for what I am experiencing and what I have experienced. The healing for me has been going through those contradictions. That has been the healing process. The healing process is the process of negotiating, how do I continue to fight sexism without always taking a confrontational stand as the only mechanism? And I employ a whole arsenal now, humor from native women. I have really learned to, it is like, you just got to tease these guys. It is like if you come from a position of power as native women do a position of real authority, you just kind of tease them a little bit. And I have watched native women bring down, I will not even name names of men, but just they know these women are in charge and all it takes a little bit of teasing and boom. There. So that is one tactic that I have learned. But I think that the healing of, it is to assume that it was healthy before. It is to assume that it was and something happened that now has to be healed. Well, it was really unhealthy. The healing needed to happen out of the (19)50s. It needed to happen out of that false unity and the breaking of that. And did we do it perfectly? God no, we broke each other's hearts. We hurt each other terribly. Those are some of the scars that we all carry. But what did you do past that point? We did not know because we did not know better. We have better skills now. People have better skills. They work with things better. Native Americans have always been able to really deal with contradictions in very respectful ways, in my experience. Just the people that I have known, the communities that I have been part of or been allowed to participate in, I should say. I have really learned other ways of dealing with difference that are not [inaudible], are not like the confrontational politics. That was what we were fed. That is what we learned. That is the only way we knew to deal with difference. That is not the only way to deal with difference. And that is really a very patriarchal way to deal with difference. There are a lot more effective ways and hearing each other, we are doing dialogue in the Gage home. And that is where you sit down with people you really disagree with and you hear what is going on with them. And you make a commitment that you are going to listen and that person makes a commitment. They are going to listen to you and you are going to hear each other. That is where healing happens. You do not necessarily come out agreeing, but you come out understanding and remembering the humanity of each other. And so I think that the healing is the process. The healing is the, we are healing not from the (19)60s. We are healing from the (19)50s. We are healing from the healthy breaking of the idea that we are all one and that everybody is equal and everybody is not equal. There is no level playing field. We have got to create a level playing field. And that means going through culturally and personally our own prejudices and the desire to hold onto the power that we have that those prejudices support. SM (01:00:22): We all know about the generation gap between the (19)60s and the World War II generation because lot has been written on it. I would like your thoughts on it, but the key thing I want to ask is, and I have asked this too, is what was it about the (19)50s, say you are a white... I grew up in Cortland, New York as a little boy. I grew up in Cortland through sixth grade and moved down toward Binghamton. And I did not see an African-American in any of the Parker schools where I went to school. And so when I think of the (19)50s though, I still think of very good times. My parents were always there. We had great Christmases, Thanksgiving, birthdays, PTA, everybody, even though we had the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation that did not seem to affect any of the kids that I remember. We played baseball. Everything was hunky dory, everything felt great. We had black and white TV, we had the Mickey Mouse Club. We grew up with Howdy Doody. We saw the first Cowboys and Indians or everything we were raised on. Of course, the Indians from Penn, you know, read later on. They were always the bad guy. And I saw Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, oh, Hop Along Cassidy, all the things that the kids in the (19)50s grew up with. And the question I have always asked myself is if it was such a great, when parents tried to give everything to their kids, and we were not talking about every ethnic group here now, because in the African American community, obviously it was different in some communities, but it seemed to be in all these issues of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation, you were cognizant of McCarthy. Some of the bad things even happened in Washington as a little kid. Why did this young people rebel in the (19)60s? Because in their elementary school years, right up to about 1960 is when they were first going to seventh grade, the front edge boomers, why did they, all of a sudden, why did these things rebel? Why are they rebelling against their parents who tried to give them so much? And I only reflect upon it because I was pretty, must be pretty naive and pretty ignorant. And I think a lot of people were, because I never put two and two together as a little boy until I started getting seventh, eighth and ninth grade. And I started putting two and two and together on a lot of issues that were happening in the world. But what was it about those (19)50s that was showed really no sign that these kids were going to be rebellious? SW (01:03:07): I think you experienced it from the privileged position of a white male in a racially segregated community where you did not hear your mother's frustration, maybe, at not being able to fulfill herself. My mother was a very frustrated woman. My father was the patriarch of the family, and that was the way it was supposed to be. My mother should have been out there doing all kinds of things in the world, and instead she was on Valium. How many women during the (19)50s were on Valium? The privilege that we experienced, I grew up in a middle class family, had everything I wanted. Totally dysfunctional family, but everything was provided for, and my brother grew up in the sort of family that you grew up in. My brother grew up, it was hunky dory, it was... SW (01:04:03): ...You grew up in. My brother grew up, it was hunky-dory. It was joyful. It was fun. It was playing out here, doing all this. That is the white male experience of the (19)50s. My sister and I experienced a totally different childhood in the (19)50s. And I think that the discontent that grew, what you are describing was not a universal experience. That was a white male middle class experience. And you were kept in a privileged position where you did not have to hear other voices. My brother had no idea my mother was a despondent, frustrated, desperate woman. He did not know that. He totally did not. He was totally protected from that knowledge. My sister and I experienced it daily. I think that the 50s, for a certain group... And it was not that it was either great or it was awful, but I think that the contradictions were there of the unhappiness, the injustice, the things that were not right. I was watching for communist airplanes flying over Aberdeen, South Dakota. The Girl Scouts had duty up on the top of the Sherman Hotel, which was the tallest building in town, which was five stories. And when I screwed around and was not watching this skies carefully at night was certain that I was going to be responsible for the destruction of the United States because I failed to see that communist aircraft coming through. We did the duck and cover. We did the... And all that is funny now, but there was an earnestness about it. It was like we were the greatest country in the world. I did not know until I was in high school that there were concentration camps for Japanese in this country. Once you start getting the information, once you start knowing about the McCarthy era... I had nightmares in my childhood, and the nightmare was that my father was being chased by communists. And then it was a recurring nightmare and there was one that was even worse. It was the same nightmare, but at the end, my father turned around smiling and joined the communists/ and years of therapy, I could never figure out what was going on with this. But you know what it was? Once I figured out, my parents were friends with Karl Mundt, who was Senator McCarthy's right hand man. And my dad, as a Republican banker was saying, "Well, communism is just another economic system and it is one that makes most sense in developing countries". And my mother would weep in whale and say, "Fred, do not let anybody hear you say that. You are going to go to prison." There was a hell of a lot of shit going on in the (19)50s. And my brother was oblivious to it. My brother continues to. And my brother never became part of any movement. He went on to become a Republican banker himself. And I love him, I adore him, and he is very generous spirited, but he took a different path because he had a different childhood. My sister and I, in varying degrees have, become involved in social justice movements. And I was the one in the family who went the furthest out, and I think it was because I was the most discontent. And then tried to do a marriage in a traditional way, and that did not work. SM (01:08:12): Well as a kid, my dad used to win trips to Florida because he worked for Prudential. And I can remember something was not right, because all of a sudden as we drove to Florida, I saw all this poverty in the south. Well, that was a shocker to me. And since I was a history kid from the beginning, I started putting two and two together and I did it for the rest of my life. SW (01:08:34): So you can [inaudible] those kind of... For me, being in the fifth grade and traveling south, and there were drinking fountains with colored water in them. I go, "Whoa, that is so cool. I am want to drink colored water." So I went up to the drinking fountain and the water was not colored. And that was when I learned that there were different drinking fountains for... I was like, "Come on, what is this?" So yeah, those kind of experiences of seeing... SM (01:09:09): Do you think the beats had anything to do, in terms of a lot of the boomers, were they cognizant of this- SW (01:09:17): I sure was. SM (01:09:18): ...Beats and [inaudible] SW (01:09:19): I mean, I cannot talk about Boomers in that respect, but I can talk about beats. SM (01:09:23): How important were the beats in the (19)50s? SW (01:09:25): Here I am in Aberdeen, South Dakota in high school reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the school grounds to my friends dressed in... I had blonde black stockings and I got a false long braid to put on my blonde hair. And I got kicked out of school. I am reading... You know Ferlinghetti. SM (01:09:53): Oh, yeah. He still runs the bookstore out there. SW (01:09:53): Yeah, City Lights. And I am reading this really, really wonderful poetry about "To taste still warm upon the ground, the spilled sperm seed". And what are they going to do with me? I am the daughter of the banker in town. So they sent me home because of the false ponytail, because of the false braid. What could they bust me on? But my brother introduced me to the Beat Poets, and I am reading Ginsburg, I am reading Ferlinghetti. I was really influenced by the Beats, by the Beat Generation and by their writing. I longed to go to San Francisco. SM (01:10:40): Yeah, he is still out there. I think he is 92 years old now. SW (01:10:43): Is he really? SM (01:10:44): He still runs the bookstore. It is amazing. SW (01:10:47): Is that true? SM (01:10:48): Yeah, he is- SW (01:10:48): I have got to take my grandson there, my younger grandson, because he is doing a report right now on beat. SM (01:10:54): Well go into the computer and hit City Lights Bookstore and you will see it. I knew Ferlinghetti was still alive, but I did not know he was still connected to the store. He is. SW (01:11:07): I am taking my grandson. SM (01:11:09): And Pete Seeger is 91, and they see these great people that are... SW (01:11:15): And still going. SM (01:11:16): Oh yeah, Pete's- SW (01:11:17): The Ruth Putter Welcome Center here has named for a woman, who I am not going to tell you her exact age because she does not come out with it, but she is in Pete Seeger's sort of generation. She is a social justice activist and she funded the building of that, and she has been a social justice activist her whole life. And she is now photographing it because she is a photographer. And so when the house opens, there will be a Ruth Putter exhibit of the creation of the Ruth Putter Welcome Center. Of course you know what she is photographing: the workers. The workers in that house, I have been meeting with them, take stuff for them to eat and drink since they started the work. And do you know about Gage and do you know about this? They are now Gage scholars. SM (01:12:06): Are you going to have a big opening here? SW (01:12:08): Yeah. October 8th through 10th, the weekend. SM (01:12:11): Ah, I will come. SW (01:12:11): Oh, wonderful. SM (01:12:12): I will come. SW (01:12:12): That will be wonderful. SM (01:12:13): And I will ask my niece and her husband to come, and I will say hi to you and I will be here. SW (01:12:18): And you know who the featured guests are going to be? SM (01:12:20): Who? SW (01:12:20): The workers. SM (01:12:22): They should be. SW (01:12:22): So that is where... So is the (19)60s dead? Do people from the 60s still carry a consciousness? In everything we do. SM (01:12:32): Have they done a good job with their kids and grandkids in terms of sharing? Obviously you have, so you- SW (01:12:40): You know what- SM (01:12:41): But do you think that as a generation, they have done a good job of educating their kids and now their grandchildren? SW (01:12:47): You are going to be the answer to that. When you interview 120 people, you are going to have a better sense of it. Because who knows this? You will find this out through asking us, and I will tell you my story, which is all I can tell you. My Christmas present I already got for... One of the Christmas presents for my 16-year-old grandson, the one I am going to take to City Lights, is a subscription to Z Magazine. That is what he wanted. SM (01:13:14): Howard Zen is in there a lot. SW (01:13:18): Yeah. And I am going [inaudible] he has got a teacher that is turning him onto this. I rented through Netflix, the last film I saw was Flow about the destruction of water and the commercialization of water because my grandson told me to watch that film. So now he and I will have a conversation about that. It is my grandson, Michael, is the one who I pass all this on to. My granddaughter, Alex, fiercely independent young woman. My daughter Beth has established her own nonprofit, does animal rescue in California and large animal rescue, horses, saves the lives of horses. And then does programs with kids at risk, autistic kids, brings them together. Also, the sheriff's department keeps their horses there. So she does these programs that bring together the kids that are getting arrested with the cops, working together with the horses and brings together all kinds of class, race, gender, diversity, differently abled. It is like, here is the vision of the world. And this is the girl who said, "I am never going to be like my mother." SM (01:14:57): I will let you get your [inaudible] or something. SW (01:15:01): So my daughter, she went through this whole period where she said, "I am never going to be like my mother". The (19)60s were really hard on her. She was scared through a lot of it with the kind of pressure we were under. My son... And that way the kids would have totally different experiences, the (19)60s were the best time in my son's life. So what traumatized my daughter empowered my son, and he went on to, for a number of years, had a coffee house because he loved going to the coffee house in the (19)60s. So in the (19)80s he has a coffee house where he created community in the way that the coffee houses in the (19)60s did. SM (01:16:00): Now I am going to cough. I got a cough too. SW (01:16:02): The cough is catching. SM (01:16:04): Well, one of the things I wanted to ask you in talking about in influence and qualities that parents pass on to kids is the issue of looking back at the Boomer generation again, I can remember when I was in college in the Psych 101 class and the psychology professor saying to our class, "Let us talk about the issue of trust today". And he would ask the question how important we felt trust was in our lives. Then he said basically, if you cannot trust others, then you will not be a success in life. Trust is an important quality. But then you look at the Boomers because a lot of the Boomers might be defined as a very distrustful generation because of the lies that were told to them by leaders over time. And the lies being obviously Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was a lie. The lies of the amount of people that were dying over there. McNamara and the lies that he told. Obviously Watergate and the experiences of Richard Nixon. And then even... And boomers were aware of this too, even though it might have been in the back of their minds, in the late (19)50s, they knew President Eisenhower lied to them because of the U2 incident. It was an on TV... I remember seeing it coming home from school, saying that Gary Powers said... No-no-no-no-no, he was not spying, so Ike lied. And I know Ike wrote later on that he regretted doing that, but still he lied. And then you get a whole lot of others. So one of the qualities is that that boomers did not trust anybody in positions of leadership, that is whether they be a minister, a rabbi, a president of a university, a corporate leader, a politician or anybody in their... They did not trust any of them. And I knew a lot of the college administrators were not trusted. [inaudible] whether this lack of trust is a real negative on a generation. And whether you even say, as some people say, "Well only 15 percent of the activists were activists," but that was a pretty much of a quality that maybe even a 100 percent had toward people and responsibility. Do you think this quality can be defined as part of the generation and is not really as negative as that psych professor said? SW (01:18:27): I think it goes both ways. I think that the healthy distrust of authority really democratized the country tremendously, because what it ended was, "Trust me, I know more than you do," from father to priest to minister to president to whatever. No, I am not going to trust you. You give me the information that I am going to make the decision. Matilda Johnson said the greatest lesson of her life was her father's teaching her to think for herself. And then what he did was he empowered her to be able to act on that. She confronted authority. She spoke truth to authority from the time she was a child. And I think that what we [inaudible] later in the (19)80s or (19)90s is speaking truth to authority, that was the democratizing of America for the first time, beginning to happen in the (19)60s. And it was because of that failure to accept on face value, "Just trust me". No, I will not trust you. And that was the healthiest thing that ever happened, that distrust. But it was accompanied by the creation of trust among each other. We could not have done what we did. You cannot be in a demonstration where... I remember the... What did they call it? The squad, it was in San Francisco. And they would bring in the attack squad from Alameda County, and these were mean son of a guns. And they were in full riot gear. You are not going to be walking up to those folks or you are not going to be walking and challenging that authority unless you can trust every single person that you are in that demonstration with. SM (01:20:35): You are right. SW (01:20:36): So the creation of trust, you cannot put yourself on the line doing acts that the government is going to be coming after you for doing unless you have some level of trust. And that is why the government came in and created the distrust among ourselves, sent out those lying letters about this person doing this and this person doing this. My FBI file, there is tons of it that I cannot read. It is just page after page blacked out. Why did they do that? Because there was a police informer working with us. They tried to destabilize what we were doing. They were pretty successful in it in a lot of ways. But trust was created in a new way in community at the same time that trust in authority was being destroyed, and I think the combination of that was incredibly healthy. SM (01:21:28): What do you think was the watershed moment when the (19)60s began and what was the watershed moment when it ended? SW (01:21:38): I do not have an idea about that. And I wonder if it is not individual for different people and entering at different moments. For me, the moment was when my kids were sick, and there had been a number of things leading up to this, a number of experiences. But I was divorced, I was a single mom raising these two little kids and they got sick. I went, took them to the doctor. I had been up a couple nights, not sleeping much, going to school and working, and I was really tired. Took the kids to the doctor, got antibiotics, and they were finally sleeping. And I turned on the news and here was that mother in North Vietnam with her napalm baby. And it was- SM (01:22:33): Kim Phúc. SW (01:22:34): ...The floodgate just opened. And it was like, I can take care of my children and they are going to be well, her child is going to die and I am the reason. My government is doing that. And I joined Another Mother for Peace, and that was my first movement into movement. I think each one of us may have our own personal moments. Was there a catalyzing event for everybody? That I do not know. I think it was more people entering at different moments. And once you entered, do you go to the point of origin? Do you go to the headwaters of it? I do not know. But once I entered, I was in flow. There was a movement, there was a river that I joined. And I think the movement quality of it, it was not individual, even though each of us joined at individual moments and came in. SM (01:23:39): You may have the same response to this question, but if I were to have in an auditorium 500 people from all over the country, male, female, all backgrounds, you name it, who were boomers, particularly those first 10 years of the boomer generation, and I were to ask them, what was the event that had the greatest impact on your life, what do you think the majority of them would say? SW (01:24:06): Cambodia, Kent State. The burning of the Bank of America in Santa Barbara. The Civil Rights arrests. The dogs going after the civil rights demonstrators. The murder of the three. I do not know. A lot of different catalyzing events. Cambodia, Kent State was a watershed. I do not know that it was "the" watershed, and I do not know if there was a watershed, but I would guess that you would get different answers like that. SM (01:24:48): Yeah, some people have said, well, the (19)60s began when John Kennedy was assassinated and it ended when Kent State happened because we knew it was ending. I had all kinds of responses to it. To me... And this is not about me, so this is the only time you are going to hear me. For me, the (19)60s ended in 1973 when the streaking happened on college campuses and I knew that something was totally different. Streaking was now the activity of college students. SW (01:25:22): There were things like when fashion designers started creating jeans and what had been secondhand store clothing became the designer label. When the tour buses started going through the Haight-Ashbury and hippie became a term. When the woman's movement, a lot of work has been done on when did radical feminism sort of end as a dynamic process or transform itself? And (19)73 is the date that is often used. That is why the Veteran Feminists of American voted that date. SM (01:26:06): That is interesting. SW (01:26:07): But see, for me, the (19)60s never ended. The (19)60s continue. The (19)60s are the center of my life. The (19)60s are... I saw that door open. I saw that open a crack. I looked inside, I lived in it temporarily, and I would never be satisfied until I could live in that world full time, and I will go to my grave working to create that world that we saw was possible in the (19)60s. And I still believe it is possible. If we can save the planet, if we can turn things around, that is the world we are going to create. SM (01:26:50): One other question following up, why did the Vietnam War end? SW (01:26:54): We won it. We won the Vietnam War. The people of the United States and the people of Vietnam came together and forced the United States government to its knees and we had the victory. SM (01:27:12): How important were college students in that? We saw protests really strong, (19)67, (19)68, (19)69. SW (01:27:18): Critically important. The transforming moment, the moment when I think the change happened was when we started, instead " Bring the troops home now," which is stupid. It just "Turn it into an air war". That was a dumb, dead end strategy. But when we started support the Seven Point Peace Plan of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam, that was when we began to win the war, the anti-war movement. And we won that war. And I hate the history that says anything different. The people of the United States won the war against the United States government and we stopped that war. Our war was never against the Vietnamese. Joining together with the people of Vietnam, we got the United States government to agree to the Seven Point Peace Plan of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, and that was an extraordinary win. And if we taught history with that, what do you think could be happening with Afghanistan right now? If all those students that you have taught, that I have taught, if every student that was taught understood that the United States government was defeated by its own people and brought to its knees, we claimed our government, that was the victory in Vietnam. SM (01:28:54): How do you think Vietnam vets would feel about that though? Because a lot of Vietnam vets came back from Vietnam feeling that they were not treated right and they were not welcomed home. And this big controversy within the community, the anti-war movement in fact, that some people say it was never about the troops, it was always about the politicians. But then some vets feel that we should have gone all out and won that war, and the people back home were one of the reasons why we gave ammunition to the enemy, so to speak, to continue the war. SW (01:29:30): I distributed up against the Bulkhead, which was an anti-war paper that was done for soldiers. That stupid moment of believing that we were fighting the soldiers and that they were the enemy disappeared really quickly and was replaced by anti-war coffee houses for so soldiers. How come so many refused to? Why were there so many [inaudible] in Vietnam? Why were there... I worked with Vietnam Veterans Against The War. My idea was that if Vietnam Veterans Against The War and the women's movement came together in a coalition, we were an incredibly powerful group. And we were in Sacramento, and we did come together, and we sponsored a piece together and we worked together and we were allies, and we supported them and they supported us and worked with their sexism, dealt with their sexism. It was not perfect, but it was powerful. And the Winter Soldier investigation and those guys throwing their medals over the... This is a bronze, this is a gold star, and you can take them back because I never should have done what I did. That anti-war movement, the Vietnam Veterans Against The War still exist. SM (01:30:51): Yeah, that was Bobby Mueller. Do you know Bobby? Have you met him? SW (01:30:55): No. SM (01:30:56): And Ron Kovic. They were two of the three leaders of the movement. SW (01:31:00): They were. But it was a decentralized movement, too. And it was really strong in different parts of the country. It was very strong in Sacramento. SM (01:31:09): Just your thoughts on the music of the era, how important was music in the anti-war, and what were students and what were young people reading in the (19)60s, in the (19)70s? What were the books? What were the people reading? So it is a two-part question: the music and its importance within the movements, all the movements, and what were people reading, the books? SW (01:31:33): Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone got me out of my marriage. That was my support system. "Once upon a time, you dress so fine. Threw the bums a dime in your prime, did not you?" That was my song. This is the song about white, middle class married woman leaving her life behind in a moment when getting a divorce was a travesty in my family and among everybody I knew. Dylan was my support system. Well, how many other people was he... If he could reach me, good Jesus, who did he not reach? I took my grandson to a Dylan concert when he was five, and I had him on my shoulders and I said, "You will grow up knowing that you saw Bob Dylan when you were small enough to be on your grandma's shoulders". For his birthday last year, I gave him a framed flyer that I had saved from the first anti-war demonstration that I took him to, and I had written on it "Michael's first". He was in a stroller. But the music was an absolutely critical part and it is a critical part of what we share. I share the music of the (19)60s with my grandkids. They play me their music, but we are listening to Dylan, we are listening to Leonard Cohen, we are listening to The Doors, we are listening to... That music was absolutely essential. It was an absolutely essential part. And then when the Woman's Movement created its own music, Holly Near, she is the- SM (01:33:23): Yeah, she is great. SW (01:33:24): ...Major, major figure in the creation of that. SM (01:33:32): Testing, one, two, testing. The first question on the second part of the interview here is about the issue of trust. A lot of the boomers did not trust anybody in positions of responsibility when they were young. And I think a lot of that is carried into their adulthood. A lot of them saw presidents and other people who they felt lied to them. And of course they were part of a generation that did not seem to trust anybody of positions of responsibility, whether it is a college administrator, a politician, a corporate leader, even priest, rabbis and ministers. Your thoughts on this issue of trust and whether this is a concern within the generation, that they were a very non-trusting generation and this carried on into their adulthood and how they raised their kids. SW (01:34:35): I think trust is earned. And I think I grew up in a generation in which there were very few people in positions of power who earned any trust or who earned a great deal of trust. And I think that the absence of trust was, there was a manifestation of the hell of the generation that we were just simply not taking the crap anymore. And when things happened like the Pentagon Papers, that became an official then who we trusted because this was somebody who was telling the truth. And I think the trust that was lost was because we were not being told the truth. And because there was an authoritarian, leave it to father, father knows best mold that we were breaking out of. And father does not always know best, and what we said was, "Father president, you do not know best about Vietnam". And I think that distrust continues. I will give you a manifestation for me of the continuation of the distrust. Medical profession- SW (01:36:02): ...trust. Medical profession, 100 years ago, their best treatment was giving people mercury, and bleeding them, and giving them purgatives, laxatives, which killed people. And in my time, when I gave birth to my children in the (19)60s, the medical profession's best judgment was, "We will give you x-rays to see how your baby is situated if everything is okay. And we will put you on diet pills because we do not want you to gain more than 20 pounds." Well, they gave kids leukemia with the x-rays in utero. And babies, we were told by old wives tales, "Should be fat, they will be healthier. Well guess what? Old wives tales, "Should be fat. They will be healthier." Well, guess what? Old wives tales, were better knowledge than the medical profession at the time. So for me, do I trust sonograms now? Hell, no. I am not going to trust those people that have a long history of being wrong. And so my relationship with Western medicine is a very touch and go one. There is times when I will step into it and times I will step out of it. And that is just one example of the president who, when George Bush takes us to war in Iraq, I think that the Boomers had enough knowledge of the untruth of the Gulf of Tonkin to know not to trust implicitly that there really was a reason to go to war. And we were right. There was not. It was based on a lie like the Gulf of Tonkin was. So I think that we are holding out for truth. And when truth emerges, we trust it. And I think that is the hope with Obama is that this is a man who may speak truth. We will withhold judgment a little bit. We will watch, we will make sure, we will see. But there is a sense that I have that this is a man who largely is a truth teller, and that is probably the first truth telling president that I have experienced. SM (01:39:06): Why do you think the Vietnam War ended? SW (01:39:10): We ended it. I think I told you in the last interview. SM (01:39:12): Okay. SW (01:39:18): We won. When the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, the NFL ... LF. God, do I still remember? I think so. Of Vietnam and the anti-war movement in the United States joined forces, we brought down the government of the United States. We stopped the war. SM (01:39:44): Is there any- SW (01:39:45): And we got the government of the United States to agree to, the sixth point, I think was first and then nine points peace plan of the PRG. SM (01:39:59): Is there, in your lifetime, particularly when you were young, in the (19)60s and the (19)70s, was there a speaker you saw at a college campus or an entertainment event that had really great impact on you? SW (01:40:14): Tons of them. SM (01:40:16): Could you describe some of them or list them? SW (01:40:20): Going to the Fillmore in San Francisco, and watching Grace Slick spell out, "When the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope within you dies, do not you want somebody to love?" Watching the last performance of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young ... Buffalo Springfield, not Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, when they were Buffalo Springfield. Their last performance as that group. Listening to Dylan transformed my life, Like a Rolling Stone. When I left the middle-class marriage, it was with the support of Bob Dylan singing Like a Rolling Stone. SM (01:41:08): Right. SW (01:41:09): Became my anthem, like it was for millions of my generation and political people. I was at California State University, Sacramento, and I was on the program committee, and also employed in that office, and I arranged for Tom Hayden to come and speak when he was part of the Chicago 8. And the president of the college canceled the speech because he said to me, when he called me privately into his office, "Free speech is too important to allow it to be used." Or, "Sometimes you have to cancel it to protect it." I think was his line, Otto Butz, President Otto Butz. SM (01:42:04): Oh my God. SW (01:42:05): "So I am going to have to cancel this, speech, Sally, and I am sure you will understand." Well, it was right after Cambodia and Kent State and we were living on campus. We would set up a Strike City on the campus. And I went back to Strike City and said, "What are we going to do?" Within an hour, we had plastered all over campus that Tom Hayden was scheduled to speak, the time, and we just went ahead. And within two hours we had silk screen posters all over the city of Sacramento, which forced the president to publicly cancel the speech, which then brought in the ACLU, which filed a restraining order against the president of the campus or the chancellor of the state college system, and went into court that morning, and we won- SM (01:43:00): Wow. SW (01:43:01): ...inside, on campus. SM (01:43:03): Wow. That is activism. SW (01:43:07): Was for a few, but I could go on and on, and Malcolm X. SM (01:43:13): Yeah. Since you had that experience, did you have some experience with some other speakers when you were a student? SW (01:43:21): Oh, yeah. We brought Gloria Steinem, Flo Kennedy, Malcolm X, I never heard speak in person. Ti-Grace Atkinson, who was one of the most brilliant of the feminist theoretician, Robin Morgan, I could go on and on. SM (01:43:41): Okay. SW (01:43:44): And it was also reading things, that it was an electric time when there was a paradigm shift going on that was just unparalleled, at least in my lifetime. SM (01:44:05): In your very unbelievable credentials, you started the first women's studies program, according to what I have read, and of course you had the first PhD in women's studies. First off, could you describe starting that first women's studies program, where, when, and the reaction, both positive and negative, toward that experience? SW (01:44:31): Well, let me clarify. It was, as far as we know, the third, when the studies program in the country, I was one of the founders. None of those things were done by individuals, you know, the creation of programs, it was a movement. SM (01:44:52): Mm-hmm. SW (01:44:53): And I was a part of that. And I was, I think a very strong, I do not mean to underplay my part in it, I taught the first women's studies class at California State [inaudible]. And I held the meetings that led to the creation of the women's studies program. In my role as an employee in the Honor Center, we had the very first discussion in 1969 on campus that led to the creation of the program. I taught my first class in 1970. I have been teaching women's studies for 39 years. That may be a record, but God, that said, I did play an important role. But that women's studies program grew out of these meetings that I put together on campus in the honors program. They were sponsored by the honors program. I was a work study student employed by honors. I could basically set up whatever kind of discussion events I wanted. So I did series on women's studies, or was not even women's studies. There was not such studies then, it was on women's rights, you know, on feminism. SM (01:46:14): Mm-hmm. SW (01:46:15): Called it at that time, women's liberation. And so we had a series of talks about it. And whoa, oh, it was amazing. And the faculty that came and just tore us up one side and down another in terms of, "Women are not in an unequal position. Women really hold power and authority. And men are the ones who are really put upon by women." And I do not know, it was a class warfare. And so right from the beginning, you know, the opposition, just dreadful. SM (01:47:03): Yeah. That leads right into my, what year was that too, by the way? SW (01:47:08): 1969 was when we held the meeting. I think (19)70 was when I taught my first women's studies class. And I think, I am pretty sure that was the first one on our campus. And that was early for women's studies classes in the country. And then I think we got the program together in about (19)71. SM (01:47:36): If there has been anything that has hurt the movement since the early (19)70s, what would it be? SW (01:47:44): There has been all kinds of things that have hurt the movement. I think the backlash was inevitable. And the backlash was predictable, although we did not know it at the time. But that was very painful. I think another very difficult thing was that we want to create a system that was not based on power over, but that was based on power with. And we did not know how to do that. And we did not know how to work with each other. We were forging relationships and building relationships at the same time that we were trying to build a movement and we had political differences, and we did not know how to deal with those in any kind of respectful way. The one model we had was confrontation politics, and we used that on each other. And that was not the most effective thing. That was injurious. We hurt each other. And I think into the (19)80s, when, was it Rush Limbaugh that created the term feminazis? The damage of that. Young women today, "No, I am not a feminist." Even older women today, "I am not a feminist," because they have that right-wing media created image of what feminist is. And then it is just the standard thing, we all know that [inaudible] said, " Well, you believe in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And, "Of course I believe in all those." "Well, that is what feminist is." "Yeah, but I am not a feminist." The word became so- SM (01:49:46): Wow. SW (01:49:47): ...[inaudible]. And that is true of many moves. And that is true of many- [inaudible] SM (01:49:52): How do you deal with the criticisms like, well, I know David Horowitz has written about it, but how do you respond to critics who say that, "The women's movement, like all the other movements of that era, is more about indoctrination than education. And it is part of the new left. The new left has taken over." SW (01:50:13): That is bullshit. I do not know. How do I respond? It is bullshit. It is reactionary bullshit. Indoctrination? I do not know. I do not like to waste my time with working against those kinds of statements. Spend all your energy matching is just, it is bullshit. SM (01:50:47): Who stands out as the- SW (01:50:49): It was not a perfect movement. I think to expect a movement to have perfection, it is a crazy expectation. And I think that to make those kind of sweeping statements, there is an arrogance to that that I just find so offensive that I do not want to be in the same room with the person that would make that kind of a quote. SM (01:51:18): Right. SW (01:51:18): So it is like you just waste your time. SM (01:51:26): Well, the other thing here is that, one other criticism might be, do you think that the movement's criticizing the stay-at-home moms has helped the movement in any ways? Because some moms may have wanted to go out and work, but others wanted to stay-at-home and raise the kids. And that is the mothers who were in the (19)40s, (19)50s, and early (19)60s, you know, who raised a lot of the boomers. SW (01:51:47): No, I think if you want the indoctrination. Indoctrination came from the way that we were depicted incorrectly in the media. There was this Shulamite Firestone wrote book in which she talked about biological and [inaudible]. I bought that book early on, that was an idea that we played with. And I think our goal was to create options for women. The media created an artificial war between working moms and stay-at-home moms. And the economy is what created, women having to go out into the workforce and not have an option. You know, it is a middle-class luxury for women today, being able to think about being a stay-at-home mom. SM (01:52:46): Mm-hmm. SW (01:52:52): Most families have to have two people working. And part of the reason is because women do not get equal pay for equal work. And there is no legislation prior to this [inaudible]. And now we have respect better, but we still do not have equal pay or equal rights guaranteed. And seminars still making 78 cents on the dollar to men are making. And we are in the United States, and in economics we are beat up in every single area of work. And if people are being laid off, and, and, and, and. It is a false fight between working moms and stay-at-home moms. And there were some women in the movement who made statements about an end to motherhood, an end to the nuclear family. [inaudible] family being based on male power was one of the things that we went after, not the family unit, but the idea of the fatherhood knows best, the head of the family is going to make all the decisions, and who has the right to beat the wife into submission until she just go along with it. In the (19)60s, wife battering was not a crime. It was not punished. It was a domestic dispute and cops did not want to get in the middle of it. So it was as it should be and it was really not an option. You stayed with your husband. You know, it was your fault. Have to figure out what you should do different. SM (01:54:57): What- SW (01:54:59): So I think those are the real issues and it is a diversionary tactic to get people looking at some false issue like some division between working moms and stay-at-home moms, which only affects a wealthy, privileged part of the population, anyway, even considers staying at home. That is bogus, in my mind. SM (01:55:17): Who stands- SW (01:55:17): That is a diversion from the real issue. SM (01:55:27): Who stands out, especially for young Boomer women that- SW (01:55:31): What? SM (01:55:33): Who stands out as the number one role model for Boomer women and- SW (01:55:38): For what women? SM (01:55:41): Boomer. SW (01:55:43): Oh, Boomer. SM (01:55:44): Yeah, the female Boomers. So was there one person in that late (19)60s, early (19)70s, through the (19)70s, into the (19)80s that stood out more than anybody else? SW (01:56:06): That is an antifeminist question. SM (01:56:06): Oh, it is? SW (01:56:06): Yeah. We were creating a leaderless movement. SM (01:56:06): Okay. SW (01:56:07): And I think that we were inventing ourselves, and a movement, and what we wanted. Now, the media created spokespeople, the media created leaders, the women's movement did not. SM (01:56:25): Okay, well, that is important. That is a magic moment in the interview, because I just learned something, because I am really into leadership. I am always into, well, what makes a leader, and how do they evolve, and where do they come from, and all that other stuff. And can I ask one other thing, though? If it is a leaderless movement, who were some of the Boomers that may have been in their late teens and 20s that have really gone on to be outstanding leaders today? SW (01:56:55): I think that if you look for leaders, you miss the movement, then and now. That if you looked for an individual, you look for five outstanding people, you are going to miss that this is an entire movement. And there are some who gained more visibility for whatever reason within the movement. When we first started out in women's liberation in Sacramento, the media was always saying to us, "Who is your leader? Take us to your leader. We want to talk to whoever is in charge." And they were nuts, because we would say, "We are all in charge. You can talk to any of us, because we have to get the spokesperson. We are all spokespeople." And they demanded that we give them a spokesperson. And sometimes we could not get any media coverage if we did not. You know? SM (01:57:52): Mm-hmm. SW (01:57:53): And I think that there also, I was a radical [inaudible]. There were other tendencies to this feminism. And so you had NOW, which was liberal feminists and that was based more on the-the male model of leadership is power down. So you could come up with women who were presidents of NOW and women who were... Gloria Steinem, to me, has become a leader because... I do not even want to say leader. Nobody follows Gloria Steinem. Nobody follows anybody. But I think where Gloria Steinem has become a really important symbol of the movement, and representation of the same power of the movement, and the continuing growth of thought, she wins out. " I shall not [inaudible] in the age." SM (01:59:05): What- SW (01:59:05): She is the poster child for that. And she is willing, she is so adept at, you listen to anything she says, or you read anything that she says, and if she gets credited, she always says, "I was part of a movement." SM (01:59:23): Huh. SW (01:59:25): "I did not do this. I was part of a movement." SM (01:59:25): What- SW (01:59:26): So she never let the media- [inaudible] SM (01:59:32): What do you and what do members of the movement think about people like Phyllis Schlafly, and Anita Bryant, and female leaders, who may not support, conservative leaders support the movement? SW (01:59:50): I think every movement has people who do not identify with their class. I think Mark called it false conscious. You know. SM (02:00:06): Mm-hmm. SW (02:00:08): [inaudible] part. You do not expect that everybody's going be part of what you are fighting for. I think it was Lucretia Mott who said, "The death of the slave is exemplified by how strong he holds on chains." I am paraphrasing, but there is something to that effect- that it is an indication of the degree to which we are oppressed that we embrace our oppression. And there are also women who exploit their anti-ness in this culture because the media is always looking for, "Let us look at the other side." Even when there is not another side, they create one. So they interview a feminist that, "My God, we got to have an anti-feminist, here, and a really good woman. Or we got to have a Black who's opposed to Black rights." You know? SM (02:01:09): Mm-hmm. SW (02:01:13): [inaudible] will not it? And so they create artificially, these people who nobody in the movement would pay attention to that the media has all of a sudden created them up to be a big giant. What do I think of them? I think it is absolutely to be expected that there will be. There will always be some men who are stronger advocates of women's rights than some women. There will always be some white people who will be stronger advocates of, you know- SM (02:01:56): Mm-hmm. One of the things, Johnetta Cole, with- [inaudible] SW (02:01:59): ...the- SM (02:02:03): Johnetta Cole used to be the president of Spelman College. She wrote a great book. And she talked about some of the sensitivities within the African American female community with respect to being identified with the women's movement because they were identified with the civil rights movement. So she brought up, they wanted to be involved in the movement, but they needed to be more identified with the civil rights movement. And- SW (02:02:34): [inaudible] That was a piece of an issue. And I think that that also was one that the media picked up. All that stuff is really so superficial that I think the focus on that stuff is really to not understand what the [inaudible] was about. That is really [inaudible] communication in the (19)60s. You know, that is not what it felt like to being inside it. SM (02:02:58): Mm-hmm. SW (02:03:01): There was always dialogue, there was a racism, of course there was racism. The culture was rampant with racists all of a sudden, because we were involved in the liberation of women. Did that mean that we checked our racism at the door? I do not think so. There was classism. There was sexism in the African American movement. But being involved in the movement, we were working with that. It was in process, it was in dialogue. It was not status. But when it got to be looked at through the static lens of the media, which did not understand what was going on, that this was a process. It was like, "Okay, I am going to take this still photo of this and I am going to freeze this event in time to say, 'This is what is going on.'" And it did not characterize what was going on. SM (02:04:03): Two- SW (02:04:03): There was a constant looking at racism, looking at sexism, looking at classism, looking at homophobia, looking at ageism, looking at ableism. One thing would lead to another, would lead to drawing awareness of one thing in another. You know, in the last interview I told you how that happened with my daughter- SM (02:04:25): Mm-hmm. SW (02:04:26): ...with my daughter and then my son was children's liberation. That was part of the strength of the movement, was that we were all dealing with these issues. And yeah, people wrote about it when we were in process. But I think to take those writings that were happening in process where we said, "This is what the problem is, we got to deal with it, is to ignore the dealing with it." SM (02:05:00): Two things here, reaction to two different areas. The burning of the bras, why did that take place? And did it have a positive effect? And secondly is Playboy magazine, which is Hugh Hefner and the sexual revolution. And I know that it is a very sensitive issue on college campuses today, women's bodies and a lot of them do not like Hugh Hefner, and what he stood for, and everything. Just your thoughts on the women's movement, how they looked at Hugh Hefner in that Playboy movement, and then whole, maybe it was just the media with a burning bras, but just those two things. SW (02:05:38): Well, the bra burning, as you know, it never happened. And [inaudible] been, it is done to death, but it never happened. And yet the question keeps coming up. And it is like, "Ho-hum. Come on, ask me something important." But the effect of it was that was very important. It became a way of trivializing the movement. It became a way to not have to deal with it seriously. "They are just a bunch of bra burners." Same thing happened in the 19th century with a bunch of [inaudible] wear." Well, the burning of the objects at the Miss America pageant, which they actually did throw in makeup and whatever. That was a symbolic destruction, a symbol of our [inaudible]. It was, "We are not just sexual objects." And I think that was the whole, Hefner is soft porn. It was the objectification with the violence turned down. Larry Flynt, was not that his name? SM (02:06:58): Yes. SW (02:07:04): The one who did the woman upside down in the meat grinder. Now, he was pornography with the violence turned up loud. And the violence is there, the objectification is there. What it does is its training manual for young males and perpetually adolescent adult males who connect power and sex, and the connection of power and sex to the culture is very strong. And pornography is the training manual for it, the indoctrination. If the women are commodities to be consumed, and, "I have the power to either violently or with just mild power." You know. SM (02:07:59): Mm-hmm. Another question, the Women's Vietnam Memorial was built in 1993. Actually, it was- SM (02:08:03): ...memorial was built in 1993. Actually it was opened up in 1993. I am sure you know, everything Diane Carlson had to go through and how she was treated on the hill for even thinking of doing this. And the prejudice, even in the Vietnam veteran community in the very beginning was a big roadblock. They seem to forget that now, everything's hunky-dory, but I know what she had to go through. Were the women's movement working at all with a lot of the female veterans of the Vietnam War when this memorial was being built for the idea? Is there a linkage there? SW (02:08:35): I do not know about that. SM (02:08:40): Okay, because I know that... SW (02:08:44): [inaudible] I mean, you are talking about a movement that is so diverse and that is so decentralized now and that is operating in so many different fronts. There is so many different areas. There is no way any single person can have the knowledge of everything that is going on in the United States. I think that is the strength of it. SM (02:09:04): Sally, what reading... why did the ERA fail? I remember my boss was Betty Menson at Ohio University on Lancashire campus. She was one of the leaders in the state of Ohio and trying to get this passed. And I can remember sitting in my office, I think it was 1973, and the vote was taking place in Ohio at that time, see if it would be passed. And it did not pass in Ohio. And boy, she was very disappointed. But why did the ERA fail and why was there so much resistance to it? SW (02:09:38): The same reason it failed last time through it. It is still on the table. And, with a Democratic majority and Obama's president, we may still join the civilized world and have equal rights to have been protected in the time too, before I die. But the reason that it failed when it went almost to the edge, was the same reason that we are really at risk of not passing a healthcare bill, right now. The insurance company. The insurance company put tremendous amounts of money behind the care, because it is not in the interest of corporations and insurance companies for women to have equal rights. If you can bill women and men in different ways for insurance, your benefit, if you can make more money off women and off their labor. I mean, if you had to suddenly pay women equal with men in this country, look what that is going to do to corporation? If you lose that 25 cents in profit, but you are getting off every woman's dollars. You know, for every man you pay a dollar, pay the woman 78 cents. Who was keeping that profit? [inaudible] And so, it was a well... and that has been well documented. It was a well-orchestrated, well financed, that they hired some token right wing women, Phyllis Schlafly before she became the poster child for Anti-ERA. My God, you are going to have go to the bathroom in the same bathroom. The world's western civilization will crumble as women and men are in the same bathroom. Well, guess what? We are in the bathroom a lot on airplanes and number of other places and the world seems to still be operating. But, it was those incredibly stupid things that were the arguments against it. But Phyllis Schlafly was a spokesperson for... She was a well-recognized right-winged [inaudible] before she became the paid gun of the corporate [inaudible] Still post-ERA. SM (02:12:21): What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you? SW (02:12:27): I went there once and I was moved. I am much more moved by the movie the Winter Soldier Investigates. SM (02:12:42): And why is that? SW (02:12:44): I mean, the Vietnam Memorial is like a senseless death. I mean, okay, here is a death count and here is the names of all those men who died unnecessarily. That is what I see when I go there. SM (02:13:09): What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? SW (02:13:17): It was when the government brought the war home against its gun. SM (02:13:24): What does Watergate mean to you? SW (02:13:35): The truth. SM (02:13:36): What...? SW (02:13:36): You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. In this case it was [inaudible] Richard Nixon. SM (02:13:43): What does Woodstock in the Summer of Love mean to you? SW (02:13:48): The Summer of Love means commercialization of something that was much deeper than that characterization of it. Woodstock is the place that the [inaudible] went through. SM (02:14:10): The what went through? SW (02:14:13): The [inaudible] on the East Coast. SM (02:14:14): Oh, okay. SW (02:14:14): It just became legendary to most of us on the West Coast. SM (02:14:20): Yeah, there were 400,000 people there, but if you talk to everybody, there might have been 10 million. What does 1968 mean to you? SW (02:14:37): (19)68 is the Worldwide Revolution State, for me. It means Rudy the Red in Germany. It means Danny the Red in France. It means the moment when we really believed that we could turn the world around, in a brief period of time. SM (02:15:02): What does counterculture mean to you? SW (02:15:06): A label that somebody attached at a later date. SM (02:15:11): What do the hippies and yippies mean to you? SW (02:15:15): The yippies! I love that one. Put the yip back and hippy. The hippie again, I mean, once the term was created, the movement was in decline and almost dead. SM (02:15:34): How about the Students for Democratic Society and the Weathermen? SW (02:15:47): SDS was... boy, you know what comes to my mind? What was the support hearing statement? What was that even called? Was not that the first? SM (02:15:58): Yes. SW (02:15:59): And it is like reading, okay, here is our manifesto, here is... here is truth. And SDS became legendary, it was much more on the East Coast, early on. And then the split with the Progressive Labor Party - the PLP, and just if you vote. And then the Weatherman. Is it time for an armed revolution? The folks from mild arm struggle is the highest form of struggle. And the arguments over, does that mean it is the most important? Does that mean it is the last-ditch effort when nothing else makes... when all else fails? That is what you have to go through. That means Bob Dylan and Subterranean Homesick Blues, which was our national anthem. "You do not need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." It is the movement growing out of the lyrics of the troubadour of our generation. It means that because of people that died were principled. And it also means to me, personally, watching males pull guns just like the males that were, I do not know, being indoctrinated to carry guns as a symbol of man hooding Weatherman carrying guns, a symbol of manhood. And women trying to be as tough as the boys. Especially, it means to me being told by a weather woman, a weatherman, woman. If you are to be a true revolutionary, you have to be prepared to give up the kids. SM (02:18:40): Well, how would you talk about black power and the Black Panthers? SW (02:18:46): The Black Panthers, what comes to mind immediately is the government's systematic execution of them. SM (02:18:58): Yeah, what were your thoughts on... There is actually seven that really... SW (02:19:01): [inaudible] What? SM (02:19:01): There is actually seven that really stick out here. Of course, Bobby Seal, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, H Wrapped Brown, Stokely Carmichael and Fred Norman. Those are the ones that are known all over the world. SW (02:19:24): But the blunt... but in Oakland, they were feeding the people. They were really enhancing the lives of people. And I think that the media created leaders, and to some extent they were leaders of the movement. I think to concentrate on their activities, is [inaudible] what the Black Panthers were doing in the community. And they were feeding the people first and foremost. They were taking care of the needs of the people. SM (02:20:10): The other one here is the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. SW (02:20:14): Yeah, VVAW. My vision, my dream was that there would be a political coalition between VVAW and the Women's State. And we did that in Sacramento, we worked together really closely and did a lot of stuff together. That was a powerful, powerful coalition. SM (02:20:33): They took over when SDS was failing. They kind of rubbed up the anti-war movement. And the last one word here is enemy's list. When you hear about that enemy's list. SW (02:20:47): Yeah, that does not conjure up anymore [inaudible] enemies. SM (02:20:57): That was the Richard Nixon's enemies list. SW (02:21:00): Oh, okay. And that is important. That is indicative of how it was sort of like Richard Nixon is the President of the United States. Richard Nixon is a corrupt man who I do not recognize as a lead...as my leader. It was like, Richard Nixon's going to go off and do whatever he is going to do. I am going to be part of a movement to stop before I could be part of the movement to turn this country around. And so, it is not focusing on Richard Nixon. I was focusing on the work I was doing in that. But we were... SM (02:21:46): You, you have made comments on Richard Nixon and I was going to ask what you thought of him. Now I am just going to mention some names. This is toward the end of the interview here. You have men made comments on Richard Nixon. What about Spiro Agnew? SW (02:22:00): Oh man. They were just so indicative of everything that was wrong with the country. SM (02:22:14): And what were they indicative of? SW (02:22:22): Of power that was not used for the good of the people. Of corruption that was just a given and a normal part of daily life. Of a level of lying that was standard procedure. SM (02:22:46): Okay. Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the yippes. SW (02:22:50): Yeah, they were funny guys. I liked it when they threw dollar bills at the on the floor at, what is it? Wall Street? SM (02:23:05): Yep. Dollar bills. And of course Jerry Rubin, remember the story in his book 'Do It!', when he went into a bank and wanted to use a restroom. Do you remember that story? SW (02:23:17): I do not. SM (02:23:19): Well, I will mention it here. In his book, 'Do It!', he went into the... you know how he always looked with a bandana and the beard and everything. And he went into a bank and they might have been having a rally someplace, but he had to go to the bathroom and he went in and the policeman said, "you have to leave." "Well" he says, "I got to use the restroom." And he says, "No, we are not going to allow you to use the restroom." So he put his pants down and did a dump right in the middle of the bank. Unbelievable. How about Timothy Leary? SW (02:23:56): The opening of consciousness. SM (02:24:00): Eugene McCarthy? SW (02:24:03): Liberal. SM (02:24:05): George McGovern? SW (02:24:08): Liberal. But with more integrity. SM (02:24:15): How about John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy? SW (02:24:25): You know, that was a different time. That was an earlier time. That was the time when, for me it was the horrible time. SM (02:24:44): How about Lyndon Johnson? SW (02:24:48): Hey-hey, LBJ how many babies did you kill today? SM (02:24:52): Hmm. How about Hubert Humphrey? SW (02:24:57): Bah. That is my response. SM (02:25:03): Okay. Robert McNamara? SW (02:25:08): McNamara, watching that movie of him coming to grip to some extent with his behavior during that time. You know the movie I am talking about? SM (02:25:21): Yes. SW (02:25:21): About a couple of years ago? Yeah, That was dangerous. SM (02:25:27): George Wallace? SW (02:25:30): George Wallace, the poster child for Southern rights. SM (02:25:37): Ronald Reagan? SW (02:25:45): A man who had Alzheimer's when he was President of the United States and nobody pulled him out. SM (02:25:55): How about Gerald Ford? SW (02:25:59): He could not walk and chew gum at the same time. SM (02:26:01): Jimmy Carter? SW (02:26:20): A man whose integrity has grown geometrically in my eyes, and I think he is since he was President. SM (02:26:21): Dwight Eisenhower? SW (02:26:25): A guy who we quoted about the Military Industrial Complex. And maybe it was still possible to be a Republican with integrity before Nixon. SM (02:26:48): How about Benjamin Spock? SW (02:26:55): Well, he had a hell of an impact on [inaudible] and not all of it good, but a lot of it good. SM (02:27:06): Daniel Ellsberg? SW (02:27:11): Truth teller. SM (02:27:14): Daniel and Phillip Berrigan? SW (02:27:19): I think the reason I do not hold the entire Catholic Church in contempt. Examples of how even in an obsolete and corrupt institution, there can be [inaudible] integrity and goodness. And that would be true, the whole Dorothy Day of which they were part in arm. SM (02:27:53): Barry Gold... SW (02:28:06): The guy who cut my hair now in Syracuse is a product of that world in friends [inaudible] but still does not work in our area. SM (02:28:08): Barry Goldwater? SW (02:28:17): If you think Goldwater, I may be liberal, but to a degree I think everybody should be free. But if you think I am going to let Barry Goldwater move in next door and marry my daughter, I would not do it for all the tea in Cuba. SM (02:28:30): How about John Dean? SW (02:28:40): Well... what do you say about being able to live through a [inaudible] The crooks get caught and the crooks are held accountable, and the crooks are in the highest office [inaudible] It was a vindication. SM (02:29:13): William Buckley? SW (02:29:21): A smart conservative. SM (02:29:26): Okay. George Bush Sr? SW (02:29:27): Yes. And arrogant. Who? SM (02:29:32): George Bush Sr? Who said the Vietnam syndrome is over, took us to the Gulf War. SW (02:29:40): Hey you know, it is just more of the same. I think that at some point it starts looking like is the Principle President and oxymoron? Is there something inherent about the land between the office and the political processes embedded in a for-profit world, where it is impossible to have all these communications. Because it just becomes another farce. SM (02:30:26): How about, lastly here, George Bush and Bill Clinton, because they are the only two Boomer presidents. Do they define the Boomer generation by their actions, even though they are both... SW (02:30:39): They define what I just was talking about. The impossibility of principle politics in a for-profit system. SM (02:30:52): How about, and again, even though... SW (02:30:54): The accident of their time of birth does not have a whole hell of a lot to do with their behavior. SM (02:31:02): Gloria Steinem? SW (02:31:05): I think I have talked about her. SM (02:31:08): Okay. Bella Abzug? SW (02:31:10): Yeah, she is another person that got a lot of spotlight and was doing good work along with thousands and millions of other ones. SM (02:31:21): Betty Friedan? SW (02:31:22): Same thing. SM (02:31:24): And Shirley Chisholm? SW (02:31:26): She opened the door...Betty Friedan opened the door with her book, to a lot of reflection. And the book was important. SM (02:31:41): When the best books are written about the legacy of the Boomer generation. It could be... it is usually 50 years after an event or a period and we are approaching that, but particularly after Boomers have passed away, what do you think historians and sociologists will be saying about this Boomer generation when they are writing it in books for future generations? SW (02:32:08): I think it depends on how many voices from that time period they witness and the variety of voices that they witness. That will depend... that will be how good their history is. SM (02:32:25): All right, I am looking and see if I have anything else here. I do not think I do. Is there any questions I did not ask that you felt I should have asked? SW (02:32:35): I cannot think of any. SM (02:32:37): I think I have covered about everything. I wrote a whole extra set of questions here. I know one person who... A critic of the women's movement wanted me to ask a question, I have not really been asking it, but I will... Why have the women's movement not made more criticism of Muslims for how they treat women, instead of trying to defend their rights constantly here in the United States? SW (02:33:08): I think there has been a lot of criticism of the behavior and the criticism makes me a little observant, because we are criticizing a religious tradition where women had property rights 500 years before they had them under Christianity. And it is also an easy target to point to another culture and say, "that religious exploits women." "That religious is bad." When I think, the absence of looking at the effects of Christianity in our own culture, might be a more productive use of our time. SM (02:33:55): And my very last question is something that you have heard before and it is just a general comment that I have heard for a long time, is when women take over leadership roles, they will take on the same qualities of men and they will start getting sicker earlier. They will die of the same illnesses. It is just part of the nature of the human species. When you hear that, what do you say? SW (02:34:25): I think that is not got anything to do with the human species. I heard clueless about what the human species is. If we generalize from our particular society at this particular moment in history, I think that the goal of the revolution in its largest, broadest form of this social, cultural, economic, political, spiritual revolution is to do away with power-over, and to establish a system of power-with. And that means leadership takes on a very different form. And that price that you are talking about, the level of stress is the function of a system of power-over, is the price that the oppressor pays. Will women move into that? Yes they will, black. Yes they will. Will gay and lesbians? Yes they will. There are people that will move into that and are moving into, and we will see that as progress. I think a deeper progress is a real transformation of human relationship is when we end the system of power-over. End the price that both the oppressed and the oppressor pay in that system. The leader and the lead, if you will. To end that we move to a system of power-with. And then those stress things fall away, work with people. It is a very good model. SM (02:36:24): But you finally, my last, I have said this twice already, but this thing about the Women's Movement, as particularly when Boomers were young, the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, right through to today, the role that the women's movement has played in linking up with the GLBT movement, the Chicano movement, Native American movement, the Anti-War, Civil Rights, Environmental Movement, Disability Rights, ageism, and even mental health issues now, which is a big issue with women. Because there is a lot of movements. David Oaks, I do not know if you have ever heard of David, you ought to link up with him. He is really leading the mental health issue. He was a former student in Harvard, he is out in Oregon. Just your thoughts on how the Women's Movement has worked with these groups over the last 40 years. General thoughts. SW (02:37:18): Well, I think it is not just the Women's Movement. I think that of the linking of the struggles, that is what I was talking about earlier. The interplay. That we all needed to deal with each other's issues if we were to work together. And I think that has been one of the real strengths of this movement in its largest sense. And it is an imperfect thing, it is one that he keeps raising contradictions, but out of those contradictions comes transformation. SM (02:37:57): Very good. Well that is my. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Wagner, Sally Roesch ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors, American; Lecturers; Civil rights workers; Women's rights; Women's studies; Wagner, Sally Roesch--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner is an author, lecturer, and activist. She was a founder of one of the country’s first Women’s Studies programs and one of the first women to receive a Doctorate in the United States for work in Women’s Studies. Wagner received her Bachelor's degree and her Master's degree in Psychology from the California State University in Sacramento. She also received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness (Women’s Studies) from the University of California in Santa Cruz. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource ND Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.169a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.169b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 158:01 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/2d6ab8c9dc1b4369a916af82d51ffb90.jpg c7df4b924a7310b7fa787d52e2b1909d https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/9e2a81ac52c7c2eccd92994bb492e38f.mp3 4d76180b5a343635eae9b1e41cd4a583 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 2009-08-06 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sally L. Satel Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Sally Satel is a practicing psychiatrist, author and lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Satel focuses on mental health policy as well as political trends in medicine. She earned a Bachelor's degree from Cornell University, a Master's degree from the University of Chicago and an MD degree from Brown University. She completed her residency in psychiatry at Yale University. &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15107,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16382457],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,1447960],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Dr. Sally Satel is a practicing psychiatrist, author, and lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Satel focuses on mental health policy as well as political trends in medicine. She earned a Bachelor's degree from Cornell University, a Master's degree from the University of Chicago and an MD degree from Brown University. She completed her residency in psychiatry at Yale University. </span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 69:42 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Hippies; Bill Clinton; George Will; Mad Men(TV Show); Baby boom generation; Beat generation; Middle class; Generation X; Activism; Young Americans for Freedom; Nineteen sixties.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:16370588},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Hippies; Bill Clinton; George Will; Mad Men (TV Show); Baby boom generation; Beat generation; Middle class; Generation X; Activism; Young Americans for Freedom; Nineteen sixties.</span> Subject LCSH Psychiatrists; Authors; Lecturers; Yale University. School of Medicine; Satel, Sally L.--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Sally Satel Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Satel, Sally L. ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Psychiatrists; Authors; Lecturers; Yale University. School of Medicine; Satel, Sally L.--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Sally Satel is a practicing psychiatrist, author, and lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Satel focuses on mental health policy as well as political trends in medicine. She earned a Bachelor's degree from Cornell University, a Master's degree from the University of Chicago and an MD degree from Brown University. She completed her residency in psychiatry at Yale University. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-08-06 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.10.2016.109 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 69:42 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/9662014448d3709b06841781fe91bb95.jpg 073d4396748bf6d302300527ad5ddca7 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/50390d6b654343b5dd0a4abf5ed8646a.mp3 7ec9a8c11da0672b738894a4bb0ad957 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-08-16 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen Mckiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sara M. (Sara Margaret) Evans, 1943- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Sara M. Evans is a Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Minnesota. She has helped the university become a center for Women's History and Women's Studies, showing how women's lives impacted society. Dr. Evans earned her Bachelor's degree and Master's degree from Duke University and received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:4995,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Dr. Sara M. Evans is a Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Minnesota. She has helped the university become a center for Women's History and Women's Studies, showing how women's lives impacted society. Dr. Evans earned her Bachelor's degree and Master's degree from Duke University and received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 92:32 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Anti-war movement; Baby boom generation; McCarthy hearing; Middle class; Second-wave feminism; Betty Friedan; Ronald Reagan; Family values; Third-wave feminism; Rebecca Walker; University studies programs; Environmental Studies; Women in the nineteen-fifties.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792}}">Anti-war movement; Baby boom generation; McCarthy hearing; Middle class; Second-wave feminism; Betty Friedan; Ronald Reagan; Family values; Third-wave feminism; Rebecca Walker; University studies programs; Environmental Studies; Women in the nineteen-fifties.</span> Subject LCSH College teachers; Evans, Sara M. (Sara Margaret), 1943--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Sara Evans Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 16 August 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:04): Testing one, two. All right, let me get going here. I have got my sheet free. The first question I have is, who were your role models growing up? The teachers or the parents, the leaders that helped you become the person you are? I follow that up, also, as part of the question that I asked Dr. Baxandall when I interviewed her up in Massachusetts about a week ago. If you were in a packed house of 500 female college students today, and one of the students stood up and asked you to name three or four events in your life that made you who you are, the person you are today, what would those events be? It is kind of a combination, two-part question. SE (00:01:03): Well, the role models, when I was a child, I certainly have to talk about my parents. Because my father was a Methodist minister in South Carolina, and my parents were the only white people I knew who thought segregation was wrong, and I grew up in the segregated South. SM (00:01:32): Oh, wow. SE (00:01:33): That is very fundamental to who I became. My mother told me when I was, I do not know, about second grade, "They are going to teach you in school that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War, but it is." That is probably far and away the most important. I loved school. I had a number of teachers that I adored. I remember my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Holler, and I am not sure I can name any other one, but I had a number of teachers that I cared about very much. I always thought I wanted to be a teacher. SM (00:02:32): Right. SE (00:02:32): It is what I turned out to be. I wanted to teach every grade I was in except eighth grade and that is because, it is not because of the teachers, because the kids. I thought that that would be very hard. SM (00:02:45): Right. SE (00:02:45): I think I will stop at that for role models and- SM (00:02:56): Are there any specific- SE (00:02:58): Go ahead. SM (00:03:00): Events in your life besides the role models, who helped shape you? SE (00:03:07): Sure. There's no question that the civil rights movement changed the world I lived in and, certainly, changed my life. I can think all the way back to 1954 when I asked my students to think about some time when they became aware that history matters. And I say, 'I will tell you mine." I was on the playground and we were arguing about who should have won the war. Then, of course, I made them figure out what war and it is the Civil War. It is a playground in Columbia, South Carolina, and it is about 1954. The fact is, we were arguing about Brown versus the Board of Education. SM (00:04:00): Right. SE (00:04:01): That was what was really going on. So growing up in segregation in the (19)50s meant that the civil rights movement was both, was just a huge relief in a way and an opportunity to act on values I was raised with. I started college in 1962 and became active in the movement there in Durham, North Carolina, soon thereafter. I, also, another important event or experience was that in the summer of 1964, I went to Africa as a... It was after my sophomore year in college. There was a program called Operation Crossroads Africa. I do not think I had ever been out of the country. I went to Africa in an interracial group of college students, my first interracial experience, really, and laid bricks in a country that received its independence the summer that we were there, the little country of Malawi. We even got to be in the stadium and watched the British flag come down and the Malawi flag go up. That summer changed my view of the world because I saw the United States from outside. I discovered colonialism. I began to understand the impact of our country on the rest of the world. For several years, anyway, focused on African studies in my academic life. It framed when I began the next year to think about the war in Vietnam. I thought very differently about it because of having had that experience, so that was pretty fundamental. SM (00:06:23): I wrote this question up that I have asked probably the last 12 people I have interviewed. Since I am writing a book on the boomers, a lot of people have had a problem with defining the boomers. SE (00:06:35): Right. SM (00:06:36): Because the textbooks say it is anyone born between (19)46 and (19)64. But so many of the people that were the leaders of the anti-war movement were born between 1938 and 1945. SE (00:06:52): Right. SM (00:06:52): Many have told me, that I have interviewed have said, "Steve, you have got to think a little different here because the first half of the boomer generation, yes, they were really impacted. But a 10-year-old in the second half?" So I am just dealing with what higher ed defines as generations- SE (00:07:13): Right. SM (00:07:13): And what sociologists have been saying. But the question I am coming up with here deals with the (19)50s. I have a couple questions here. To boomers, and correct me if I am wrong, grew up very naïve. They learned that the meaning of fear stood for being quiet, obeying orders, do not question authority. So I came up with three qualities here that I feel defined boomers in the 1950s. The concept that there was fear, there was a sense of being quiet and there was a sense of being naive. Then the (19)60s and (19)70s came, it was just the opposite. There were lots of injustices and people spoke up. They challenged authority and certainly the students did. So they had to deal with these issues from the (19)50s that they grew up with. Whether it be the McCarthy hearings, the Cold War, the bomb, obviously, injustices in the South, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Am I on target here? I read your book, Personal Politics. It's one of the best books I have ever read, in fact. SE (00:08:25): Thank you. SM (00:08:27): I got it right in front of me. Actually, I destroyed it underlining it but I got to get another copy. It is a tremendous book. SE (00:08:35): Thank you. SM (00:08:36): But are those three qualities really what the boomer generation when they were young lived through in the (19)50s? I am not just talking white people. I am talking about African American, gay and straight, you name it. SE (00:08:53): Well, I think it is really hard to apply something like those qualities completely across the board. I was born in 1943, by the way, so I am in that earlier group. I always tell my students that the uptick in fertility took place a lot sooner than 1946. So I do not think the boomer generation should be counted just from (19)46, but that is a different issue. Fear. Let us talk about that one just a little bit. Certainly, I was aware that there was a danger of atomic war, for example. On the other hand, I think African Americans in the rural south lived in a kind of perpetual fear that is not really about the decade of the (19)50s. It is about centuries of suppression. So those things are very different and their links to time are somewhat different. On the other hand, I would say a lot of people think of the (19)50s as a time of tremendous optimism. Think about Happy Days, that movie, that TV series. A lot of Americans became middle class for the first time. We had been through a depression and then a war. Now people were beginning to have a life of material wealth and opportunities to seek higher education, to own automobiles or refrigerators, or use telephones, watch television. All of those things were becoming a part of ordinary American life, so there is an optimism in the 1950s that linked, also, to the Cold War ideology, "We are the best. We are the most wonderful. Look at us." The Cold War both had produced fear because of war. We had come out of a war and now war seemed threatened all the time. This sense of, "We are the best and we are only getting better and we will win." It was all modulated with that. The naivete of many in my generation was linked to that sense of well-being that gets shattered as we discover. I cannot say that I feel participating in this because I grew up in the segregated South, and I grew up knowing that something was deeply unjust about American society. But I think there were many in my generation in other parts of the country who did grow up with the sense that all is well and getting better, until they discovered that children go to bed hungry in this best of all possible societies. The civil rights movement brought segregation and the brutal suppression of segregation to their television screen. Then the Vietnam War, of course, brought others. Your themes are not, I would not say they are completely wrong but, like any stereotype, you need to push them a little bit because they are never going to fit perfectly. SM (00:13:25): The second wave is something you have written about in one of your latest books. What are the major second wave accomplishments, in your opinion? What are the failures or maybe things that were not achieved in the second wave, so far? SE (00:13:46): Well, the second wave, certainly, in many ways, created a revolution in American life. We can look at that on many dimensions. It made a lot of legal changes, of course, so that it is no longer legal to pay women less than men for the same work. It is no longer legal to advertise jobs as men only or women only. It is no longer legal for professional schools, medical schools, law schools, and graduate schools that have quotas and only admit 5 percent women. It is no longer legal to prevent women from serving on juries. That whole edifice of legal discrimination fell apart in the late (19)60s and in the 1970s, mostly in the early part of the 1970s. It is also no longer the case that women are expected to stay home through their adult lives and care for children and tend to the house. Now, that was never a reality for very large numbers of women no matter what. But it was a cultural ideal that was lived out mostly in the middle and upper middle classes. That the revolution of women's labor force participation was not caused by the women's movement, but it interacted with it. In some ways, it was a cause of the women's movement because all those women were running into barriers, discrimination, finding only dead-end jobs. Only women only work available to them. Younger women with higher education who sensed potential in themselves would be discouraged, or not admitted to school, or whatever, so there was an interactive effect there. But in the aftermath of that movement, women and men participate in the labor force on an almost equal basis in terms of numbers. There are many ways in which that movement did not... I think I want to credit it with creating a revolution and also notice that it is far from achieving the goals that it set for itself, which was genuine equality between men and women in American society. There are many ways in which it is far more equal than it used to be, but we still have, in many ways, a double standard. There is discrimination still but it's much more subtle, much more subtle. It is important that we had a woman run for president in 2008 who could have won. That is the first time. We have had women run for president many times but this was a new one. I think it is a real marker that Hillary could have won. SM (00:17:41): I think she is going to run again down the road. SE (00:17:44): She might, she might. We will see. There are a lot of built-in attitudes that I have been distressed to see the sort of casual sexism that was rampant in my childhood, some of that is back. I do not know if you look at movies and that sort of thing, they certainly are better than they used to, but there is still a lot of those themes are there. I think what we did not do was change the way society regards family. Even though families have changed, we offer no support for single-parent family. It is... When it was married couples raising children, women still do more than half, although, at least it is not 90 percent. But they still do more than half of the work of caring for children and families and households. Our labor force offers very few breaks for people who want combined meaningful work and child rearing. There are other countries, particularly in Europe, that have gone much further down this path. We do not offer paid childcare leave. We do not offer them for men, as well as women, except in some places six weeks. But that is not what we need. We make it very hard for people to deal with ill children. We create this competition between these two arenas that are both essential for the future of our society. So you have people hiring nannies that are... People with really high paying jobs, hiring nannies and hardly ever get to see their children. People with really low paying jobs find it very difficult to find decent childcare and children end up in not very healthy situations. SM (00:20:26): When you look at the, I am going to use the years the boomers have been alive, of course, they have been alive since 1946 through today, and the oldest is now 64 years old, and the youngest is 48 going on 49, so there are no spring chickens anymore within this generation. I think they finally realized that maybe, like a lot of generations, that they are mortal. SE (00:20:53): That may be what? SM (00:20:56): That they are mortal. That they- SE (00:20:59): Hello? SM (00:20:59): Are you still there? Can you hear me? SE (00:21:05): Hello? Are you there? SM (00:21:06): Yes, I am here. SE (00:21:09): I think I lost you for a second. SM (00:21:11): Can you still hear me? SE (00:21:13): Yes, I can. SM (00:21:13): Okay. Yeah. SE (00:21:16): You need to know that my telephone works through my wireless. SM (00:21:21): Okay. SE (00:21:22): Because I am in a very remote place, so every now and then it blinks out. SM (00:21:26): Okay. All right. I do have your number if it does disconnect us. What was it like, and you can just give a few examples or just explain it briefly. What was it like being a female during these different periods that boomers have been alive? You did a great job in your book, Personal Politics, about explaining about the young women who were being reared in the 1950s, seeing their moms go to work- SE (00:21:59): Right. SM (00:22:01): And so forth. So they saw some of the experiences that their mothers had to go through. It helped shape them, too, that it was not going to be easy for many of them. SE (00:22:11): Right. SM (00:22:12): But what was it like being a woman in the United States from 1946 to 1960? I am breaking these down according to timeframes, from that time at the end of World War II- SE (00:22:24): Right. SM (00:22:25): Until the time John Kennedy became president? SE (00:22:28): Okay, well, I am assuming you are asking me about my experience as opposed to- SM (00:22:32): Yes-yes. SE (00:22:37): I was born at the end of 1943, so I do not have a lot of memories of (19)46. But the main thing I would tell you is that I had a mother with a college degree and the passion of a scientist, who should have been a scientist, who never thought she had that choice. So I grew up aware of my mother's frustrated potential and anger and depression. I think that really did shape me in some important ways. I did not want to end up in that situation. When I read in 1963, this is outside your timeframe, but when I read Betty Friedan's book, a light bulb went on like, oh, I do not have to make that choice. But I think in the (19)50s, girls in the middle class, which I certainly was, the way we thought about our future was not, what are you going to be when you grow up? When I was really little, I was going to be a nurse because kids did ask that question. SE (00:24:03): I was going to be a nurse, because kids did ask that question or asked that question. But in high school, what I recall is conversations among girls about who would you like to marry? Would you like to be the wife of a lawyer, a doctor, a minister? Those kinds of... It was being the wife of and not being those, not having those professions ourselves, that was presented as how to think about yourself in the future. SM (00:24:38): How about that period? You already talked about Betty Friedan's book that came out in (19)63, but the period 1961 to 1970. SE (00:24:49): Well, that is when things got really revolutionary, and you almost have to talk about that year by year, because it is different year by year. Certainly this mobilization of women is beginning by the mid (19)60s, and with the presidential commissions on women and so forth. I read Betty Friedan in college because one of my professors told me to read it. And at that point, I decided along Betty Friedan's prescription that I could be several woman. I would have a career and I would have a family too and it would not even be hard. But it was in 1967 that I landed in a women's liberation group. And from that moment on, became a very active feminist, and saw the need to transform American society and the way it defined gender and gender roles. SM (00:26:03): How about that period, 1971 to 1980? SE (00:26:10): Well, again, I am really reluctant to just slap labels on decades like that, because they changed so much from beginning to end. The high point of the women's movement in terms of mobilization was the mid (19)70s, just in terms of sheer numbers and actions and so forth. The high point of legislative change was about 1972 to (19)74, in terms of legal transformations. I think young women, coming of age then, and you need to talk to them, because I was moving from my late twenties into my thirties at that point, in graduate school. But for younger women, I think there was a sense of, the sky is limit. Everything is opening up. SM (00:27:13): Then you get into that Ronald Reagan era, from (19)81 to (19)90. SE (00:27:21): Right. Well, and that was a time of tremendous backlash. The backlash got going in the (19)70s, the anti-ERA movement, for example. And I actually think it is important to remember that some women growing up in the (19)60s and in the (19)70s were living lives that were not so different from the women growing up in the (19)50s. There were places in America, from suburbs, from small towns, that were not touched as deeply or thoroughly or whatever. So changes, change always has a ragged quality to it. It is certainly far from uniform. And in the (19)80s, you have, on the one hand, Reagan and all the talk about family values and people openly saying that women should go back home and take care of the kids and be women again. And on the other hand, you have women entering all these professions in massive numbers, because now they have been able to go to medical school and law school and get MBAs in the (19)70s. And so the change is still going on and even Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court. SM (00:28:56): That is right. Then we get into the (19)90s, which is the time of Bill Clinton. SE (00:29:04): Right. And I think there is a resurgence of feminism in a new generation. In the early (19)90s, they called themselves the third wave. One of their leaders is Rebecca Walker, the daughter of Alice Walker. SM (00:29:18): We had her at our school. SE (00:29:18): You what? SM (00:29:23): We brought her to this university. She spoke at our school. SE (00:29:27): Oh, great. Yeah, she is quite charismatic. She is quite wonderful. And also, I think in the (19)80s and (19)90s, more and more women and men were discovering how hard it is to live these new lives and have families, and some of the pressure of that is beginning to be felt. SM (00:29:56): And then we- SE (00:29:57): But I would say by the (19)90s, the women's movement and younger generations were less divided by race. Not to say that race was not still really important, but Rebecca's a good example of a new language of talking about race that begins to be possible. I apologize for the fact that there is another phone here, a landline. Can I? SM (00:30:27): Yep. SE (00:30:28): Do you mind if I pick it up? SM (00:30:29): Nope, go ahead, just go ahead. SE (00:30:31): Okay. SM (00:30:31): All right. That is fine. All right. SE (00:30:35): Chuck, are you there? Are you on the phone? So I hang up? Good. Okay. (00:30:44): Okay. Sorry. I am in a very small cabin. SM (00:30:47): Okay. That is all right. Then we got the last 10 years, which is George Bush and now President Obama. Where was everything stand in that decade? SE (00:31:01): Well, when you say everything, what are you talking about? [inaudible] lose the thread here. SM (00:31:09): Well, what is it like being a female today, really? SE (00:31:13): Okay. Yes. Yes. Well, and I think for young women today, it is very confusing. They have an immense number of choices, and they know it. They also know that they are often very hard choices. In some ways, I feel like young women today feel something like that old pressure of family or career. They no longer have the illusion that it will be easy to do both. They expect they will do both, and they will have to do both, but they do not see it as something that is going to be a piece of cake. SM (00:31:57): I have two nieces that are going through it right now. SE (00:32:00): Yeah. No, I think it is very hard. On the one hand, the sky's the limit. On the other hand, you may not be able to ever get there. SM (00:32:11): Right. One of the things that is interested, and I have been asking each of my guests recently, is the difference between mainstream feminism and radical feminism. And it seems to me that oftentimes, when people define mainstream feminism, they say that is liberal. But that radical feminism is like the new left that led the anti-war movement in the (19)60s. And it seems to me that it is always the new left or the more extremes that gets things done. Your thoughts on the difference between the two and defining them? SE (00:32:49): Well, if you read, obviously, Personal Politics is about the origins of radical feminism. And I notice that liberal feminism is being created at the same moment, but I do not go into that. I am completely unwilling to say one does things more or better than the other. And the reason is, I think they need each other. I think this is true of many social movements, that when the radicals raise the questions in a far more fundamental way and set out to show the world how deep change is possible, the liberals who are saying things that in the previous context would have been considered wildly unthinkably radical, suddenly look moderate and are able to accomplish things. My last book, called Tidal Wave, which is a sequel to Personal Politics, covers from (19)68 into the beginnings of the 21st century. And I look at these two streams, I argue that, by the mid (19)70s, you really cannot draw a line between them easily. There is a spectrum, but not a bifurcation, but that they influenced each other enormously. The radicals, lots of people joined the more liberal organizations because they went looking for a radical movement and they could not find it because it was so decentralized, and they landed in the other movement, but they radicalized it. And I do think legal changes matter. I think it matters that we have an equal pay act and that we have Title IX, which [inaudible] in women's participation in sports. I think the Equal Credit Act matters. So the fact that we got, and Roe versus Wade, for goodness sake. But the person who argued Roe versus Wade came out of a consciousness raising group in Austin, Texas. It was part of the radical movement. But what she did was the way the liberal movement functioned. SM (00:35:14): That is Sarah Weddington, correct? SE (00:35:17): Exactly. So I am going to resist that either-or kind of question. SM (00:35:27): Okay. Yeah. One of the things that is very important, and my very first boss at Ohio University was one of the leaders of the ERA movement in Ohio. And I know Dr. Mensen was very disappointed when it did not pass. I remember being in the office next to her when the final vote came in and I think she was crying, and it is a long story, because she had worked two years on this. But why did it fail? And I also interviewed Phyllis Schlafly in Washington about four months ago. Yeah, I interviewed her for an hour, and I interviewed David Horowitz on the phone. And both of them have said this. They say that the troublemakers of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, which are probably the new left or whatever, now run the universities and they control what is taught. And they were making reference to women's studies, black studies, gay and lesbian studies, environmental studies, all the studies movements. Your thoughts on their criticism, the studies programs in the universities, whether there's truth to that. And secondly, why did the ERA fail? SE (00:36:35): Okay. Those are really two different questions. The ERA failed in part because the most important things it was going to accomplish were already accomplished in the legal changes that did take place in the (19)70s. And so on one level, in the end, it was not as devastating to lose it as it would have been 20 years earlier when all that discriminatory stuff was still on the books. But it also failed, I think, because people found change in gender roles very frightening. And people like Phyllis Schlafly played on those ears. And it was similar to how frightening voting, the idea of women voting was in the 19th century. And all of that change which was happening to people and they were participating in it, was also scary, and I think there was a lot of demagoguery, and Phyllis Schlafly was the leader of it, talking about why should people be worried about single sex bathrooms, we're going to say, or they made up things that they said the law would do, but they also said women might have to participate in combat in the armed forces. Well, we have got that and we do not have the ERA. The ERA was not going to make it happen, but it was happening and people were not easy about that. And I think there were also women in more traditional roles, and there's a very good book on this by Jane De Hart and Don Mathews about the Equal Rights Amendment in North Carolina. And what they found were that women who were opposed, it was not only men who were opposed, for sure, but women who were opposed shared a deep distrust of men with the people who advocated it and said, "We need legal equality, because you cannot trust them to treat us right no matter what." But they were in traditional roles and still very dependent on men. And their fear was that if men are not forced to play their traditional roles, they will abandon them. And their fear was that if women and men are treated equally in the public arena, in the workplace, and everywhere else, men will say, "I will not support my family. You have got to go out and work." Or they will get divorced and refuse to pay alimony. Or they will simply abandon their family. And their view was really that men have to be coerced to take care of their families, and women are vulnerable, and they were afraid that equality would mean that women would be abandoned, so. And that is really about how deeply uneasy some of these changes made many people feel. So that is one question. Now, remind me again of what your other one was, because- SM (00:40:15): Well, the other one was just- SE (00:40:17): Oh, about the studies sequence. SM (00:40:19): Yeah, Phyllis Schlafly basically said the troublemakers of the (19)60s and (19)70s now run the university's studies programs. SE (00:40:30): Well, that is a right wing attack that is... I could name a number of writers who have made those charges. It certainly is true that the social movements of the (19)60s and (19)70s ask questions that could not be answered within the framework of traditional discipline. And there's an intellectual transformation that follows from that. I have been very involved in women's studies. I wrote women's history and taught women's history. When I was in school, there was no such thing as women's history. And you did not learn about women in any class that you took, because they were considered to be outside of history. So asking the question about where are the women and what are they doing was an intellectual transformation. The same thing with black history. When I was in school, I was taught very little about what life was like for slaves. In fact, in South Carolina, it was assumed that slaves were probably pretty happy. But even in college, we did not know anything about what life was like for enslaved people. But when people started asking about that, there's an amazing amount there to be covered about how enslaved people created a culture from many parts of Africa, speaking different languages, created African American culture and music and religion and family structures and so forth. So I think those studies programs, in fact, were very, very important in bringing previously unthought about and fundamental issues into our intellectual discourse. It's simply not... It is true that a lot of us... I was an activist in the women's movement. I wanted to know, what shoulders do we stand on? Have people like us, i.e. females, ever changed history the way we want to do it, or is it true that women never have made any history? And I felt we needed to know our history, not romanticized, but just to know, as part of the movement. And that drove me into graduate school. And lots of people like me did that. But the implication that our scholarship is purely ideological, that we do not in fact do real research and hold ourselves to rigorous standards, is the right-wing position, that I think is wrong and dangerous. And if you want to say environmental studies, then you are discounting all the environmental science of the last half century. And those are the same people who say there is no global warming, if they want to say environmental studies is a left-wing plot. SM (00:44:08): One of the other points, and I had an hour with her, she was at the CPAC conference, and she was very tired, so I think I got a really quality 30 minutes from her, even though she was there for an hour. And we talked a little bit about whether women in the (19)50s, the parents of boomer women, were fulfilled or were unfulfilled as mothers and housewives, and many not even working. And it was her belief that many were fulfilled, that being a mother and taking care of kids was the duty. And so for the women's movement to say that there is a lot of unfulfilled women who never had a chance to speak their thoughts, just raise the kids and so forth, any thoughts on that? SE (00:45:02): Well, I had a mother who was not fulfilled, so that was my personal experience, a group of one. I suggest that you read a book by Elaine Tyler May called Homeward Bound. SM (00:45:16): Homeward Bound. SE (00:45:18): Yes. A very, very important book about the family in the Cold War era and she has data on this that is really important, and I think anecdotally, you will get people telling you everything. Based on what I know from Elaine May's work and other scholars, I would say, and then packing back to my own experience, I would say, in the first place, of course there were some women who were happy doing that, but that does not tell you that they were all happy doing that. The flood, if you go and read the letters written to Betty Friedan after The Feminine Mystique came out, you would be deluged with thousands and thousands of women writing to say to her, "Thank you, thank you, thank you. I did not think anybody else felt this way." And if you look at the numbers of women who go to graduate school, once the barriers are lifted, and the number of women in the (19)60s, there was a big movement in the (19)60s to create opportunities for women to return to college. And that was very, very successful, called the Continuing Education for Women movement. Huge numbers of women wanted to go back, finish degrees and find something else to do with their lives. Maybe they enjoyed staying home, but then they wanted to do something else. And finally, I have to say for Phyllis Schlafly, so why did she have a career? Her own life does not fit that. SM (00:47:07): Yeah, I have heard that before. She has been a lawyer, created the Eagle Forum and speaks all over the country, and- SE (00:47:15): Right, so she said women should have a role that she never chose to have. SM (00:47:22): One of the things about the second wave movement, I remember reading Johnetta Cole's book, several years back, Sister President, that she wrote about her experiences. And this leads me into this question, has the second wave of the women's movement been all inclusive with respect to women of color, women with different sexual orientations? Because I have read quite a bit from other authors that, even Johnetta Cole said, there was pressure within the African-American community to identify as a black person first and then as a woman second, and then she identified with both, but it was very- SM (00:48:03): And then she identified with both, but it was very difficult for... SE (00:48:08): Well, I think that is true, and I would ask you to please read Tidal Wave because that is a major theme of Tidal Wave. My history of the Second Wave, and it's a functioning part of timing. The Women's Movement started at the same time that the Black Power Movement was in full force. And what seems to me is when you tell this story, on the one hand you have to notice black women and women of color were always there. They started women's groups within all those other movements, which were pretty separated in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. But there were women's liberation committees that raised issues within the Latino movement, with the Chicano movement and the Asian American movement and the Black movement. There were separate organizations, often of women of color, raising very similar issues and often in very similar ways and similar language. But it was a time of such racial polarization that it was very difficult for women to talk across racial minds successfully. And there was tremendous pressure within each of those groups to identify first with their group and then secondly with your gender. So that was true. I would say that the liberal wing of the Women's Movement was more successful, even there, it was not easy, but there were women of color in the leadership from the beginning of the National Organization for Women and of the National Women's Political Caucus. So it is important to notice that, and I discussed it in some detail in Tidal Wave. SM (00:50:18): Do you also include the Native American women? SE (00:50:22): Yes. SM (00:50:25): When did the (19)60s begin, in your opinion? And when did it end? And what do you feel was the watershed moment? This is just you personally. SE (00:50:35): Well, I would begin it with the sit-ins in 1960, although it is not hard to push it back to the Montgomery bus boycott since the marker for me is really civil rights. And I am not quite sure how to end it. I would push it well into the (19)70s. But even then, when you try to create a category like that, the early (19)60s and the late (19)60s, (19)70s are also very different times. The early years, the Civil Rights Movement, the Kennedy years, the creation of the Peace Corps, and then the Anti-War Movement and the race riots that happened, and the increasing violence and turmoil is a very different era. SM (00:51:37): Did The Beats have an influence on women? SE (00:51:42): The Beatniks in the (19)50s? SM (00:51:44): Yes, The Beats, because many people have told me they believe that the (19)60s began with the beats because they were anti-authoritarian. They lived their lives. They did not care what other people thought. SE (00:51:58): Oh, I think so. I was not living where they were very permanent. But I am sure that is true. They were extremely sexist, and at the same time, they were very anti-authoritarian and into breaking all the rules. So they are forerunners of the new left. They are very... Are you there? SM (00:52:28): Yes. I am here. SE (00:52:28): They are very sort of nihilistic and they represent some of that side of the (19)50s that says the world is going to blow itself up and recognizing that racism is rampant and so forth, and not feeling very hopeful that any of that can be changed. And the New Left comes along, picks up on a lot of those themes, but says, "Well, hey, we can change it." SM (00:53:06): I know that one person I interviewed said that he identified Neil Cassidy. He is the number one Beat because all the books that were written were basically studies about him. And of course, he became one of the Mary Pranksters. But his attitude toward women was basically conquests. SE (00:53:29): Right. And that is why I have trouble with a lot of those folks. SM (00:53:35): One of the well-known facts that you bring up in your book, Personal Politics, but also, it has been historically documented, is that the sexism that was rampant in the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement drove many of the New Left women that were affiliated with those groups into the Women's Movement in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. So now I have some questions that are directly related to your book, Personal Politics. The people who have studied post-World War II activism know that sexism was rampant in the movements I just mentioned. My question is, how bad was it? SE (00:54:13): Well, I would say it was not as bad as in the rest of American society. And I think it is really important to notice that the Women's Movement did not happen in a place where women were treated much worse than they had ever been treated. But rather in a movement that advocated equality but did not treat women equally. And it is that contradiction that women ran into. But they had opportunities to do things, to change history, to go to jail, to stand up for what they believed, to risk their lives, to teach in Freedom School, to take on responsibility for organizing communities. And I think it is the later part of the New Left Act, it became a really massive movement that some of the sexism of the counterculture was much more raw, [inaudible] but the New Left offered women an opportunity to grow and develop leadership. And it also periodically reenacted the sexism that was fundamental to American culture. No surprise. It is not that they were worse, it was that they had not completely transcended everything they had been raised with. And the contradiction is what drove women to name it and act on it. SM (00:55:48): You do a tremendous job in this book. I have read the Free Speech Movement. There is a lot of books on that. And a lot of the students that were involved in that movement, were also in Freedom Summer in (19)64, and many of them were even in down south in the (19)61 (19)62 period. And I have interviewed at least six people who were involved in Freedom Summer and male and female. But can you explain, I know, but this is for the people they are going to read this, how important was the student non-violent coordinating committee with respect to not only the Civil Rights movement, but the Women's Movement? And you also in the book do a great job in one section of talking not only about the SNCC, but you talk about the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress on Racial Equality. These are all major groups that were linked to that movement in the (19)50s and (19)60s and beyond. And you talk a little bit about the sexism within those organizations where women were, and you talk a little bit about that. SE (00:57:00): Well, I am not going to be able to tell you any more than I already wrote, but the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was one of the most innovative and radical parts of the Civil Rights Movement. It was on the ground and the scariest parts of the South all over the place. And it often does not get its due when civil rights stories are being told. And the focus is on the big leader, Martin Luther King. It was the place where women found the most equality within the Civil Rights Movement, where they learned the most leadership capacities. And it was the organization that gave women an ideology about living out your value in your daily life. That the idea of the beloved community that we were going to enact among ourselves, the values we were trying to bring about in society. And, it really was fundamental to the origins of the Women's Liberation Movement. It gave them a set of ideas, a deeply egalitarian ideology. It gave them a set of strategies and tactics, consciousness raising, and the technique traces directly back to the way people talked to each other in SNCC and spoke from their hearts and tried to reach consensus and not leave anybody behind. So I think that organization was really fundamentally important. SM (00:59:00): What is interesting here also is when you look at the March on Washington 1963 with Dr. King, and you see the background of all the people around him. The only females you see are Dorothy Height, who is over to the right. And I know Mahalia Jackson, she sang, but it was all Men. So there is a perception out there, and I think you really correct it in your book that women, they were really secondary in the Civil Rights movement. They just were not there. And- SE (00:59:44): A lot of research since then to show, if you look at the Civil Rights Movement on the ground, the things I said that I wrote when I was writing that in the mid to late (19)70s, there is a huge amount more detail about it available now. Because in local communities, women were the leaders. They were towering figures. And SNCC offered role models of older women who risked their lives for what they believed in. And it was in the local communities, those women, they called the Mamas that were so powerful. And if you look at SCLC, what you get is a hierarchical organization in which the top leaders are all black ministers. But there were people like Dorothy Height who is pretty wonderful. SM (01:00:46): You talk about the major role played by white women in the South, and certainly African American women as well to end segregation. And they were involved in voting registration drives and so forth. Could you talk a little bit about what it was like being a white woman during Freedom Summer or any of the voter registration drives throughout the early (19)60s down there? Because I do not think a lot of people realize it, many of these people came back to college campuses and actually were the leaders, and several of them were as the Free Speech Movement. Just talk about- SE (01:01:20): So like Joe Freeman, for example? SM (01:01:27): Yes. Just your thoughts on the women that were involved in with SNCC. SE (01:01:35): Well, again, this makes me uncomfortable because I have written it all, and I would love you to quote from my book too. SM (01:01:43): Well, yes, I have got quotes that I am going to bring up here next, but I- SE (01:01:50): But I do think for many white women, it was stepping outside of the roles that they were expected to fulfill way outside. And when they went south, they found themselves in a movement where there were these powerful black women who became role models, who taught them a different way to be women and a more assertive and self-respecting way to be women. It was for both [inaudible]. SM (01:02:29): With me. All right. SE (01:02:34): And I do not have a whole lot longer, so. I know you planned 90 minutes. SM (01:02:43): We got 27 minutes. SE (01:02:45): I will try. Anyway, I would say for middle class college kids, black and white, male and female, going into the Southern Civil Rights Movement was a searing experience and [inaudible] and committed them, no matter what happened next, to be engaged with making the world a better place. I doubt many students came out of that experience and went back to their old lives as if nothing had happened. For black students, of course, it would have all sorts of other transforming dimensions. But for white students and for white women, it was such a step outside of their traditional roles that many of them came back to their campuses and were prepared. They felt able to lead. They were prepared to question authority. They were prepared to take public stands. And so the students who went south show up in the leadership of the New Left all over the country and the Anti-War Movement, and then the Women's Movement, and they became the leadership. SM (01:04:23): I have two quotes here from the book which are excellent. The first quote is, "These women recognize from the very beginning of their involvement in the movement that they, like their male associates, were at war with their own culture." And the second one is the, "Thus within a movement, young white women have the necessary to forge a new sense of themselves to redefine the meaning of being a woman quite apart from the [inaudible] image they had inherited." And then the third- SE (01:05:01): Do not agree with that. SM (01:05:03): ... One I have here is, "The next generation daughters of the (19)50s grew up with a knowledge that they were identifying roles should be those of wife and mother. But they knew they would probably have a job at some point. They saw mothers with double duty." SE (01:05:19): Great. SM (01:05:19): So any other thoughts on that or that is good? SE (01:05:26): No, I think that is true. SM (01:05:30): Then I have another one that I do want you to respond to. It is on the bottom of page 11. Let us see here, you have got, "The straight jacket of domestic idea to challenge it openly would be too frightening in a rapidly changing world clouded with threat of nuclear warfare and the early bush fires of racial discontent and urban decay, where corporate behemoths trained their bureaucrat into interchangeable parts, fewer ready to face the unnerving necessity of reassessing the cultural definitions of femaleness and maleness." So. SE (01:06:13): And I am in some ways saying the background of what I was saying earlier about how scary it was, how fundamental the changes the Women's Movement was demanding were. And there was great resistance to raising the issue. And once it was raised, there was a big backlash in the (19)70s. And that is because it is pretty fundamental. Our identities as women and men are pretty fundamental to who we think we are in the world. And so if anybody wants to tamper with that and change it, people get upset. SM (01:07:00): You also stated a beautiful quote which is, "Bureaucracy suppressed demotion and passion training its members into interchangeable parts. Bureaucratic values emphasize female traits of cooperation, passivity and security, getting along, being well-liked between new goals." SE (01:07:20): And what I am arguing there in [inaudible] is that men were taking on roles that the qualities demanded of them were things the culture labeled females. And so there is an uneasiness already. Things are shifting in ways. So how do men prove their manhood anymore when they are being placed in these kind of settings to work? So when women start saying, "We want in too," or "We want equal chair," or "We want the right to do this and that and the other." For men, it is like, "Well, so what is left?" How will we know? SM (01:08:06): You bring up also, and other people have mentioned that the election of John Kennedy showed many people that change is good. And of course, change is one of the definitions of the (19)60s. And certainly John Kennedy was a much younger person. So that is true. And you also bring up the fact that McCarthyism was an attitude that many people were afraid of which is to root out subversion from within. And so there was a fear. That is where I get into the fear again of- SE (01:08:39): You are right. McCarthyism did make many, many people afraid. Afraid to advocate change. SM (01:08:46): When President Kennedy asked Eleanor Roosevelt to head the commission on the status of women, I believe that was in 1961. She died in (19)62. SE (01:08:54): Yes. SM (01:08:54): Was he dead serious on that or did Eleanor Roosevelt pressure him to do it because Eleanor had problems with him before supporting him to be president? SE (01:09:13): Well, I do not think it was a top priority for him. I think it was a bone that he threw to the women, but he needed women's support. And there was concern within the Democratic Party about pressure for the Equal Rights Amendment. So one of the ways that he was persuaded to do this was that people like Eleanor Roosevelt who were opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment, on the grounds, said it would undo protective legislation that her generation had won to protect women workers. So they wanted to have a commission that would say, "We do not need that." What happened, of course, was something altogether different because that commission uncovered the depth of discrimination against women. And so when they did have one committee that said, "We really do not need an equal rights amendment." That stands somehow at odds with all the other things that they did. SM (01:10:22): One other quote I have here that I would like to, if there is any further comments, I think it is another great quote. "Furthermore, having grown up in an era that commoditized sexual intimidation while it reasserted repressive norms, they found themselves living in the ambiguous frontiers of sexual freedom and self-control opened up by the birth control pill. Such contradictions left young, educated women in the (19)60s dry tinder for the spark of revolt." SE (01:10:51): Yes. Well, that early chapter argues basically that a Women's Movement was going to happen. It was almost over-determined. There were too many contradictory pressures. It is almost like tectonic plate crushing against each other and something has to give. SM (01:11:18): The couple of people you talk about in the book, Stokely Carmichael joked in (19)64 that the only position for women was prone. And I have read about that for a long time in a lot of other books. What did the women at that time think of that? And was he just joking or was he dead serious? SE (01:11:42): He was not dead serious. And you can read many other people's descriptions of Stokely Carmichael as being one of the people in SNCC who treated women equally. So it's the implication that he was one of the most macho people around is unfair. It was a joke. It- SE (01:12:03): People around is unfair. It was a joke. It was made at the end of a very long, contentious conference, late at night. It was a joke about the sexual relations that had happened frequently within the Civil Rights movement. It is a movement of young people. And what is important about that quote to me is certainly not to vilify Stokely Carmichael, but to notice that the quote when he said that the people around him just laughed. They were tired. They realized yeah, there was a lot of sex that went around. But when other people reported that quote, and it bounced through the movement on a rumor mill, huge numbers of women heard that quote. And to them, it named the sexism that they had experienced in the movement. It is really not about Stokely, it is about how those words resonated with lots of women who had been active in the movement. So in personal politics, I talk about it some, how I had a hard time tracking down someone who talked to me about that quote, but I heard the quote from many people who were not there, many, many people. And that is what I think is really important is not what Stokely really meant, which was basically, there's been a lot of sex around here. But what it meant to people who heard it. SM (01:13:58): Casey Hayden and Mary King wrote a position paper that women were treated as second class citizens, just as African Americans were treated in the nation at large. How important was that document? Because I think there has been reference that it reveals the origins of the modern feminist movement. SE (01:14:20): Yeah, it was one of the very, very first articulations of the issue of women in relation to the Civil Rights movement. It is the opening shot that you can trace straight from there through a series of other documents to the beginning of the women's movement. So it was very, very important. SM (01:14:50): One other quote, this is from someone else, Belinda Rubbalet, and her quote is, "Feminism did not evolve from the sexist treatment within SNCC, but from the organization liberating philosophy and open structure that fostered challenges to authority." SE (01:15:07): I think that is fair. What I have been trying to say is it took both. I think she is right. That is the most fundamental, but then there was some sexism, and it's that contradiction of the movement that offered this idea of equality, this very liberating idea and this open possibility to take on leadership roles. And then within that context, when traditional American sexism showed up from time to time as it did, as it could not-not have, women had ideas and tools with which to react to it. SM (01:16:01): Yeah. One of the things about that particular comment is also linked to the students for Democratic society, because the participatory democracy, remember Tom Hayden, when he came to our campus, talked about participatory democracy and seems like SNCC was the epitome of participatory democracy. SE (01:16:21): It was the epitome of participatory democracy. And SBS took a lot of those ideas from SNCC. SM (01:16:24): You also mentioned, I read some place that you thought the 14th Amendment was a slap in the face because it only gave African American men the right to vote. SE (01:16:36): No, I did not say that. SM (01:16:37): Oh, okay. SE (01:16:38): It did. It was experienced by the women who had been active in the abolition movement and the Women's Rights Movement in the 1850s and (19)60s, they experienced it as a slap in the face because it put the word male into the constitution. Some of those women said, "Look, we do not like it, but this is all we can get right now. And it's more important to give Black men the vote than to insist on getting everything." But it raised the issue of voting to the forefront in the women's rights movement in the 19th century, from that point on, focused on the right to vote as its key issue. SM (01:17:38): Well, I am down to my final three questions, if that is okay. SE (01:17:42): Oh, good. SM (01:17:44): Because I am going to do the hour and a half. It's been one hour and 17 minutes, and I am going to keep it to one 30. SE (01:17:49): All right. SM (01:17:50): So we got 13 minutes. I took a group of students in 1995 to Washington DC as part of our leadership on the road programs, and we met Senator Muskie. And the students I took, helped me develop some questions to ask him. And one of them was about the issue of healing within the nation and within the generation. The question was this, because they had seen, they knew he was the vice-presidential candidate in (19)68, and they knew about Chicago. They had seen what happened in Chicago that year and the assassinations that year. And the question was this, due to all the divisions that were taking place in the boomers' generation when they were younger, do you think that they are going to go to their graves like the Civil War generation, not truly healing due to the divisions between Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who were for the war against the war, those who supported the troops or were against the troops? Do you think they are going to go to their grave not healing? And just your thoughts on the whole issue of healing. SE (01:19:03): Yeah, I actually do not think so. And of course you have to again say people are different, some people may go to their grave not healed because they want to hang on to their anger for reasons that are theirs. But I would not say that that is true of a generation at all. I think that there are lots of connections across racial lines within our generation that 45 years ago would have been difficult to sustain. I think that there's certainly men and women in our generation have engaged in deep debates about what it means to be men and women and have come to various kinds of resolutions about that. I think separatism, except for a few people who hang onto it, separatism, is not where people are pulling away and refusing to talk to those who are different. And I think most of us, and here, I will just speak personally because I do not really want to speak for my generation, but I personally feel grateful for having been able to live through the things I lived through. And there was a time that was very divisive and fairly painful because of that. But I do not feel I am stuck in that place at all. And the people that I know in my generation are not either. SM (01:20:46): I know that Senator Muskie in his response, made no reference to anything in the (19)60s, nothing, not even (19)68 convention. He looked up at the students after about 30 minutes, it looked like he had a tear in his eye. And he said, "We have not healed since the Civil War due to the issue of race." And he went on to talk about that in detail and the loss of life during the Civil War, because he had just seen the Ken Burn series. SE (01:21:16): Oh, that is interesting. That is really interesting. Well, I do think that there are a huge amount of unhealed things in American society, but then we're not talking about a particular generation. And if you look at the immigration debate right now, we have got a lot of some of the same awful stuff going on. SM (01:21:42): My next to last question is a question dealing with, I have talked to many feminists and I talked to one prominent feminist at her home in New York City about six weeks ago. I will not mention her name, but she likes the National Organization for Women. But she says she is disappointed in it because of the fact that if you walk into their headquarters now, the only things you are going to see as far as pickup materials, this is the first perception you have when you walk into an office. They have literature there dealing with abortion, literature dealing with the pill, and I think literature dealing with AIDS. And her comment was, "Those are all important issues, but there is a lot more issues for women than that." And she felt that that they have been hung up on those three issues. SE (01:22:39): And I do not have enough inside information about NOW to make a statement about them and their priorities as an organization. And I certainly think that there is reasons in Tidal Wave, I really wrestled with why the body was so important in the second wave of feminism, and you are lifting up issues that are about that. Also, domestic violence and so forth. But I would agree that we have a huge range of issues, and it is going to take a new generation to articulate a new focus based on their lived experience. Because I think people in our generation, we know what we experienced, but the world has changed in so many ways that we need new generations to clarify where are the flashpoints for them. SM (01:23:43): The plan of question here is the issue of trust. One of the qualities that has often been defined within the boomer generation, and that really includes the entire generation, even the activists, I have read this in books, it is just they are not a very trusting generation. They have not been trusting from the get-go, particularly with respect to the leaders that represent them in government. And as a result of the lies that many of them have seen and the disappointments that they have had in their leaders from the time they were young, right into their twenties and thirties. And they saw Lyndon Johnson, and they knew that the Gulf of Tonkin was a lie. They saw Watergate with Richard Nixon. They were questions about President Kennedy's policy on Vietnam. And anybody who was a student, particularly in the first 10 years of the boomer generation, knew that Eisenhower was the first one that lied on national television about the U2 incident. And I had interviewed one person who said that I believe in leaders. And certainly I always believed in Ike until he did that. And everything changed. So we know from history that many of the people in the (19)60s and (19)70s, the people on college campuses did not trust university presidents. They did not trust their religious leaders in the churches and synagogues. They did not trust anybody in corporate leadership. They did not trust anybody in the leadership responsibilities. So the question I am asking, do you believe that that is a negative or a positive within the generation? And I add one other note. The reason why I asked this question, I was in a Psychology 101 class at Binghamton University in my freshman year, and the professors talked for an hour about the importance of trust. And its basic premise was, if you cannot trust, you will never be a success in life. Yet seems like a lot of the movements that came because we did not trust. Women did not trust men; the anti-war women did not trust the leaders in Washington. You got all the movements, so just whether it's good or bad? SE (01:26:03): Oh boy, I need to pull your question apart again. You have got a lot of specifics that are true. People learn to distrust leaders who were not trustworthy. You end up with Watergate. But the issue, I am not quite sure about the framing of your issue, because you are saying, here is a generation that discovered as leaders were not trustworthy, did that condemn them to never being a success? SM (01:26:40): Well, that was a professor saying that, but I am just – SE (01:26:44): I think what it does is put a burden on us to build a democracy in which we in fact do hold our leaders accountable in such a way that we do trust them. And that is a long-term change that we need to work to bring about. And that requires a lot more engagement at the grassroots level. All those ideals about participatory democracy and so forth. Some are not realizable on a large scale, but they create some values that are very important to figure out ways to bring about. And they are pretty, are plenty of people that came in my generation out of the (19)60s as community organizers working at the grassroots level, doing the kind of things that Barack Obama later did. And so that is not just about a negative attitude saying, "Authority is bad," or you that you cannot trust anyone over 30. Well, most of us are maybe double 30. So, problem. But it does raise a question of how do you create a society in which you have leaders that you do trust? Not because you hand off to them responsibility and do not pay attention, but because you are engaged with them and they are accountable to you. SM (01:28:17): Since I have two minutes, so can I ask one more? SE (01:28:23): Okay. SM (01:28:24): And that is the last question. SE (01:28:25): I am making coffee in the background. So you are just going to hear little [inaudible]. SM (01:28:28): That is okay. What do you think the legacy will be of the generation that grew up after World War II when the history books are written 50, 75 years after they are gone? What will historians and... SE (01:28:46): I do not know. I do not know. I am a historian, and that guessing about the future is something that I have a tough time with because I really do not know. I do think it is a demographic bump. It had a particular shared experience as a cohort or some sub cohorts within it, was involved in massive changes in American society. But I think there is a lot more that we need to know about what comes after, before we can make those judgements. SM (01:29:24): You are right, because we are just talking about boomers. SE (01:29:28): We are in the middle of it still. SM (01:29:29): Yeah. We are in the middle and they can change a lot of things. And the one thing I did not mention when I was talking about healing, and that is the fact, how is the Vietnam Memorial itself, I am sure you have been there – SE (01:29:42): Oh, it is very powerful. SM (01:29:43): Yeah. When Jan Scruggs wrote the book To Heal a Nation, his goal was not only to heal the veterans and their families, but hopefully to heal the nation from that war. What do you think that is done with respect to the healing process, not only for vets and anti-war people, but the nation as a whole? SE (01:30:01): Well, again, I do not have any data on the nation as a whole. I can tell you my own personal experience of that memorial was extremely powerful. And I have talked about it with my students often when I talk about the Vietnam War and how it tore this country of par. And then talk about that beautiful place, which is like a scar and it names the names and it is a place of mourning and grief, and people leave their wreaths and they leave teddy bears and whatever. It honors without glorifying. And I find that very, very profound. SM (01:30:46): And of course, Diane Carlson Evans did a tremendous job making sure the Women's Memorial was there. SE (01:30:52): Right. SM (01:30:53): And she had to go before Congress, and she had to deal with a lot of issues that women have had to face their whole lives through the hearings. SE (01:31:00): Exactly. SM (01:31:00): Was there any question I did not ask that you thought I was going to ask? SE (01:31:04): No, I was not quite sure what your trajectory was, but I will be very interested. When do you think you are going to finish this book? SM (01:31:15): Well, the interviews are going to end at the end of September, and then I am going to be hibernating for about six months and transcribing all of them myself. SE (01:31:24): Wow. SM (01:31:24): I am not going to – SE (01:31:24): That is a lot of work. I know. I have done. SM (01:31:26): Yeah, because I do not trust anybody else. Peter Goldman, who I have gotten to know who wrote the book on Malcolm X said he has had nothing but bad experiences handing off transcripts, even when they were covered by grants, he says, "I end up doing them all over again because of the mistakes that are made." SE (01:31:42): Oh. SM (01:31:43): So anyways, I am hoping that next year it will be done and then I am finishing, like I said, I am going to need two pictures of you though. SE (01:31:55): Okay. SM (01:31:56): And I do not know if you can mail them to my home address or I can email you just two. SE (01:32:02): What kinds of pictures? SM (01:32:03): Just – SE (01:32:04): Why do not you send me an email telling me what you're looking for? I can send them to you on email. SM (01:32:08): Okay. I will. SE (01:32:11): So that would be the best way to do it. SM (01:32:13): Well, thank you very much. SE (01:32:14): You are very welcome. SM (01:32:15): And you have a great day. SE (01:32:15): All right. SM (01:32:15): Bye now. SE (01:32:15): Bye. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Sara M. Evans Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Evans, Sara M. (Sara Margaret), 1943- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Description An account of the resource Dr. Sara M. Evans is a Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Minnesota. She has helped the university become a center for Women's History and Women's Studies, showing how women's lives impacted society. Dr. Evans earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from Duke University and received her PhD from the University of North Carolina. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-16 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.10.2016.49 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. 92:32