Experiencing the Sixties

The streaming video clips include "The Sixties" course presentations by UM Faculty during the Fall Semester of 2002 and related interviews with UM student leaders and administrators from the Richter Library Oral History Collection.

Anthony Barthelemy on Jim Crow legislation
Civil Rights Movement: 2002.
Time: 7 min 22 sec

Anthony Barthelemy, Associate Professor of English, defines the concept of phenotype to describe the racist, segregated, "Jim Crow" South. He grew up in that South and remembers July 2, 1964, when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, a bill that opened all public accommodations -- hotels, restaurants, swimming pools -- to all Americans regardless of race, color, religion or national origin. The Jim Crow signs could no longer be enforced, although Barthelemy explains that racism continued to harass blacks. He describes the plight of African Americans seeking medical attention; they had to hope that a white doctor would be willing to see them. Barthelemy adds that African Americans who wanted to buy clothes were not allowed to try them on first. "'Couldn't' was the word that we lived by."

Arthur Fournier on resistance to the Vietnam War
Vietnam: 2002.
Time: 7 min 20 sec

Arthur M. Fournier, University of Miami Dean for Community Health Affairs, speaks about defining events in Vietnam in which he sought his inner "moral compass." Fournier asks whether anyone in the class knows the term "fragging" and relates that a former classmate of his had been fragged. He talks about religious beliefs as involved the war and recalls Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, who immolated himself to protest American involvement. Fournier asserts, re the US-Iraq War, that "The road to peace is not to war." He questions whether the US government had planted violence-promoters among peace activism groups for subversive purposes, and describes the non-violence mode of thought as the only valid litmus test for opinions about Vietnam. He asks who is familiar with the phrase "Clean for Gene," referring to the 1968 campaign for the presidency and Eugene McCarthy's opposition to the war on moral grounds. Finally, Fournier jokes about attending the Woodstock Festival.

Basil Paquet on his experiences in Vietnam
Vietnam: 2002.
Time: 19 min 21 sec

Basil Paquet, writer and Miami resident, gives a brief autobiographical sketch. In the 1960s, he attended the University of Connecticut, and Paquet talks about attending lessons in "Operation Rolling Thunder," the bombing campaign of Vietnam. He says that he studied the war from historical, ethical, and other views, and decided that the war in Vietnam was wrong. When Paquet was drafted, he hoped that his heart murmur would preclude him from passing the physical; when it didn't, he declared himself a conscientious objector. Paquet talks about the Johnson Administration's "Project One Hundred Thousand," designed to enroll one hundred thousand African Americans, who were not eligible to join the military with its benefits and pay before the Vietnam War required so many more bodies each year. He observes that most of the new 350,000 inductees were poor, undereducated, and Southern – and a huge number were black. By the end of the Vietnam War, African Americans accounted for 12% of combat deaths. Paquet talks about his eventual volunteering in 1966 to the role of a medic and his assignment to the 24th Evacuation Hospital in Long Binh, South Vietnam, in 1967. He remembers the atrocities and political corruption that he witnessed, speaking particularly about Laos. Paquet recounts three incidents that occurred during the Tet Offensive. The first was when an injured child was brought in and a priest wanted to baptize her, but Paquet prevented this “spiritual kidnapping.” The second was when a fellow officer who reminded him of “Little Orphan Annie at 25” freaked out and began to beat a Viet Cong prisoner in his chest wound; she was forcibly stopped. The third was when a Military Intelligence officer tried to coerce a 12-year-old wounded boy into giving secrets; Paquet insisted that the boy needed medical attention; the boy spat into his face, seeing no difference among any of these Americans. After the war ended, Paquet joined the VVAW, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and joined a march on Washington. He talks about founding the publishing company "1st Casuality Press." He gives statistics on casualties and wounded.

Carl H. Snyder lectures on Headlines from the 20th Century
World War II and the 1950s: 2002.
Time: 30 min 03 sec

Zack Bowen introduces University of Miami Chemistry profess Carl H. Snyder, who gives a humorous lecture and a slide show. He explains that he was born in 1932, during the Great Depression and Herber Hoover's presidency. He begins with the headline from the New York Times announcing that Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected president. Snyder talks about his personal reactions to some major events of World War II and, later, hearing that Vietnam had split into North Vietnam and South Vietnam and that school segregation had been banned in the U.S. He talks about how the short Kennedy era of the 1960s differed from the Eisenhower and Truman era of the 1950s. Snyder describes seeing tanks driving down US1 just before the first American clash with the Soviet Union over Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and his shock at hearing of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He says he believes that the 1960s began with the death of Kennedy.

Carl Snyder on John F. Kennedy
Kennedy Era: 2002.
Time: 9 min 22 sec

University of Miami Chemistry Dept. professor Carl H. Snyder recalls the post-World War II era, when people felt that they could enjoy the fruits of victory, relax, and learn to play golf. He remembers the excitement Americans felt when Kennedy gave his pro-space exploration speech to Congress ("I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon:). He asks the students in the audience if they could imagine such excitement being provoked by 2002’s president and whether they think they are better than the students of the 1960s; he expresses his own belief that they are. He refers to University of Miami president Donna Shalala’s speech about the Peace Corps and asks whether anyone is saying, "John F. Kennedy, we need you today."

David A. Lieberman on growing up in the South
Civil Rights Movement: 2002.
Time: 6 min 32 sec

David Lieberman, UM Senior V.P. for Business and Finance, explains that, having been 30 with a wife and three children in 1965, he "missed out on this decade of drugs, sex, and rock-and-roll," provoking a laugh from the audience. Lieberman mentions that he attended segregated schools and that "I was at Chapel Hill; Michael Jordan couldn't have happened in the Fifties when I was in college. He was from my home town, Wilmington." He recounts his own academic career and his observations of social change in the 1950s and 1960s, getting another laugh when he mentions that for many years he was working "for a firm nobody ever heard of until a year ago: Arthur Andersen." He traveled throughout the South for the Andersen company. Lieberman's father was a Russian Jewish immigrant who became a merchant in Wilmington and employed blacks to serve both white and black customers, which was against social custom. He quotes from the book "The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South," by Eli N. Evans.

David Fisher on the ups and downs of the 1960s
Vietnam: 2002.
Time: 9 min 38 sec

David Fisher, Professor of Geology, describes the 1960s as "the best of times and the worst of times." He recalls teaching at Cornell in the early 1960s and observing that there was only one bathroom for the faculty, because nobody had considered there might ever be women on the faculty. He remembers that when he came to University of Miami in 1966, the chairman overlooking graduate applicants dumped all the female students’ applications into the wastebasket. He describes the formal dress code at Cornell in comparison with the informality at Miami. Fisher gives his opinion on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the official, but untrue, story that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched unprovoked attacks against a U.S. destroyer. He suggests that President Johnson got us into Vietnam as a political maneuver against the rival presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. But he offers Sputnik as one of the happy developments of the 1960s, because national paranoia resulted in massive federal funding for science, so that it was a good era in which to be a scientist. Fisher recalls President Kennedy’s determination to beat the Soviets to the Moon and chemist Harold Urey’s lunar theories.

David Graf on the 1960s
Kennedy Era: 2002.
Time: 9 min 22 sec

David Graf, Professor of History and Director of the Program in Classical Studies, gives an autobiographical sketch and memories of the 1960s. In 1967, he joined McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and recalls seeing hippies smoking marijuana nearby and also having the Seminary taken over by gangs. Graf recollects the civil rights organization, FIGHT (Freedom-Integration-God-Honor-Today), which targeted the Eastman Kodak Company for not hiring minorities. The day after his 30th birthday, Dec. 4, 1969, heavily armed Chicago police, led by Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan, stormed the apartment rented by Black Panther Party members and gunned down Fred Hampton and Mark Clark; he later was invited to visit the house where they were murdered, and reports that the place was soaked with blood. As a result, Graf left the seminary and eventually became a professional historian.

David Kraslow on major events of 1940s-1970s
Vietnam: 2002.
Time: 23 min 27 sec

Professor Spivey introduces David Kraslow, who gives a dramatic and wide-ranging lecture. Kraslow, former journalist and co-author of "The Secret Search for Peace in Vietnam," reads from a Columbia Journalism Review article about Donald Graham, chairman of The Washington Post Company and nephew of Senator Bob Graham, who volunteered for the draft and fought in Vietnam from 1966 to 1968. When he returned it was to a country in turmoil. In 1969, over 300 protests were held involving one third of the nation’s students. Kraslow compares these large numbers with a single anti-US-Iraqi war movement reported in the news the week before his speech. He reads from a timeline the major events of the 1950s and 1960s, including issues of race relations. University of Miami was "lily white" when Kraslow attended in 1946. The first black student was admitted to UM in 1961, and the first black football player attended in 1967. The Orange Bowl was segregated until 1950. Kraslow discusses the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education and the 1957 enrollment of nine African-American students at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, which fomented a crisis in which President Eisenhower had to intervene. Kraslow discusses Florida Senator Bob Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who knew classified information on the US-Iraq War and pushed Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet to declassify it. He admonishes his audience that the greatest power the U.S. government has is the power to classify information to protect those in authority. Kraslow talks about Operation Marigold, an attempt by Polish diplomats to bring the United States and North Vietnam together in secrecy; its failure and cover-up led to the bombing of Hanoi. At the end, Kraslow answers a question about race relations and the war.

David Landowne on conscientious objection
Vietnam: 2002.
Time: 9 min 55 sec

David Landowne, Professor of Physiology, introduces himself as having been politically naïve when he was a graduate student studying physiology. He recalls that the American press had explained that soldiers were sent to Vietnam to defend the Americans who were there at the time and that, in that period, the phrase "credibility gap" began to appear in the media. Landowne had gone to study Quakerism, being "religiously curious," but met two young women who wanted to attend a protest against the war, and he went with them. As a result, he learned more about conscientious objection (CO) and the Quakers. Later, he began to work in an office and travel around New England to advise young potential recruits about CO, about the law, and about their options. Landowne speaks about demonstrating outside of induction centers and draft board offices, and about the various ways in which draft resisters avoided the draft (going to jail, moving abroad, etc.). Speaking on October 15, 2002, Landowne notes that there was a bill being considered in Congress at that time to reinstate the draft.

David Wilson on conscription
Vietnam: 2002.
Time: 8 min 55 sec

University of Miami Associate Provost for Instructional Advancement and Biology professor David Wilson remembers getting "Clean for Gene" in 1968 and helping Senator McCarthy’s campaign for the presidency. Wilson shows photos of McCarthy and of Phil Ochs singing at a demonstration held in Grant Park, Chicago. Another photo is of Rennie Davis, a member of the Chicago Seven, political radicals accused of conspiring to incite the riots that occurred during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, August 21-26, 1968. Wilson took part in a peaceful anti-war demonstration and shows a photograph in which demonstrators were assaulted with tear gas by the police. He recalls another tear gas experience when he attended (in the capacity of a medic) the Democratic National Convention at Miami Beach in 1972. The Miami police were approaching and Wilson got briefly separated from his wife, Peggy, so he began calling, "Hey, Peg!" The police thought he was saying "Pig!" and gassed him. Another anecdote involves Milton M. Cohen, Peggy’s uncle, a social activist for African American civil rights, who was was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1965 and, with Jerry Stamler and Yolanda Hall, refused to testify. The defiance of Cohen, Stamler and Hall eventually brought the downfall of HUAC.

Donald Spivey lectures on WWII
World War II and the 1950s: 2002.
Time: 8 min 35 sec

University of Miami History Department professor Donald Spivey lectures on World War II. He plays a recording of radio advertisements (in one of which, Orson Welles recommends purchasing war bonds) to illustrate the impact of the wartime economy on the American people. He explains that the war created jobs throughout the country. Recalling some slogans of the period, Spivey describes the impact of the war on civil liberties, particularly Executive Order Number 9066, passed in 1942, which permitted "relocation of Japanese Americans" on the West Coast.

Donna Shalala on the Peace Corps
Kennedy Era: 2002.
Time: 2 min 47 sec

University of Miami President Donna Shalala gives her opinion that young people are good at organizing and at volunteering. She says that the Peace Corps symbolizes the Kennedy Era "because it was an era of youth and of energy and of eloquence and language" and patriotism. Shalala explains that she loves higher education because she believes young people are important, because their energy makes a difference. She estimates how most Peace Corps volunteers ended up, many of them leaders in their fields. She is asked to answer questions, but there the video is cut off.

Dorothy Taylor on being a black woman in the 1960s
Gender issues: 2002.
Time: 5 min

Dorothy Taylor, professor of criminology, responds to Sharyn Ladner's lecture by remarking that, in the 1960s, she could not obtain contraception without her husband's permission. Taylor discusses being black and female in the 1960s. She witnessed the 1967 Riot in Detroit, which came about, partly, because of complaints that the police were not doing their job of cleaning up prostitution and ensuing rumors that a prostitute had been shot and killed by an undercover vice squad cop. The riot occurred in a black neighborhood where C. L. Franklin (father of Aretha Franklin) was the minister of a Baptist church.

Frederick Nagle on WWII and the post-war era
World War II and the 1950s: 2002.
Time: 13 min 26 sec

Frederick Nagle, Professor of Geological Sciences, wearing a “Rosie the Riveter” t-shirt and a cap advertising Spam, lectures on the post-WWII era. He recalls the horror of seeing handicapped veterans returning from the War. He talks about war posters and rationing and about how Spam was a major food source for soldiers, and about other food issues such as home canning and preservation. He listened to the radio for the news when he was a boy and recalls seeing television for the first time when he was twelve. He also remembers seeing Marlon Brando playing a paraplegic veteran in the 1950 film "The Men." After the war, with new prosperity, Americans were anxious to purchase automobiles as soon as they could.

Gregory Bush on his political activities in the 1960s
Student unrest: 2002.
Time: 10 min 54 sec

Gregory Bush, Professor of History and Director of the Institute for Public History, remembers growing up in a parochial New Jersey town that was "too stultifyingly nice" and learning about Thoreau and Emerson and their teachings on individualism and questioning authority. He grew interested, while attending Colgate College in New York, in activism and politics. He went with his father to the 1964 Democratic National Convention and saw the Kennedys there. Bush thought about entering politics but became disenchanted. He recalls joining a student protest concerning a Jewish student who was banned from joining a fraternity in 1968 -- "different kinds of incidents became symbols" of discrimination. His disenchantment grew when he went to work for Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon in 1969; he saw instances of corruption and phoniness that alienated him from politics. Bush wrote some speeches for Hatfield; one concerned tiger cages in which live prisoners were being contained in Vietnam. He moved from liberal Republicanism to liberalism, partly because he was trying to avoid the draft. He concludes with two stories. First, Bush graduated from Colgate with long hair and with two guests at the graduation: Secretary of State William P. Rogers and U.N. Secretary General U Thant. The valedictorian read out the names of all those who had refused to go to Vietnam, and the university president was furious, but Rogers and U Thant smiled. Second, Bush worked on "getting out the vote" for Senator George McGovern in the 1972 presidential campaign.

Holly Ackerman on social change in Washington and New York
Student unrest: 2002.
Time: 8 min

Holly Ackerman, social sciences librarian at Richter Library, talks about campus protests. She went to Howard University where, on March 19, 1968, a sit-in became the first building takeover on a college campus. She was working as a paraprofessional in a black ghetto, which was frequently patrolled by police officers with German shepherds who would be unleashed on the residents if there was any trouble. Ackerman went on to grad school at Columbia to get a degree in social work. Ackerman says that the student activists had two main issues: they thought the curricula they were being taught were unrealistic in view of the real conditions of the world they lived in; and they were unhappy with social justice and the slow pace of the Civil Rights Movement. She recalls student strikes at Columbia, but concludes that "when things were settled, it seemed to me we settled for very little. ... We accepted a small number of changes." Ackerman says she had applied, with other students, to be a community organizer, but they were told that white women could not be community organizers because it was too dangerous. The students struck a deal: that they would engage in social work for families for a year, but if they still wanted placement in community organization in their second year, it would be granted. Ackerman wound up working for a group of poor people on the west side of Manhattan. Eight groups around the city, who were connected to health centers affiliated with a teaching hospital, plotted to organize take-overs of buildings within the hospital, their ultimate goal being to introduce detox programs for addicts and thereby show that the hospital had not been treating fairly the people in its neighborhood. She concludes by explaining the attitudes behind the radical-revolutionary mode of social change.

James Wyche on discrimination in 1960s Baltimore
Civil Rights Movement: 2002.
Time: 13 min 10 sec

University of Miami Vice Provost and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences James Howard Wyche recalls growing up and working in the fields in the 1950s and resenting the treatment of minorities in migrant labor camps. He describes first coming to Baltimore in the mid-1960s and looking for a home, only to discover discrimination against blacks in housing. He contacted the local chapter of the Black Panthers and persuaded them to talk with the mayor of Baltimore, Nicholas "Tommy" D'Alesandro, about improving conditions for African Americans. With a graduate student group, Wyche canvassed the Johns Hopkins neighborhood and collected food, money, and clothing for the black community of eastern Baltimore. He discusses campus protests at Johns Hopkins. He also remembers being present when a friend in the Black Panther Party was framed and unjustly arrested.

Jomills H. Braddock on social movements in the 1960s
Civil Rights Movement: 2002.
Time: 9 min 38 sec

Jomills Henry Braddock, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Research on Sport in Society, discusses social movements in the 1960s. He recalls attending Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and feeling excitement about student agitation. He adds that student protesters could be silenced if college administrators telephoned their parents and warned that their behavior could endanger their college attendance. African American college students wished to achieve greater diversity on campus, from recruitment of more black professors to the availability of black hair care products in the campus store. Braddock reveals that his fourteen-year-old sister-in-law was one of the girls killed in the Birmingham Ku Klux Klan bombing of an African American Baptist church in 1963. He says that such experiences caused him to devote his life to working for social change.

Joseph Alkana on civil unrest
Vietnam: 2002.
Time: 11 min 47 sec

Joseph Alkana, Professor of English, recalls being a high school student in New York when a teacher's strike engaged the African American community. [On May 9, 1968, 19 junior high school teachers in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville area of Brooklyn were fired. They were white; the school board that fired them was predominantly black. The crisis led to three teachers' strikes and angry confrontations between African-American and white New Yorkers.] Alkana joined anti-war demonstrations and was tear-gassed and arrested several times, but became disenchanted with the factionalism and authoritarianism that he also found among anti-war protesters. He dropped out of college and identified himself as part of the counter-culture. He recalls joining a medical team at the Siege at Wounded Knee in 1973.

Julian C. Lee on absentee infractions
Vietnam: 2002.
Time: 9 min 41 sec

University of Miami Professor of Biology Julian Lee recalls being inducted into the army and applying for conscientious objector status; he was denied and shortly afterwards court-martialled. He was imprisoned in the stockade of Fort Lewis, Washington, and from there sentenced to the Penitentiary "Disciplinary Barracks" in Leavenworth, Kansas. Lee describes his duties at Leavenworth and reports that he was, eventually, honorably discharged from the Army. He summarizes his view of the people he met at Leavenworth, saying, "They were all individualists," from the peace activists to the sociopaths. Everyone received psychiatric evaluations on admittance to Leavenworth and the draft resisters were judged to be "suffering martyr complexes."

Lindsey Tucker on women's social conditions
Gender issues: 2002.
Time: 15 min 15 sec

Lindsey S. Tucker, Professor of English, recalls being a working girl in New York, where as as an editor at a publishing firm, women were paid much less than men. She wanted to teach women's studies, but such did not exist in the 1960s. Tucker describes how sociologists began to study women as a group, trying to move beyond the simple formulation of "women as victims." She also recalls how black women authors such as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison brought new issues to the table, so that it became necessary to learn how to read women's literature in new ways.

Marc Gellman on the acid culture of the 1960s, Part 1
Age of Aquarius: 2002.
Time: 20 min

Marc Gellman, Professor of Psychology, describes the acid culture of the 1960s. Chemists looked for a way that the US government could use LSD, but after finding none, it was declared an "illegal substance." He talks about Dr. Timothy Leary's experiments with hallucinogenic mushrooms and his testing drugs on himself and his graduate students, leading to his dismissal from his position as professor of psychology at Harvard. Leary went on to become a leading proponent for the use of psychedelic drugs to expand the mind and alter perceptions. Also discussed is Ken Kesey, who had first come across LSD when, as a graduate student at Stanford, he wanted to earn some extra money on the side. He volunteered at Menlo Park VA Hospital in a government-sponsored program, participating in experiments conducted to study the effects of hallucinogenics. He and his friends formed a group called the Merry Pranksters, who promoted LSD. Their slogan was "Furthur" (further + future). The Merry Pranksters drove around California, then the country, and threw parties at which everyone consumed marijuana and LSD (the Kool-Aid was spiked with LSD, hence Tom Wolfe's title "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"). The Grateful Dead were the house group at Kesey's parties. The counterculture hipsters talked extensively about cultural revolution and wore funky, tie-dyed clothes. He discusses Jefferson Airplane and Grace Slick’s song "White Rabbit." Gellman recalls that he knew Bruce Springsteen when growing up in New Jersey; and reminisces about getting friends together and attending Woodstock.

Marc Gellman on the acid culture of the 1960s, Part 2
Age of Aquarius: 2002.
Time: min

Marc Gellman, Professor of Psychology, describes the acid culture of the 1960s. They realized it was going to be no mere concert. There were fans of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, others who were propounding political ideas, and one attendee who had brought a huge amount of marijuana to give away.

Mark Naison on race relations in America
Civil Rights Movement: 2002.
Time: 18 min 22 sec

Guest speaker Dr. Mark D. Naison is a professor of African-American studies and history at Fordham University in the Bronx, and author of "White Boy: A Memoir" (2002; his autobiography about race relations in Brooklyn). An energetic lecturer, he talks about his book, about growing up in Brooklyn, and how he became an activist. "I didn’t choose activism; history tapped me on the shoulder." Naison explains that the diaspora of African Americans from the South into northern cities resulted in multi-ethnic neighborhoods of all kinds. For the first time, white kids and black kids were growing up together and playing sports together at school; also, rhythm-and-blues and other forms of African American music were being marketed to young urban whites. He addresses his student audience as a group of young people who are facing the war with Iraq and an economy more depressed than that of the 1960s and encourages them to think about what makes people decide to take politics and history seriously. Naison says that when he heard Martin Luther King’s "I have a dream" speech, he joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He talks about how male college students were alarmed about the Vietnam War because student deferments were being eliminated by 1967. NOTE: Naison says at the beginning that he will talk about Black Power movements, but because of edits in the video, this is not covered, while his discussion of Vietnam appears twice.

Marvin P. Dawkins on campus civil rights movements
Civil Rights Movement: 2002.
Time: 9 min

University of Miami Professor of Sociology Marvin P. Dawkins speaks about the students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, N.C., who staged a protest at a Woolworth's lunch counter in 1960 and thereby ignited the civil rights movement in the United States. A few months later, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee gathered at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. African American college administrators felt they had to contain student activism at historically black colleges. Dawkins lists some of the issues that student protesters were concerned with and discusses race riots.

Opening comments by Zack Bowen
Sixties course objectives and requirements: 2002.
Time: xxx min xxx sec

University of Miami English Department professor Zack R. Bowen explains that this course will be comprised of testimonies telling the "history from the individual, idiosyncratic eyes of people who were these" in the 1960's.

Opening remarks by Donald Spivey
Sixties course objectives and requirements: 2002.
Time: 2 min 08 sec

University of Miami History Department professor Donald Spivey explains that he considers the 1960s to begin in the late 1950s and to end in 1973. He says that more than forty professors will contribute to the class and introduces Dr. Fred Nagle of the Department of Geological Sciences and University of Miami librarian Sharyn Ladner.

Patrick McCarthy on the Selective Service System
Vietnam: 2002.
Time: 12 min 33 sec

Patrick McCarthy, Professor of English, tells the funny story of how he managed to avoid the draft. He went to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee in 1969, but his draft board was in Birmingham, Alabama, "the most godawful place in the world to have a draft board," and the conscription agents turned down his application for a fatherhood deferment. He went to Birmingham to appear personally before the board. "Things did not go well. They regarded me as a smart-ass and I regarded them as a bunch of ignorant rednecks. We were both right." McCarthy describes the Selective Service System as corrupt, because the SSS Director, Lewis B. Hershey, had ordered local draft boards to ignore Congressional law concerning deferments. McCarthy was drafted a few months after entering grad school, but took advantage of an ambiguous directive by President Nixon to postpone conscription until the end of the school year. He describes the various steps he took to keep postponing induction for the next 3 years, to much laughter from the audience.

Peter Tarjan on communism and political repression
Student unrest: 2002.
Time: 2 min 18 sec

Peter Tarjan, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and a native of Hungary, begins to tell a story about a man he met on a train in Hungary, who had been a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Unfortunately, the video cuts off abruptly.

Phyllis Franklin on the inception of Women's Studies programs and discrimination against women
Gender issues: 2002.
Time: 21 min 17 sec

Phyllis Franklin, professor emeritus of English, speaks on the inception of women's studies programs. She recalls how, during the 1960s and 1970s, people talked about "living authentically," which meant expressing individuality through clothing, for example. She tells three anecdotes about discrimination and women's rights. The first is about reading The Second Sex and other books by Simone de Beauvoir. As a result, she pursued a Ph.D. and became a feminist. The second is about attending the MLA convention in 1970, at which a woman trying to give a report on sex discrimination was shouted down by the men in the audience. Franklin and others decided that day to establish a Women's Caucus for the MLA and to develop women's studies courses. The third anecdote involves the University of Miami women’s tennis team, who in the 1970s were thrown off a tennis court in the middle of a match because some male students wanted to play. The women students came to Franklin in humiliation and outrage, and Franklin telephoned the sports editor at the Miami Herald, who wrote a story on the incident and embarrassed the University so that such discrimination would not happen again.

Rita Deutsch on feminism and suffrage
Gender issues: 2002.
Time: 10 min 41 sec

Rita Deutsch, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, speaks about feminism in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the 1960s. She describes famous feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Patricia Ireland and the many issues including suffrage (the right to vote) and other rights, such as equal pay for equal work, fair work conditions, and rights for working mothers. Deutsch describes two branches of feminism - one which was more conservative and sought equality for women, and the women's liberation movement, which was more radical.

Robert Gawley on segregation in the South and Vietnam
Student unrest: 2002.
Time: 11 min

Robert Gawley, Professor of Chemistry, gets some opening laughs by showing a slide rule, "the precursor to the calculator, the successor to the abacus," which "those of you under 40 may not have ever seen before." He recalls growing up in Jacksonville, Florida, and attending a segregated high school, then attending the conservative, Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. "Up until 1965, you were not allowed to dance anything other than square-dance on campus." He remarks that most of Florida was "very, very Southern," except for Miami, which had more Northern immigrants. Gawley was unaware of Vietnam until his freshman advisors suggested that he enter ROTC, both because he would become an officer if drafted, and because that way he could earn a deferment if entering graduate school. His draft number was 51, but he was able to avoid Vietnam. Gawley describes gender segregation at Stetson and fondly remembers the Dean of Women, Etter Turner, who kept open communication lines with the students. Other comments refer to the fact that Assistant for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, and General Westmoreland were lying to America when they reported on Vietnam so that they could keep the war going; and that Richard Nixon, ironically, campaigned for the presidency as an anti-war candidate. Gawley recalls that Jimmy Carter's first act as president was to declare amnesty for all Vietnam protesters. Gawley winds up with a recollection of a black ROTC student at Stetson who was dating a white girl and was cautioned about it; he later became a successful businessman and a trustee at Stetson: "Things have changed quite a bit."

Robert Warren on Harvard in the 1960s
Vietnam: 2002.
Time: 17 min 45 sec

Robert Warren, Professor of Cell Biology, recalls growing up in Houston, Texas, and being only peripherally aware of race issues. In 1963, he was accepted into Harvard, and experienced culture shock. He became opposed to the war. Warren was protected by a student deferment in 1966, and managed to reach the age of 26 without being drafted. Warren describes the strike that took place at Harvard in April, 1969. Harvard students demonstrated, sometimes with violence, their opposition to the Vietnam War and took over a university administration building. President Pusey called the police on campus to evict and arrest the demonstrators, the most radical of whom were members of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). Warren concludes with some thoughts on ideology and how the lessons of the past should be applied to the US-Iraqi War.

Sharyn Ladner on radical feminism and abortion rights
Gender issues: 2002.
Time: min

Sharyn Ladner, Assistant University Librarian, introduces herself as a graduate of Gettysburg College, a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, in 1967, during which time she had not been aware of the differences in treatment between male and female students (men could stay out all night, but women had curfews). She says, "Rather than questioning why the rules were different for women than for men, we just broke the rules." She speaks about radical feminism and abortion rights. Living in Bloomington with her husband, Ladner joined a consciousness-raising group of feminists. Very few states had legalized abortion, and most of them had harsh restrictions; in Indiana, it was illegal even to discuss contraception and abortion with unmarried women. Ladner became an abortion counselor, because in the late 1960s, five thousand women died every year because of "back-alley, illegal abortions." Her group networked with Planned Parenthood and Concerned Clergy and arranged help for women, until at last the Supreme Court ruled on Roe Vs. Wade to legalize abortion.

Sherri Hayes on student activism, 1966-1970
Vietnam: 2002.
Time: 10 min 25 sec

Sherri Hayes, Professor of Physical Therapy, says that she attended the University of Connecticut during the years 1966 to 1970, a turbulent era. She recalls the November 15, 1969, March on Washington, when more than 250,000 protesters gathered in Washington, D.C., in the largest anti-war demonstration to occur during the Vietnam war. At UConn, students decorated the ROTC building with flowers and recalls campus rallies and sit-ins. Student activism was major in 1969 and 1970. After graduating, Hayes did her internship at Walter Reed, where her patients were injured Vietnam veterans.

Steven M. Green on direct action resistance
Civil Rights Movement: 2002.
Time: 12 min 18 sec

University of Miami Professor of Biology Steven M. Green talks about his experiences in the 1960s during which he engaged in protest movements and, as a result, was sentenced to imprisonment and hard labor. He explains his life experiences that led him to champion social integration and nondiscrimination and notes that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was considered "the talking organization," whereas the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was "the doing organization." Green was a member of CORE and he participated in protests against the Bank of America, which had discriminatory hiring and employment policies. He also volunteered to visit Mississippi in 1965 and went door to door to encourage blacks to vote.

Steven Ullmann on California students of the 1960s
Student unrest: 2002.
Time: 9 min 7 sec

Steven G. Ullmann, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School, remembers being in high school in San Francisco when there were student protests at San Francisco State College and seeing the police massing near the campus with their tear gas and rubber-bullet guns. When he and his classmates heard about the deaths of students at Kent State, they rallied around the flagpole and pulled the flag down to half-mast. He describes the sit-ins of Haight-Ashbury. Berkeley, which Ullmann attended, was "one of the very demonstrative universities in terms of the anti-war movement." He recalls that his first class at Berkeley was taught by a hippie-type professor who would discuss how the teachings of Chairman Mao related to calculus. "That was the environment of the day." The professors were anti-authoritarian enough to award a B grade for one paper turned in and an A for two papers turned in, because "grading was a bourgeois concept." Professors often invited students to their homes for informal discussions. Ullmann studied "radical economics" and recalls that the "Group of Four" Harvard professors who had been purged from their positions came to Berkeley because it was a more hospitable environment. He also says, to appreciative laughter, that a photograph of him during a student rally appears in a history textbook.

Thomas Crowder on discrimination in education in the 1960s
Student unrest: 2002.
Time: 15 min 30 sec

Thomas E. Crowder, Associate Dean of Student Affairs, comments on race discrimination at the University of Mississippi in the 1960s. He was Director of Libraries at Mississippi State in Starkville at the time. He recalls the governor of Mississippi at that time, Ross Barnett, "a psychopath if ever there was one," and the legal battle of James Meredith, an African American, to enter the University of Mississippi. He remembers the riots and the fact that students were often armed, because they came from families of hunters. Federal marshalls collected a shopping wagon full of identification badges of students who had gone to protest at Ole Miss. Crowder says that Henry Kissinger was often on the news saying, "We will not bomb Cambodia," and then the U.S. Army bombed Cambodia, which resulted in University of Miami students being galvanized to pay attention to the Vietnam War. He discusses many other issues as well.

Victoria Noriega on being a woman
Gender issues: 2002.
Time: 12 min 16 sec

Victoria Noriega, lecturer in Psychology, delivers a humorous talk on being a woman. She compares her own life opportunities with those of her grandmother, who was an immigrant from Sicily and who married a man not of her own choosing; and of her mother, who deduced from watching movies of the 1940s and 1950s that the way to get ahead in life was to marry a rich man. "So she married my father, who made $25 a week and had a car." Noriega describes how her mother made sacrifices so that she could learn to be a wife and mother herself one day; and how she was married for 12 years; and how when she got divorced, she became a single parent with no education and no credit cards. She was able to go back to school, however, because of the social changes that feminists had achieved.

William Rothman on film and music of the 1960s
Age of Aquarius: 2002.
Time: 43 min

Bill Rothman, Professor in the School of Communications, discusses film, art and music in the 1960s. He admits that usually when we think of the 1960s, we think more of music than of films. Film-making is expensive, so most pictures of the 1950s and 1960s were produced by Hollywood studios, and few were counter-cultural. African Americans were mostly excluded from the film industry, with a few exceptions such as Poitier. The corporate establishment made movies that did not always provide what teenagers really wanted to see. In the 1950s, television was dominant and McCarthyism affected film-making. Science fiction films might argue that aliens could be welcomed, but were as likely to dramatize that strangers were dangerous. 1960 was a watershed year as the French New Wave appeared with such movies as Godard's "Breathless" ("A bout de souffle"), movies that showcased sex and violence that 1950s American films did not show. He discusses other sociological aspects of the cinema-going experience. For instance, an audience member is supposed to be silent during a movie, unlike dancing at a concert. Eventually, college students began to demand that film studies be introduced into curricula.

Zack Bowen lectures on WWII, the military-industrial complex, Movietone news, the GI Bill
World War II and the 1950s: 2002.
Time: 11 min 42 sec

University of Miami English Department professor Zack R. Bowen lectures on conditions in the United States during and after World War II. He discusses rationing, the widespread employment of women, the draft (about which he sings a song from the times), the military-industrial complex, Movietone news, and the GI Bill. Bowen recalls the shortage of automobiles and his father, who worked for defense transportation. He describes how the movie theater was a focal gathering point for ordinary people, who wanted to hear the news and often heard propaganda.

The Stanford, Long, Abrams and Yasser videos were digitized from the VHS originals in the William Bulter Oral History Collection and University of Miami 60th Anniversary History Oral History Collection in the University of Miami Archives & Special Collections, Otto G. Richter Library.