I graduated from high school in May of 1969. Then I left home and went to college. What a change that was. There was a lot going on at the university.
I think most kids who leave home at the tender age of 17 find out that there's a whole 'nother world going on out there, and it seems quite different from what they grew up in. It's exciting, like turning over a new leaf, or starting a new chapter of life.
Now that I'm past sixty, I've gained some perspective that I didn't have then. And since reading and doing historical research are pursuits I enjoy, I've decided to study that decade in which I lived as a teenager--the 1960's.
I have a feeling I'm not the only boomer who is doing this, which is why the stuff of my research will eventually be written as a novel, my fourth. It is named
King of Soul.
Back in September '68, when my senior year in high school had just begun, I addressed our student body as the incoming President of the Student Council. I remember telling them something about there was a lot going on out there in the world, and that our generation seemed to be discontented. But we, as responsible young adults at a Catholic high school, could certainly change the world by acting reasonably and playing by the rules. The students rewarded my innocent positivism with a standing ovation at the end.
About a year later, when I was a freshman at LSU, I began to see (although not necessarily understand) that my well-received idea of playing by the rules was not so simple as I had presented it.
There was, indeed, a lot going on in in 1969, and a lot of that change was being propelled by kids, not much older than I, who were working against the system with organized resistance, rather than "playing by rules." There was an authentic reason for this.
The Vietnam War.
One of the things that happened to me while I was discovering all this angst and protest in my g-generation was the draft lottery. My number came up 349, so I didn't have to worry about being drafted. I would be able to stay in school without being called to go fight the Viet Cong.
Nevertheless, all that '60's stuff was not just about the war. There was something happening here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5M_Ttstbgs
Among the war-protesters, there was a wide array of strategies being implemented to end the war--everything from pacifist Episcopalians, to SDS "bring the war home" agitators, to outright Weatherman revolutionaries.
In the research I am now doing, here is something I have come to understand clearly:
The seeds of antiwar, anti-establishment resistance tactics were sown into the American experience during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950's-60's.
Oppression breeds Resistance, which leads to Tactics.
You know what I'm talking about--Little Rock Schools, Rosa on the bus, Dr. King's courageous, nonviolent leadership, Selma, Greensboro Woolworth's sit-in, voter registrations in the deep South, etc. It was mostly black folks getting organized.
Medgar Evers had fought in the Great War, in Europe. He was a hero, like all them Americans and others who had run the Nazis into the ground back in '45. But when Medgar got back to Mississippi (where I was in the 1950's a clueless white kid living in suburban Jackson), he got on a bus to ride back to his hometown, and the driver told this war hero-- who had risked his life for our freedom-- to go the the back of the bus!
Say what?
Medgar, being a man of peace, a Christian--well, he got through that humiliating incident--but he quietly went about his bid'ness. But he got to thinking he might try to help his people make some changes (and he was playing by the rules) so he started working with the NAACP to get black folks registered to vote in his home state.
But in June, 1963, brother Medgar was shot dead, near midnight, in his own front yard.
Now that--along with all the other injustices being brought into the light of day-- got the attention of a lot of Americans.
So some of us honkys started to see the light and get involved.
The next year, 1964, saw a flood of white folks headed from up Nawth, going down South, to help black folks get organized and register. The whole movement was called the Mississippi Freedom Summer. It was a great event in American history, except for when Andrew Freedman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner got murdered.
During that sweltering summer in Mississippi, the seeds of American antiwar, antiestablishment resistance were sown. White kids from Boston, Philly, Santa Monica and Sausalito and everywhere in between went down south to help black folks.
And the black folks taught 'em how its done--civil disobedience to resist injustice, in the streets of America.
There were hundreds of white kids who went. To name just one: Mario Savio, who went down South to do civil rights work, then returned to his home in California. Later that fall, 1964 he climbed on top of a car so he could be heard while making a speech about a local issue to his fellow protesters.
And the Free Speech Movement was born in Berkeley.
Now, go back to the future--the year I was telling you about when I started this piece--1969:
While the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley was still rattling the ivys at colleges all across the nation, including the campus at LSU were I was a clueless freshman . . .
The administrators of the University of California at Berkeley had bought a vacant lot very close to campus. It was, according to David Obst, in his book, Too Good To Be Forgotten, a "three-acre field the school had bought a couple of years before."
http://www.amazon.com/Too-Good-To-Be-Forgotten/dp/0471295388
David writes:
"In mid-April a number of street people decided the field would make a groovy park. They decided to reclaim the land from the university and give it back to the people. All this was to be done under the doctrine of squatters's rights.
For the next few weeks, hundreds of students and street people, folks who wouldn't work if their parents or employers begged or paid them, worked for free at the park. They transformed the mud-splattered field into a grass-covered park by bringing together a weird collection of sod, shrub, and seedlings. A grove of apple trees was planted and and a brick walkway was laid. Swings and a sandbox for kids were put up; there was even a fishpond, and a . . .'revolutionary cornfield.' "
Now, I, reading this, thought that was a pretty productive, creative way to make good use of a vacant lot.
But of course the Berkeley admins didn't think so, so the chancellor called Governor Reagan, who called in the National Guard, and things got ugly, kind of like, you know, Selma, or you know--but this was a bunch of white kids.
By 'n by, I later came to appreciate Ronald Reagan, when he was President. But this was not one of his shining moments.
Which gets to my point: there are two sides to every story. Confusion is the order of the day when you're a freshman.
When I walked into the college maelstrom of 1969, I was entering a storm of controversies. . . with both sides right and both sides wrong. How was I to make sense of it all?
As I later learned from Scriptures: "There is not one right, no, not one."
The long, collegial tradition of free thought and orderly discourse was being challenged from both sides--left and right--during those tempestuous days. On the left, the "Movement" was being split. A huge rift was tearing the violent-prone revolutionaries apart from the "play by the rules" nonviolent protesters.
David Horowitz, years ahead of me, had been, along with David Obst (quoted above) in the very thick of the antiwar, antiestablishment resistance during those days. But later, in the 1970's, he changed his tune and his political affiliations. In his book, Radical Son, Horowitz wrote:
http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Son-A-Generational-Odyssey/dp/0684840057
"Although the Panther vanguard was isolated and small . . .its leaders were able to rob and kill without incurring the penalty of the law. They were able to do so, because the Left made the Panthers a law unto themselves. The same way the Left had made Stalin a law unto himself. The same way the Left makes Fidel Castro and the Sandinista comandates laws unto themselves."
". . .the best intentions can lead to the worst ends. I had believed in the Left because of the good it had promised; I had learned to judge it by the evil it had done."
Such is the electrifying commotion of ideologies and tactics that I walked into while starting college in 1969. And I am still trying to figure it all out--who is right, who is wrong.
More about all this later. Film at 11. Book in, probably, about three years.
Glass half-Full
