Politics and Activism; The Sixties' Influence Today

America continued to respond to the trauma of September 11, 2001 during 2002 and 2003. The war in Iraq, supported by a majority of the population, and the foreboding implications of the U.S. Patriot Act on rights protected by the Constitution, have stirred public debate not seen since the Civil Rights movement and antiwar protest of the sixties. Many excellent books published by university and independent publishers this past year provide new insights into the politics, issues, and personalities that shaped the momentous events of the United States four decades ago. These books are reminders that America is a nation built on the right of its citizens to support or try to change the policies of its government—ideally, but all too infrequently, in civil and respectful forums.
Following is a sampling of the many titles that investigate how the changes brought about forty years ago continue to course through America. Their lessons are instructive for current leaders and citizens.
During the last decade several important books have shown the 1960s to be less the highpoint of the liberal Democratic Party and more so the birth of the modern American conservative movement, which has dominated politics since 1968. Gary Donaldson in Liberalism’s Last Hurrah: The Presidential Campaign of 1964 (M.E. Sharpe, 0-7656-1119-8) demonstrates that Barry Goldwater’s crushing defeat paved the way for a new conservative Republican Party based in the South and West, while it spelled the demise of New Deal Liberalism. Goldwater, in this lively account, is viewed as Ronald Reagan’s “John the Baptist . . . the first national political figure to represent modern American Conservatism.”
California is not only the home of Ronald Reagan, who symbolized modern conservatism, but also the location of the finest state system of higher education in America. In The Gold and the Blue: A Personal Memoir of the University of California, 1949–1967: Volume II: Political Turmoil (University of California Press, 0-52-0236-416), Clark Kerr recounts his leadership as chancellor of the Berkeley campus and then president of the University of California during a time when the university was roiled by protests over civil rights, free speech, and the Vietnam War. Ultimately, Kerr, one of America’s most distinguished educators, became a casualty of the conservative backlash when he was dismissed by a board of regents sympathetic to Governor Reagan.
Although she died in 1955, Mary McLeod Bethune was a role model for sixties activists. Joyce A. Hanson’s Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women’s Political Activism (University of Missouri Press, 0-8262-1451-7) tells the inspiring story of this “race leader” who devoted her life to gaining civil rights for African-Americans, especially black women. Bethune relied on both public and non-confrontational forms of protest during an era when the struggle for racial equality was perilous, if not fatal. She served for many years as president of the college that bears her name, Bethune-Cookman College, a position from which she influenced generations of African-American women.
Mary Stanton’s Freedom Walk: Mississippi or Bust (University Press of Mississippi, 1-57806-505-4), chronicles the tragic story of Bill Moore, a white mail carrier, who was murdered in Alabama while on a march for racial tolerance. Before he could deliver a letter requesting tolerance to Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, Moore was killed by Floyd Simpson. The letter remained undelivered despite five attempts to do so. Killing Moore was not a crime in the South, comments a friend of the author: “It was not a sin to kill an atheist, integrationist, a communist, or a Jew.” This book is a testament to the power of ordinary people to make extraordinary contributions to a cause.
John F. Kennedy continues to fascinate Americans forty years after his death. Kennedy inspired a generation of young Americans with his call to public service. Several excellent books have appeared, which are based on recently declassified documents and offer new views of JFK. Howard Jones’s masterly Death of A Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and John F. Kennedy Prevented the Withdrawal of American Troops from Vietnam (Oxford University, 0-19-505286-2) asserts that had he lived and won a second term, Kennedy would have removed American troops from Vietnam. Kennedy is not portrayed as a saint: his support of the coup against South Vietnamese President Diem led to the war that took millions of lives. Kennedy, however, recognized early on that South Vietnam would ultimately fall and American forces could not win the war by propping up Diem.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the most dangerous event of the cold war, bringing America and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear devastation. Sheldon M. Stern’s Averting “The Final Failure”: John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Stanford University Press, 0-8047-4209-X) portrays Kennedy as a leader in control who was able to prevent the “final failure” of a nuclear holocaust because he chose diplomacy over military retaliation. Kennedy is faulted for his obsessive attempts to rid the world of Castro, which in no small part caused the crisis, but ultimately JFK’s cool leadership prevented a possible world-ending catastrophe.
American citizens watched helplessly—with a few wealthy ones retreating to their fallout shelters, and many others fleeing their homes in panic—while the world’s fate was decided by Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khrushchev. Alice L. George, in Awaiting Armageddon: How Americans Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis (University of North Carolina Press, 0-8078-2828-9), recounts in this lively yet frightening investigation how the public coped with the events of this thirteen-day nightmare.
Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were the presidents that Americans loved to hate during a time when public disenchantment with government grew. Two books that show a more balanced assessment of LBJ are Thomas Alan Schwartz’s Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam (Harvard University Press, 0-674-01074-4) and Lyndon Johnson Remembered: An Intimate Portrait of a Presidency, edited by Thomas Cowger and Sherwin Markman (Rowman & Littlefield, 0-7425-2798-0). Schwartz praises Johnson for maintaining good relations with Great Britain, Germany, and France during the cold war, despite his diplomatic failure in Vietnam, which ultimately drove him from office. Cowger and Markman bring together many of the people who knew LBJ best—Jack Valenti, Harry Middleton, and Joseph Califano, to name a few—who remember Johnson’s triumphs and failures, and the personality of this larger-than-life Texan.
Keith Olson, in Watergate: The Presidential Scandal that Shook America (University Press of Kansas, 0-7006-1250-5) presents an excellent and concise account of the greatest constitutional crisis of the last century. This book, aimed at those too young to remember Watergate, dispels the illusion that Nixon was driven from office by a liberal witch-hunt, but rather by a bipartisan movement of Democrats and Republicans.
The 1968 My Lai Massacre resulted in the brutal murders of more than 500 Vietnamese women, children, and old men. William Belknap, in The Vietnam War on Trial: The My Lai Massacre and the Court-Martial of Lieutenant Calley (University Press of Kansas, 0-7006-1211-4) discusses the trial of William Calley, who led the American troops in this slaughter and was convicted in a military court of premeditated murder, for which he received a life sentence in prison. The trial divided the country between those who saw Calley as a patriotic hero who was doing his job and those who believed he was a mass murderer. Belknap, a law professor and Vietnam veteran, skillfully unravels the intricacies of the military judicial system.
Michael S. Foley’s Confronting the War Machine (University of North Carolina, 0-8078-2767-3) presents the account of the Boston draft resistance movement from 1966–1969. This antiwar coalition, one of the largest of the Vietnam War, splintered after the death of Martin Luther King, but it left two important legacies: an alliance with Vietnam veterans, who became the most credible war protestors of the 1970s, and an inspiration for the emerging women’s movement.
Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth, edited by Randall M. Miller and William Pencak (Penn State University Press, 0-271-02213-2) is the first full history of the Keystone State published in more than thirty years. Unlike any previous work, it features the contributions of all ethnic and racial groups, and the impact of geography, art, and literature on history. The editors demonstrate that many aspects of American culture first appeared in Pennsylvania. Similarly, this outstanding, comprehensive work stands as a model for historians contemplating histories of other states.
These books illuminate how the struggles of activists have led to improvements in laws and social conditions. By focusing on the roles played by men and women, frequently with small financial resources and miniscule power bases, we are reminded that all Americans are obliged to participate in their own governance, and by doing so, they exercise rights afforded by few other nations.