tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/1968-50th-anniversary-48869/articles1968 50th anniversary – The Conversation2018-12-19T20:25:05Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1085692018-12-19T20:25:05Z2018-12-19T20:25:05ZHow the ‘Heat and Light’ of 1968 still influence today: 3 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251600/original/file-20181219-45416-18aleoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters fill the streets outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: As we come to the end of the year, Conversation editors take a look back at the stories that – for them – exemplified 2018.</em></p>
<p>This year, The Conversation US marked the 50th anniversary of 1968 with our first podcast, “<a href="https://heatandlightpod.com/">Heat and Light</a>.” Hosted by journalist Phillip Martin, the show explored lesser-known stories from that pivotal year through interviews with scholars who have dedicated their lives to studying them. Here are three of my favorite episodes that revealed surprising insights about how 1968 changed the course of history – and how it still shapes our world today.</p>
<h2>1. The first interracial kiss on American television</h2>
<p>On Nov. 28, 1968, the right for interracial couples’ <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1966/395">to marry</a> in the U.S. was just over a year old. A majority of Americans still disapproved of <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-whites.aspx">marriages between whites and people of color</a>. On that day the science fiction show “Star Trek” broadcast the first <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RGxuU2vtBo">interracial kiss</a> on American television between William Shatner, a white man, and Nichelle Nichols, a black woman. Matt Delmont, professor of history at the Arizona State University, told us why this seemed so <a href="https://theconversation.com/tvs-first-interracial-kiss-launched-a-lifelong-career-in-activism-101721">far-fetched to the viewers of the day</a>, despite taking place in the future and on another planet, with the participants placed under mind control by aliens.</p>
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<p>However, as far as America has come toward normalizing interracial love, there is plenty of evidence that shows <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-americans-really-feel-about-interracial-couples-99173">these relationships are still not totally accepted</a>.</p>
<h2>2. The birth of Silicon Valley</h2>
<p>In the cascade of political and cultural milestones and anniversaries from 1968, it’s easy to overlook the fact that the year was a watershed moment for the technology industry. </p>
<p>Margaret O'Mara, a professor of history at the University of Washington, explained that 1968 can be thought of as the year the Santa Clara Valley in Northern California began its transformation into what is now known as the Silicon Valley. It was the year that saw the founding of microprocessor manufacturer Intel and the debut of the computer mouse at an event that would come to be known as the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-1968-computers-got-personal-how-the-mother-of-all-demos-changed-the-world-101654">Mother of All Demos</a>.” </p>
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<p>All of this innovation, however, came with consequences – including environmental degradation and rising income inequality – that still affect many residents of the former <a href="https://theconversation.com/silicon-valley-from-hearts-delight-to-toxic-wasteland-86983">“valley of heart’s delight.”</a> </p>
<h2>3. The protest movement … backfires?</h2>
<p>1968, much like 2018, was a year of protest. Across the country and around the world, people filled the streets to rail against the war in Vietnam and racial and economic inequality. <a href="https://theconversation.com/1968-protests-at-columbia-university-called-attention-to-gym-crow-and-got-worldwide-attention-102093">Students rose up</a> across the country. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-anti-trump-activists-can-learn-from-chicago-68-62741">Democratic National Convention in Chicago</a> dissolved into chaos and violence. Days of unrest followed the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/04/the-riots-that-followed-the-assassination-of-martin-luther-king-jr/557159/">assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.</a> in April. </p>
<p>However, despite its reputation as a year of liberal, anti-establishment protest, 1968 was also the start of two decades of nearly unbroken Republican control of the presidency. Arizona State University history professor <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/donald-critchlow-180542">Donald Critchlow</a> explained how, as the left filled the streets across the country, they may have driven many <a href="https://theconversation.com/politicians-have-long-used-the-forgotten-man-to-win-elections-103570">voters concerned with “law and order”</a> to Richard Nixon and the Republican Party. </p>
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<p>Critchlow, himself a former member of the 1968 protest movement who has since drifted from radical leftist to conservative historian, says that this is a phenomenon that may repeat itself in 2020. It’s a lesson – and a warning – that those looking to <a href="https://theconversation.com/resistance-is-a-long-game-103298">resist the Trump administration</a> in 2019 may want to take to heart.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This year, The Conversation celebrated the 50th anniversary of 1968 with its first podcast, ‘Heat and Light.’ These are some of the most interesting stories we uncovered – ones that still resonate in 2018.Jonathan Gang, Editorial Researcher and Multimedia ProducerLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1046882018-11-01T10:50:35Z2018-11-01T10:50:35ZDemocrats’ struggle over masculinity in an election 50 years ago is still playing out today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243345/original/file-20181031-122159-tz93n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hubert Humphrey, left, and Lyndon Johnson, right.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Charles Harrity, File</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donald Trump sells himself as a man’s man.</p>
<p>When Trump projects old-fashioned male power full of aggression and swagger, he gratifies his culturally conservative base, both men <a href="https://theconversation.com/republican-women-are-just-fine-thank-you-with-being-republican-104762">and women</a>. </p>
<p>Democratic politicians, by contrast, rarely discuss masculinity. That might seem obvious for a party which, heading into the 2018 midterm elections, is seeking a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/27/politics/year-of-the-woman-politics/index.html">“year of the woman.”</a></p>
<p>During an election that took place exactly 50 years ago, however, ideas about manhood played a central role for the Democrats. As I describe in my forthcoming book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Men-Moment-Election-Partisan-Politics/dp/1469651092/">The Men and the Moment</a>,” the Democratic Party was grappling with its identity in 1968. Its struggle was on display in the personal dynamic between its two most significant figures: party leaders Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey.</p>
<p>Both men were giants of American liberalism. But Johnson did not trust Humphrey as president, because he did not respect Humphrey as a man. That friction led to one of the most extraordinary and underappreciated tales in modern American political history: President Johnson kept undercutting the presidential campaign of Humphrey, his own vice president.</p>
<p>It is a story with lasting implications for the Democratic Party.</p>
<h2>‘He cries too much’</h2>
<p>In 1968, presidential politics was still a man’s world.</p>
<p>The modern women’s movement was in its infancy. Washington D.C. was the province of powerful white men.</p>
<p>As scholars such as <a href="http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/imperial-brotherhood">Robert Dean</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Manhood-American-Political-Culture-Cold/dp/0415926009">K.A. Cuordileone</a> have shown, Cold War Democrats such as President John F. Kennedy held an ideal of manly, vigorous toughness that shaped their vision of honorable leadership during the Cold War. It also drew them into the military morass of Vietnam.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243348/original/file-20181031-122162-pdu1c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243348/original/file-20181031-122162-pdu1c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243348/original/file-20181031-122162-pdu1c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243348/original/file-20181031-122162-pdu1c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243348/original/file-20181031-122162-pdu1c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243348/original/file-20181031-122162-pdu1c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243348/original/file-20181031-122162-pdu1c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243348/original/file-20181031-122162-pdu1c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">President Lyndon B. Johnson’s visit to Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.lbjlibrary.net/collections/photo-archive.html">LBJ Library photo by Yoichi Okamoto</a></span>
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<p>Liberals – with their nurturing, optimistic ethic – were vulnerable to accusations of weak manhood. In the 1950s, while carrying out his Red Scare witch hunts, Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy purged homosexuals from federal agencies, <a href="https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/lavender.html">linking sexuality with subversion</a>. Liberals were “soft” by association.</p>
<p>But Kennedy’s successor as president, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, was a big, macho man who applied his earthy masculinity to progressive ends. The notorious <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johncoleman/2018/07/30/the-johnson-treatment-pushing-and-persuading-like-lbj/#9522ba342013">“Johnson Treatment”</a> combined cajoling, vulgar analogies, veiled threats and physical force. He used it in the service of passing <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/whats-great-about-the-great-society">“Great Society”</a> legislation that included the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, and dozens of other initiatives.</p>
<p>Johnson famously reflected to biographer <a href="https://openroadmedia.com/ebook/lyndon-johnson-and-the-american-dream/9781497683853">Doris Kearns Goodwin</a> that the Great Society was “the woman I really loved” and Vietnam was “that bitch of a war.” The military struggle, in his mind, demanded strong male traits such as toughness and sacrifice. He worried that if Vietnam fell to communism, then he would get labeled “a coward. An unmanly man. A man without a spine.”</p>
<p>He considered Humphrey, his vice president, one of those weak men. </p>
<p>“He cries too much,” Johnson snapped to the press in the summer of 1968, explaining his big problem with Humphrey. “That’s it – he cries too much.”</p>
<p>Humphrey did cry a lot. He cried during speeches when he got too wound up. He cried after JFK crushed him in the 1960 West Virginia primary, <a href="http://www.wvpublic.org/post/may-10-1960-kennedy-wins-west-virginia-primary-0#stream/0">burying his presidential bid</a>. He cried at the sight of wounded <a href="https://www.stripes.com/news/despite-the-heat-a-fast-paced-tour-of-saigon-for-humphrey-1.20996">American soldiers in Vietnam hospitals</a>.</p>
<p>Humphrey was authentically emotional and empathetic. As a <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Hubert_Humphrey.htm">senator from Minnesota</a>, he established a reputation as an energetic, sincere and pragmatic spokesman for liberal values. In early 1965, prior to the massive military escalation in Vietnam, Humphrey <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1976/05/09/archives/humphrey-in-memo-to-johnson-in-1965-warned-of-vietnam.html">privately advocated a peace settlement</a>.</p>
<p>But Johnson demanded Humphrey’s loyalty, and Humphrey succumbed to Johnson’s domination. To appease the president, Humphrey <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/vietnam-hubert-humphrey.html">sold the war to Congress and the public</a> with trademark fervor. By 1968, Humphrey had curried favor with the Democratic establishment, but destroyed his progressive reputation.</p>
<p>“In the eyes of many of his old allies,” suggested Philip D. Carter in the Atlantic magazine, “the new Hubert is but a vestige, morally and ideologically diminished by his years of faithful service to the Great Emasculator.”</p>
<h2>Democratic fracture</h2>
<p>Once Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election in 1968, Humphrey became the heir to the Democratic nomination. But as the anti-war movement escalated, he also became an icon of national malaise.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243349/original/file-20181031-122171-v2j7kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243349/original/file-20181031-122171-v2j7kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243349/original/file-20181031-122171-v2j7kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243349/original/file-20181031-122171-v2j7kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243349/original/file-20181031-122171-v2j7kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243349/original/file-20181031-122171-v2j7kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243349/original/file-20181031-122171-v2j7kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243349/original/file-20181031-122171-v2j7kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Chicago police officers confront a demonstrator on the ground at Grant Park in Chicago during the city’s hosting of the Democratic National Convention.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/NATO-Summit-Chicago-Police/641ace9d6ea749398e3d14d5bb1c214f/1/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Prior to the Democratic National Convention that August, Humphrey sought a compromise position that opened the possibility of a bombing halt in North Vietnam, which could kickstart the peace process. But <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wzGabQcvDvcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=hubert+humphrey+biography&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwifl--3krHeAhVIqlkKHeJHC6sQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=johnson%20chicago&f=false">Johnson shot down those suggestions</a>. </p>
<p>Humphrey looked like the president’s puppet, while the Democratic coalition fractured over Vietnam. The convention featured gory scenes of alienated anti-war activists clashing with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/07/18/what-happened-in-chicago-in-1968-and-why-is-everyone-talking-about-it-now/?utm_term=.7305608f0c62">brutal policemen in downtown Chicago</a>. Humphrey’s campaign <a href="https://www.minnpost.com/arts-culture/2018/09/new-biography-points-up-central-challenge-hhh-faced-in-1968-race/">soon hit rock-bottom</a>. </p>
<p>Anti-war protests kept plaguing his rallies. Other Democratic candidates treated him like a contagious disease. In September 1968, a Gallup poll gave him only 28 percent of the vote. Tom Wicker of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qahWKgSkTSYC&pg=PA203&dq=a+burnt-out+case+who+left+his+political+manhood+somewhere+in+the+dark+places+of+the+Johnson+administration&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj91Ya3jZDeAhUL1lkKHZPeAscQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=a%20burnt-out%20case%20who%20left%20his%20political%20manhood%20somewhere%20in%20the%20dark%20places%20of%20the%20Johnson%20administration&f=false">The New York Times</a> called Humphrey “a burnt-out case who left his political manhood somewhere in the dark places of the Johnson administration.”</p>
<h2>No regrets</h2>
<p>On Nov. 5, <a href="https://www.270towin.com/1968_Election/">Richard Nixon won the election</a>. While third-party candidate George Wallace bled five southern states from the Republicans, Nixon took 301 Electoral College votes and 43.4 percent of the popular vote, while Humphrey finished with 191 electors and 42.7 percent.</p>
<p>Nixon capitalized on the conservative backlash against an ineffective war, rampant social protest, race riots and high taxes – political forces that further animated the populist third-party campaign of Alabama’s George Wallace. </p>
<p>But what if Lyndon Johnson had presented his vice president as the man to deliver peace in Vietnam? Could it have swung the election? </p>
<p>LBJ had no regrets. </p>
<p>“I often think it’s a good thing that Hubert Humphrey never got to be President – for his own good and the good of the country,” he told a former aide while retired on his Texas ranch. Humphrey, he said, “hasn’t got much more spine than a small girl.” A real man, to Johnson, stands up for himself – even if it meant challenging his boss, the President of the United States.</p>
<h2>Modern manhood</h2>
<p>In 1968, strong leadership was cast in traditional masculine terms – for both good and ill. At his best, Johnson championed a muscular and wide-armed vision of American progress, while Humphrey personified an authentic, empathetic liberalism. They were doomed, together, by Johnson’s compulsion to dominate and Humphrey’s tendency to crumple, leading to a tragic war and failed election. </p>
<p>What does this mean for today’s Democratic Party? </p>
<p>I believe that it would be absurd for this more inclusive, progressive party to adopt the masculine clichés of the past. Since 1968, the party has <a href="http://time.com/4414685/1968-democratic-convention-reform-geoffrey-cowan/">enacted reforms</a> and crafted appeals that have opened more room for women, racial minorities and youth. Women’s rights are a core value for the party. It ran <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/hillary-clinton-election-president-loss">Hillary Clinton</a> for president. Many of its brightest stars are women. </p>
<p>Yet if the Democratic Party ever plans on rebuilding a legitimate coalition that captures the broad middle swath of Americans, it needs men of many stripes – and a <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-do-men-think-it-means-to-be-a-man/">huge majority of men consider masculinity as part of their identity</a>. </p>
<p>Liberal politicians can trumpet a vision of manhood that includes respecting women, asserting independence and wielding power for the common good. In other words, they can take the best from both Johnson and Humphrey, while discarding the worst. </p>
<p><em>Check out The Conversation US’ podcast “<a href="https://heatandlightpod.com/">Heat and Light</a>,” a seven-episode series hosted by award-winning journalist Phillip Martin, looking at pivotal moments from 1968.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104688/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aram Goudsouzian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 1968, Lyndon Johnson’s ridicule of presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey as weak and feminine tells us something about how a party of progressives still struggles with the idea of masculinity.Aram Goudsouzian, Professor of History, University of MemphisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1056402018-10-30T10:44:36Z2018-10-30T10:44:36ZThe soundtrack of the Sixties demanded respect, justice and equality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242768/original/file-20181029-76405-t6rnc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Supremes, with their polished performances and family-friendly lyrics, helped to bridge a cultural divide and temper racial tensions.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-International-News-Ente-/0897f662ca564589975e8c01730f5ea4/10/0">AP Photo/Frings</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Sly and the Family Stone released “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/7lL2lMWNtzOcf5HnEudNgn?si=Iki3pMgHRYGigF5i_0reow">Everyday People</a>” at the end of 1968, it was a rallying cry after a tumultuous year of assassinations, civil unrest and a seemingly interminable war.</p>
<p>“We got to live together,” he sang, “I am no better and neither are you.”</p>
<p>Throughout history, artists and songwriters have expressed a longing for equality and justice through their music.</p>
<p>Before the Civil War, African-American slaves gave voice to their oppression through protest songs camouflaged as <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197495/">Biblical spirituals</a>. In the 1930s, jazz singer Billie Holiday railed against the practice of lynching in “<a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/jazz-and-the-civil-rights-movement-2039542">Strange Fruit</a>.” Woody Guthrie’s <a href="https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/woody-guthrie">folk ballads from the 1930s and 1940s</a> often commented on the plight of the working class.</p>
<p>But perhaps in no other time in American history did popular music more clearly reflect the political and cultural moment than the soundtrack of the 1960s – one that exemplified a new and overt social consciousness.</p>
<p>That decade, a palpable energy slowly burned and intensified <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/01/01/1968s-chaos-the-assassinations-riots-and-protests-that-defined-our-world/?utm_term=.b71ae9680ebe">through a succession of events</a>: the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.</p>
<p>By the mid-1960s, frustration about the slow pace of change began to percolate with riots in multiple cities. Then, in 1968, two awful events occurred within months of each other: the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.</p>
<p>Through it all, there was the music.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.osu.edu/features/2016/the-music-man.html">Coming of age during this time in Northern California</a>, I had the opportunity to hear some of the era’s soundtrack live – James Brown, Marvin Gaye, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and The Doors.</p>
<p>At the same time, virtually everyone in the African-American community was directly connected in some way or another to the civil rights movement.</p>
<p>Every year, I revisit this era in <a href="https://news.osu.edu/students-learn-a-lesson-in-rock-n-roll/">an undergraduate class I teach</a> on music, civil rights and the Supreme Court. With this perspective as a backdrop, here are five songs, followed by a <a href="https://open.spotify.com/user/osuprezdrake/playlist/1glThKK9iTE9CRAQ0d9pC4?si=BJgzMNRVR42_cHgRtmhEMA">playlist</a> that I share with my students. </p>
<p>While they offer a window into the awakening and reckoning of the times, the tracks have assumed a renewed relevance and resonance today.</p>
<p><strong>“<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/18GiV1BaXzPVYpp9rmOg0E?si=zswsOON-Rqq1mWntenzr5Q">Blowin’ in the Wind</a>,” Bob Dylan, 1963</strong></p>
<p>First made a hit by the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, the song signaled a new consciousness and became the most covered of all Dylan songs. </p>
<p>The song asks a series of questions that appeal to the listener’s moral compass, while the timeless imagery of the lyrics – cannonballs, doves, death, the sky – evoke a longing for peace and freedom that spoke to the era.</p>
<p>As one critic <a href="https://www.npr.org/2000/10/21/1112840/blowin-in-the-wind">noted</a> in 2010: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“There are songs that are more written by their times than by any individual in that time, a song that the times seem to call for, a song that is just gonna be a perfect strike rolled right down the middle of the lane, and the lane has already been grooved for the strike.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This song – along with others such as “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Chimes of Freedom” – are among the reasons Bob Dylan <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2016/dylan/lecture/">received the Nobel Prize in Literature</a>. </p>
<p><strong>“<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/0KOE1hat4SIer491XKk4Pa?si=s_jCKsCDTV-MPBpQsOcQ4w">A Change is Gonna Come</a>,” Sam Cooke, 1964</strong></p>
<p>During a 1963 tour in the South, Cooke and his band <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/02/01/268995033/sam-cooke-and-the-song-that-almost-scared-him">were refused lodging</a> at a hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana. </p>
<p>African Americans routinely faced segregation and prejudice in the Jim Crow South, but this particular experience shook Cooke.</p>
<p>So he put pen to paper and tackled a subject that represented a departure for Cooke, a crossover artist who made his name with a series of Top 40 hits.</p>
<p>The lyrics reflect the anguish of being an extraordinary pop headliner who nonetheless needs to go through a side door.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242767/original/file-20181029-76393-1opcg8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242767/original/file-20181029-76393-1opcg8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242767/original/file-20181029-76393-1opcg8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242767/original/file-20181029-76393-1opcg8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242767/original/file-20181029-76393-1opcg8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242767/original/file-20181029-76393-1opcg8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242767/original/file-20181029-76393-1opcg8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242767/original/file-20181029-76393-1opcg8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Singer Sam Cooke stands next to a huge reproduction of his head on the roof of a Manhattan building.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Entertain-/0856cfd19a274ac9a9df38a0520d601c/2/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Showcasing Cooke’s gospel roots, it’s a song that painfully and beautifully captures the edge between hope and despair. </p>
<p>“It’s been a long, a long time coming,” he croons. “But I know a change is gonna come.”</p>
<p>Sam Cooke, in composing “A Change is Gonna Come,” was also inspired by Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”: <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-unlikely-story-of-a-change-is-gonna-come">According to Cooke’s biographer</a>, upon hearing Dylan’s song, Cooke “was almost ashamed to have not written something like that himself.”</p>
<p><strong>“<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/307kcWJQNMdiYYKj1LgClU?si=gTWTLeaHTHGhJZTIHVfRCw">Come See About Me</a>,” The Supremes, 1964</strong></p>
<p>This was one of my favorites of their songs at the time – upbeat, fun and necessarily “unpolitical.” </p>
<p>The Supremes’ record label, Motown, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/arts/artsspecial/motowns-link-to-civil-rights-movement-on-display.html">played an important role bridging a cultural divide</a> during the civil rights era by catapulting black musicians to global stardom. </p>
<p>The Supremes were the Motown act with arguably the broadest appeal, and they paved the way for other black artists to enjoy creative success as mainstream acts.</p>
<p>Through their 20 top-10 hits and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_cBv3wzcGs">17 appearances</a> from 1964 to 1969 on CBS’ popular weekly live program “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the group had a regular presence in the living rooms of black and white families across the country. </p>
<p><strong>“<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/2rOyqEU3frual4yxJymr0Z?si=5zOXUWbKSv2ThFa7pFfbbA">Say it Loud – I’m Black And I’m Proud</a>,” James Brown, 1968</strong></p>
<p>James Brown – the <a href="http://www.jamesbrown.com/bio/default.aspx">self-proclaimed</a> “hardest working man in show business” – built his reputation as an entertainer par excellence with brilliant dance moves, meticulous staging and a cape routine.</p>
<p>But with “Say it Loud – I’m Black And I’m Proud,” Brown seemed to be consciously delivering a starkly political statement about being black in America.</p>
<p>The track’s straightforward, unadorned lyrics allowed it to quickly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/opinion/sunday/james-brown-say-it-loud-50-years.html">become a black pride anthem</a> that promised “we won’t quit movin’ until we get what we deserve.”</p>
<p><strong>“<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/7s25THrKz86DM225dOYwnr?si=WRIrWDZbRpKnMr9v-1aNqQ">Respect</a>,” Aretha Franklin, 1967</strong></p>
<p>If I could choose only one song to represent the era it would be “Respect.” </p>
<p>It’s a cover of a track previously written and recorded by Otis Redding. But Franklin makes it wholly her own. From the opening lines, the Queen of Soul doesn’t ask for respect; she demands it. </p>
<p>The song <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/08/14/how-aretha-franklins-respect-became-an-anthem-for-civil-rights-and-feminism/?utm_term=.0a5db56fd9be">became an anthem</a> for the black power and women’s movements. </p>
<p>As Franklin <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/8/17/17699170/aretha-franklin-2018-respect-song-otis-redding-feminism-civil-rights">explained</a> in her 1999 autobiography: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It was the need of a nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher – everyone wanted respect. It was also one of the battle cries of the civil rights movement. The song took on monumental significance.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, these five songs can’t possibly do the decade’s music justice.</p>
<p>Some other tracks that I share with my students and count among my favorites include Simon & Garfunkel’s “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/2LkaNhCrNVmcYgXJeLVmsw?si=FOV9PY_AS9qN2uqK8gh6Dw">The Sound of Silence</a>,” Barry McGuire’s “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/1x95pWB3KeK3evKa1VrW6e?si=TllEVkaFSomi_tzqnXnqgQ">Eve of Destruction</a>” and Lou Rawls’ “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/6lE3fTHyZgGtT2adZSLYxW?si=8UKuSQZ_ScyoFxJ8hUw0TQ">Dead End Street</a>.”</p>
<iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/user/osuprezdrake/playlist/1glThKK9iTE9CRAQ0d9pC4" width="100%" height="380" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105640/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael V. Drake does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fifty years ago, Sly and the Family Stone sang ‘We got to live together, I am no better and neither are you.’ The words ring just as true today.Michael V. Drake, President, The Ohio State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/947142018-10-26T10:42:43Z2018-10-26T10:42:43ZIn the turmoil of 1968, music failed to seize the moment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241915/original/file-20181023-169819-18yvdps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">That year, the pillars of 1960s pop music released unfocused, confused albums.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/broken-guitar-neck-748856833">Thitkorn Krireuk/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>While the first half of 1968 was a series of explosive moments – the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/01/29/580811124/military-victory-but-political-defeat-the-tet-offensive-50-years-later">Tet Offensive</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90330162">Paris protests</a>, the assassinations of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/01/15/kings-assassination-shaped-americas-identity-50-years-ago-and-continues-to-shape-it-today/">MLK</a> and <a href="http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-robert-f-kennedy/">RFK</a>, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2018/aug/19/the-whole-world-is-watching-chicago-police-riot-vietnam-war-regan">Chicago Democratic National Convention riots</a> – the second half seemed like a car wreck in slow motion. </p>
<p>The pace of the news cycle slowed to a crawl, the shock and surprise followed by the dull inevitability of events already set into motion.</p>
<p>The music of 1968 mirrored its historical moment. </p>
<p>The trends and styles of the previous year – the psychedelic rock born of <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/07/lsd-drugs-summer-of-love-sixties">the Summer of Love</a>, the empowerment of Aretha Franklin’s demand for “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/5WndWfzGwCkHzAbQXVkg2V?si=NhW9m-jXRMibXO-vpvf05Q">Respect</a>,” a rainbow coalition of black and white artists collaborating – passed into instant obsolescence, creating a vacuum waiting to be filled. </p>
<p>The three pillars of 1960s pop music – Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Motown hit machine – certainly didn’t rise to the occasion. Each put out music that was adrift and directionless, and each would lose its momentum and see its influence wane. </p>
<h2>Drifter’s escape</h2>
<p>In the last days of 1967, Bob Dylan quietly released “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/2KzCDxKpgLqBffHu1IZ7Kn?si=DNmxv0A3TOCp-pSmsgTKSA">John Wesley Harding</a>.” </p>
<p>The prior year, <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/bob-dylans-motorcycle-accident-1322021">Dylan had been in a motorcycle accident</a>, and his condition was shrouded in mystery. An 18-month period of silence followed, during which Dylan wrote and recorded “John Wesley Harding” with a trio of Nashville musicians. </p>
<p>But the long-awaited album contained none of the piercing anger, wit or wordplay of his white-hot classics “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/1lPoRKSgZHQAYXxzBsOQ7v?si=lO9wPjqhT9umbi_G7zMSMw">Bringing It All Back Home</a>,” “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/6YabPKtZAjxwyWbuO9p4ZD?si=FYXa15ipTbaApf00hlXzWQ">Highway 61 Revisted</a>” and the 1966 double-album set “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/4NP1rhnsPdYpnyJP0p0k0L?si=MBSClttbQ5OEgVkn4bPRdQ">Blonde On Blonde</a>.” </p>
<p>“John Wesley Harding” lacked the incisive social commentary of tracks like “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/6k9DUKMJpWvu6eFG3O64Lg?si=Q68uFBTXQB-UWYVfzYuUZQ">Subterranean Homesick Blues</a>” (“You don’t need a weatherman / To know which way the wind blows”) or the razor sharp character studies found in songs such as “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/3AhXZa8sUQht0UEdBJgpGc?si=Kt_LNGJnTV6wvdK1ord0Pg">Like a Rolling Stone</a>” (“Nobody’s ever taught you how to live out on the street / And now you’re gonna have to get used to it”). </p>
<p>Instead, Dylan wove perplexing parables couched in biblical imagery in songs such as “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/1cbLvt7UrsbVnljXttWUip?si=0p0I8yENTzeIrJv7ozuxfg">I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine</a>” and “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/0Fnb2pfBfu0ka33d6Yki17?si=llliBaF_RV6tO_Gzz5Wbaw">All Along the Watchtower</a>,” in which he sang, “Outside in the cold distance, a wild cat did growl. Two riders were approaching; the wind began to howl.” </p>
<p>The album’s darkly mysterious nature set an ominous tone for the year to come.</p>
<h2>The forlorn four</h2>
<p>Like Dylan, the Beatles seemed to be in the midst of an existential crisis.</p>
<p>Following the death of their manager, <a href="https://www.momentmag.com/brian-epstein-the-man-behind-the-beatles/">Brian Epstein</a>, in 1967, the Beatles headed to India, where they studied transcendental meditation with Indian guru <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/maharishi-mahesh-yogi-india-guru-the-beatles-meditation-a8543666.html">Maharishi Mahesh Yogi</a>. When they reconvened in London a few months later, they were no longer bright-eyed youths but four disillusioned men seeking answers and finding none.</p>
<p>After the tumultuous events of the first half of 1968, the group returned to the airwaves with an anthem to the power of positive thinking.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241904/original/file-20181023-169828-gra93q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241904/original/file-20181023-169828-gra93q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241904/original/file-20181023-169828-gra93q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241904/original/file-20181023-169828-gra93q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241904/original/file-20181023-169828-gra93q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241904/original/file-20181023-169828-gra93q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241904/original/file-20181023-169828-gra93q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Harrison and John Lennon sit on rocks by a river in Rishikesh, India, where they studied transcendental meditation in 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-India-Enter-/73970b4964e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/5/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Released in September of that year, the single “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/0aym2LBJBk9DAYuHHutrIl?si=B1FwJkhbQBy1_eOugtYOiw">Hey Jude</a>” sat atop the charts for months. The song’s first half urged the listener to take a sad song and make it better, while the second half – four minutes of nonsense chanting, slowly fading into infinity – offered only the notion that “though we may be lost, we are all lost together,” a hymn for a community that defined itself more by grief and resignation than by a belief in a better future.</p>
<p>The double album that followed in late November – officially titled “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/1klALx0u4AavZNEvC4LrTL?si=p2VaoAKhR5GWcCkdNLXnJA">The Beatles</a>,” but forever referred to as the “White Album” – brought together splintered fragments of the group’s experiences. It contained none of the audacious discovery and very little of the exuberance found in their previous work. </p>
<p>The track “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/3UDmHZcBTQp8Iu8droNtUl?si=5ES_BfHxRmOovpXIP2YPTg">Revolution #1</a>” was the Beatles’ most direct engagement with the politics of the moment. But it was decidedly ambivalent, arriving at the muddled confusion of “count me out in.” It seemed to urge the listener to take up arms, even as the lyrics urged acceptance: “Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright.”</p>
<h2>The widening racial divide</h2>
<p>In the mid-1960s, Detroit’s Motown Records had issued a string of singles that rivaled the Beatles for chart supremacy. </p>
<p>But with Detroit in flames <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-detroit-exploded-in-the-summer-of-1967-81065">during the riots of 1967</a>, the label lost its mojo: The upbeat cheer of the Motown sound was at odds with the violence erupting just a few blocks from the studio. </p>
<p>In 1968, the label’s two biggest acts – <a href="https://open.spotify.com/user/thetemptations_islanduk/playlist/1KmAgq98r2vUcHrxUdNdLA?si=nc6_dOfAT52guKvyzG90fg">The Temptations</a> and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/57bUPid8xztkieZfS7OlEV?si=5UwmaYvjTuyH4fVEi1cQSg">The Supremes</a> – barely managed to make the charts, and the few releases that did were dim shadows of earlier brilliance. </p>
<p>The events of 1968 would even more directly effect Stax records, Motown’s biggest rival. </p>
<p>Based in Memphis, Tennessee, Stax artists like Otis Redding and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/2BVYdY4PyfCF9z4NrkhEB2?si=itIAYwifQem-8PUBZGQ-0w">Sam and Dave</a> proudly wore their rough edges and black identity, unlike the polished acts Motown fashioned for The Ed Sullivan Show. </p>
<p>Redding, however, died in a plane crash in December 1967 – an ominous portent for the new year.</p>
<p>On the night of Dr. King’s assassination, just a few blocks from the Stax offices and studio, its legendary integrated house band, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/2vDV0T8sxx2ENnKXds75e5?si=NiDt8UzTRU2MuKfxJWq8hg">Booker T and the MGs</a>, came face-to-face with the racial divisions their very existence had defied. </p>
<p>Fearing for the lives of the two white members, the musicians and staff formed a caravan to escort them safely out of a neighborhood soon engulfed in flames. Though the band continued to work together for another year, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/may/15/booker-t-mgs-donald-duck-dunn">the bubble had burst</a>: A community fell apart, and the hits dried up.</p>
<p>James Brown was one of the first stars to directly address the year’s racial tumult in his music, issuing “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/1sYRkVKdT2ize1HSDCwbEF?si=FCpi_txxTVinsBMGJ4Sayg">Say it Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)</a>” in the late summer of 1968. </p>
<p>For a moment, he would bridge the gap between black and white, soul and pop, <a href="https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2017/04/05/james-brown-saved-boston-king/">famously holding Boston together with a concert performed</a> the day after King’s assassination. </p>
<p>This night, however, would prove the high water mark for Brown, whose increasingly political music caused him to lose much of his white audience, relegating him to the niche of soul music.</p>
<p>Sly Stone met a similar fate. His 1968 breakout hit, “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/1MQWtVcs0PKsY4PA6ZvLiy?si=GiAxBHy2Q-WB9qWYQp5U7A">Dance to the Music</a>,” featured a multiracial band of men and women, creating a musical rainbow coalition.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241908/original/file-20181023-169834-1dthivu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241908/original/file-20181023-169834-1dthivu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241908/original/file-20181023-169834-1dthivu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241908/original/file-20181023-169834-1dthivu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241908/original/file-20181023-169834-1dthivu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241908/original/file-20181023-169834-1dthivu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241908/original/file-20181023-169834-1dthivu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the 1970s, Sly Stone seemed to succumb to cynicism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-United-St-/69241b44a01c4447a6626929ed4dce93/2/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But within a year, Sly’s message became considerably less rosy. His 1969 album “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/7iwS1r6JHYJe9xpPjzmWqD?si=dUc555gZQm-0KqD4jBoUCw">Stand!</a>” contained the song “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/7EpNtcFGd3yJl0sjgJgqEe?si=rhND2g0FSjWzAK7rcz5IMg">Don’t Call Me Nigger, (Whitey)</a>” while his 1971 follow-up, “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/29f2cOueckYE8Nc1pkJjrU?si=zj1iCmQtSqetPeMj_5VkQw">There’s a Riot Going On</a>,” depicted a dystopian view of the future. Like Brown, he would fade from the mainstream.</p>
<p>After the hopeful days of <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-swinging-sixties-london-changed-the-world">Swinging London</a> and the Summer of Love, the events of 1968 triggered classic fight or flight responses. </p>
<p>A few musicians metaphorically took to the streets. </p>
<p>But most fled for cover, going back to the land or looking to God. </p>
<p>Compared to the more radically charged music of 1969, the resigned hymns of 1970, and the escapist fare that dominated the following decades, 1968 serves as a kind of still point, an extended moment of hesitation after a gunshot, just before the fight-or-flight reflex kicks in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94714/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A few musicians metaphorically took to the streets. But most fled for cover.Alan Williams, Chair of Music Department, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/955842018-10-05T10:41:13Z2018-10-05T10:41:13Z‘Coming of Age in Mississippi’ still speaks to nation’s racial discord, 50 years later<p>Most memoirs are soon forgotten.</p>
<p>A rare exception is Anne Moody’s “Coming of Age in Mississippi,” which was published in 1968. It spoke to the day’s pressing issues – poverty, race and civil rights – with an urgent timeliness.</p>
<p>Fifty years later, the book still commands a wide readership. Read each year by thousands of high school and college students, it remains a Random House backlist best-seller – a title that continues to sell with little to no marketing.</p>
<p>As I research Anne Moody’s life for my upcoming biography, I often wonder what her memoir’s continued popularity means. Does it signal dramatic progress on race relations in the U.S. – or does it instead show us that, as former Sen. Ted Kennedy wrote in 1969, “If things are somewhat different, then they are not different enough.” </p>
<h2>Till’s death opens Moody’s eyes</h2>
<p>Written when Moody was 28 years old, “Coming of Age” is a gripping story. In spare, direct prose, she takes readers into the world of African-American sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South. As a child, she chopped and picked cotton, cleaned houses for white people, and wondered why whites had better everything – better bathrooms, better schools and better seats in the movie theater. </p>
<p>That mystery remained unsolved when, in 1955, Moody learned that white men had killed a black boy her age just a few hours’ drive north. The killing felt personal. </p>
<p>“Before Emmett Till’s murder, I had known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil,” <a href="http://users.soc.umn.edu/%7Esamaha/cases/moody_10-11.htm">she wrote</a>. “But now there was … the fear of being killed just because I was black.” </p>
<p>Closer to home, whites ran her cousin out of town, brutally beat a classmate, and burned an entire family alive in their home. Amid such horrors, Moody feared a nervous breakdown.</p>
<p>But she resolved to resist.</p>
<p>In 1963, Moody became infamous in Mississippi after she challenged racial segregation in what would be the era’s most violent lunch-counter sit-in. At the Woolworth’s in Jackson, Mississippi, white men shoved Moody off her stool, dragged her across the floor by her hair and, when she crawled back, smeared her with ketchup, sugar and mustard. </p>
<p>Photographer Fred Blackwell captured a now-iconic image of this day, with Moody seated in the middle.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239384/original/file-20181004-52669-1as8j2o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239384/original/file-20181004-52669-1as8j2o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239384/original/file-20181004-52669-1as8j2o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239384/original/file-20181004-52669-1as8j2o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239384/original/file-20181004-52669-1as8j2o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239384/original/file-20181004-52669-1as8j2o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239384/original/file-20181004-52669-1as8j2o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239384/original/file-20181004-52669-1as8j2o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Anne Moody endures harassment from a crowd of whites at a Woolworth’s in Jackson, Miss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/02/22/arts/22OBITSMOODY1/22OBITSMOODY1-jumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp">Fred Blackwell/Jackson Daily News, via Associated Press</a></span>
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<p>In the early 1960s, Moody worked tirelessly as an organizer for the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/congress-of-racial-equality">Congress of Racial Equality</a> in Canton, Mississippi. But after facing daily death threats, she fled to the North, where she moved from city to city, raising money for the movement.</p>
<p>At each stop, she described what it was like to come of age, as a black woman, in Mississippi. At one, she shared a stage with baseball great Jackie Robinson, who urged her to write down her story. </p>
<p>So she did.</p>
<h2>Readers react</h2>
<p>After “Coming of Age in Mississippi” was published, the response was split.</p>
<p>Some readers viewed the book as – in the words of one reviewer for The New Republic – a “measure of how far we have come.” To them, the worst of racism was over, and Moody’s account served as a stark reminder of how bad things once were.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239396/original/file-20181004-52691-6nialy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239396/original/file-20181004-52691-6nialy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239396/original/file-20181004-52691-6nialy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239396/original/file-20181004-52691-6nialy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239396/original/file-20181004-52691-6nialy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1190&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239396/original/file-20181004-52691-6nialy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1190&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239396/original/file-20181004-52691-6nialy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1190&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Many readers praised Moody’s story. Many in her home state, however, spurned it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/58392869-d9cf-40ef-bd18-54f4c1181933_1.ba861969fbc957f41e5a220c486acf01.jpeg?odnHeight=450&odnWidth=450&odnBg=FFFFFF">Dell</a></span>
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<p>Others, however, read Moody’s experiences of racism as simply one chapter in a current and ongoing struggle – “the sickening story of the way it still is for thousands who are black in the American South,” as Robert Colby Nelson wrote for The Christian Science Monitor. </p>
<p>Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy read it both ways. </p>
<p>He called the memoir “a history of our time, seen from the bottom up, through the eyes of someone who decided for herself that things had to be changed.” Still, he regretted that the book did not mention recent advances, like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which enabled the election of several black public officials in Moody’s own hometown.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, for decades, Southern media outlets and public institutions shunned “Coming of Age in Mississippi” and Anne Moody herself. Hostile whites in Moody’s hometown of Centreville, Mississippi even threatened to kill her if she ever returned.</p>
<h2>How much has really changed?</h2>
<p>By contrast, today, “Coming of Age” shows up on high school and college reading lists throughout the South, and Anne Moody appears among 21 authors pictured on the <a href="http://msreads.lib.ms.us/mslitmap/">Mississippi Literary Map</a>. Her crumbling childhood home sits on the recently renamed Anne Moody Street, and <a href="https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2018/04/02/mississippi-highway-honor-civil-rights-pioneer-anne-moody/479152002/">Anne Moody Memorial Highway</a> now connects Centreville and Woodville, the town where she graduated from high school.</p>
<p>In Moody’s day, local public officials were all white. Now they more closely reflect the county’s 75 percent black population. </p>
<p>In 1963, Moody mourned the assassination of her beloved colleague, Medgar Evers, president of the state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and watched in horror as local whites refused to convict his murderer. Thirty years later, Byron De La Beckwith was finally convicted of homocide and imprisoned for life. Today, visitors who fly into the Mississippi state capital, land at Jackson-Evers International Airport.</p>
<p>These shifts make “Coming of Age” seem, to many readers, an inspiring account of survival, resistance and victory. </p>
<p>But to others, the book is anything but a triumphalist story. Instead, its lessons are grim: In retrospect, civil rights victories seem superficial, while the brutal poverty and racism Moody described endures. </p>
<p>Compared to whites, black people in the U.S. are more than twice as likely <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/black-women-infant-mortality-rate-cdc-631178">to die in infancy</a>, three times more likely <a href="https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D">to be poor</a>, three times more likely <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/fatal-police-shootings-of-unarmed-people-have-significantly-declined-experts-say/2018/05/03/d5eab374-4349-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html?utm_term=.e80d6742c435">to be killed by police</a>, five times more likely <a href="https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/">to be imprisoned</a> and seven times more likely <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-homicide-in-america-by-the-numbers">to be murdered</a>. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96">was gutted by a 2013 Supreme Court decision</a> that emboldened states around the country to create <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/how-shelby-county-broke-america/564707/">new restrictions that prevent black citizens from voting</a>.</p>
<p>Anne Moody was one of the lucky ones. She graduated from college, moved north and published a best-selling memoir.</p>
<p>But despite the accolades, television appearances, radio interviews and speaking engagements, she could never really escape Jim Crow Mississippi. It had deprived her of her family and a place to truly call home.</p>
<p>“Coming of Age” ends with Moody listening to civil rights workers sing the anthem, “We Shall Overcome.”</p>
<p>“I wonder,” she wrote. “I really wonder.” </p>
<p>Fifty years later, many of us are still wondering.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leigh Ann Wheeler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Does Anne Moody’s memoir represent how far we’ve come as a society? Or is it a stark reminder of how far we need to go?Leigh Ann Wheeler, Professor of History, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1023032018-10-03T10:33:10Z2018-10-03T10:33:10Z50 years old, ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ still offers insight about the future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238387/original/file-20180927-48653-1d2wlhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Even 17 years beyond 2001, spacesuits are bulkier than this.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/scarywardrobe/8999720714/">Matthew J. Cotter/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Watching a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2001-a-space-odyssey-movie-50th-anniversary/">50th anniversary screening</a> of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” I found myself, a <a href="http://neukom.dartmouth.edu/people/rockmore.html">mathematician and computer scientist</a> whose research includes work related to artificial intelligence, comparing the story’s vision of the future with the world today.</p>
<p>The movie was made through a collaboration with science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke and film director Stanley Kubrick, inspired by Clarke’s novel “Childhood’s End” and his lesser-known short story “The Sentinel.” A striking work of speculative fiction, it depicts – in terms sometimes hopeful and other times cautionary – a future of alien contact, interplanetary travel, conscious machines and even the next great evolutionary leap of humankind.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sQUr44SO_Is?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The opening of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’</span></figcaption>
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<p>The most obvious way in which 2018 has fallen short of the vision of “2001” is in space travel. People are not yet routinely visiting space stations, making unremarkable visits to one of several moon bases, nor traveling to other planets. But Kubrick and Clarke hit the bull’s-eye when imagining the possibilities, problems and challenges of the future of artificial intelligence.</p>
<h2>What can computers do?</h2>
<p>A chief drama of the movie can in many ways be viewed as a battle to the death between human and computer. The artificial intelligence of “2001” is embodied in HAL, the omniscient computational presence, the brain of the Discovery One spaceship – and perhaps the film’s most famous character. HAL marks the pinnacle of computational achievement: a self-aware, seemingly infallible device and a ubiquitous presence in the ship, always listening, always watching. </p>
<p>HAL is not just a technological assistant to the crew, but rather – in the words of the mission commander Dave Bowman – the sixth crew member. The humans interact with HAL by speaking to him, and he replies in a measured male voice, somewhere between stern-yet-indulging parent and well-meaning nurse. HAL is Alexa and Siri – but much better. HAL has complete control of the ship and also, as it turns out, is the only crew member who knows the true goal of the mission. </p>
<h2>Ethics in the machine</h2>
<p>The tension of the film’s third act revolves around Bowman and his crewmate Frank Poole becoming increasingly aware that HAL is malfunctioning, and HAL’s discovery of these suspicions. Dave and Frank want to pull the plug on a failing computer, while self-aware HAL wants to live. All want to complete the mission. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Man versus machine.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The life-or-death chess match between the humans and HAL offers precursors of some of today’s questions about the prevalence and deployment of artificial intelligence in people’s daily lives.</p>
<p>First and foremost is the question of how much control people should cede to artificially intelligent machines, regardless of how “smart” the systems might be. HAL’s control of Discovery is like a deep-space version of the networked home of the future or the driverless car. Citizens, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0267364909001514">policymakers</a>, <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7167238">experts and researchers</a> are all still exploring the degree to which automation could – or should – <a href="https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/internet-of-things/fbi-warns-public-on-dangers-of-the-internet-of-things">take humans out of the loop</a>. Some of the considerations involve relatively simple questions about the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/22/self-driving-car-uber-death-woman-failure-fatal-crash-arizona">reliability of machines</a>, but other issues are more subtle. </p>
<p>The actions of a computational machine are dictated by decisions encoded by humans in algorithms that control the devices. Algorithms generally have some quantifiable goal, toward which each of its actions should make progress – like <a href="https://theconversation.com/computers-to-humans-shall-we-play-a-game-77383">winning a game</a> of checkers, chess or Go. Just as an AI system would analyze positions of game pieces on a board, it can also <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/interview-brad-porter-vp-of-robotics-at-amazon">measure efficiency of a warehouse</a> or <a href="https://www.wired.com/2014/05/google-data-center-ai/">energy use of a data center</a>.</p>
<p>But what happens when a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-everyday-ethical-challenges-of-self-driving-cars-92710">moral or ethical dilemma</a> arises en route to the goal? For the self-aware HAL, completing the mission – and staying alive – wins out when measured against the lives of the crew. What about a driverless car? Is the <a href="https://theconversation.com/safe-efficient-self-driving-cars-could-block-walkable-livable-communities-103583">mission of a self-driving car</a>, for instance, to get a passenger from one place to another as quickly as possible – or to avoid killing pedestrians? When someone steps in front of an autonomous vehicle, those goals conflict. That might feel like an obvious “choice” to program away, but what if the car needs to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-everyday-ethical-challenges-of-self-driving-cars-92710">“choose” between two different scenarios</a>, each of which would cause a human death? </p>
<h2>Under surveillance</h2>
<p>In one classic scene, Dave and Frank go into a part of the space station where they think HAL can’t hear them to discuss their doubts about HAL’s functioning and his ability to control the ship and guide the mission. They broach the idea of shutting him down. Little do they know that HAL’s cameras can see them: The computer is reading their lips through the pod window and learns of their plans. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">HAL reads lips.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In the modern world, a version of that scene happens all day every day. Most of us are effectively continuously monitored, through our <a href="https://theconversation.com/7-in-10-smartphone-apps-share-your-data-with-third-party-services-72404">almost-always-on phones</a> or corporate and government <a href="https://theconversation.com/snowden-a-picture-of-the-cybersecurity-state-65310">surveillance of real-world and online activities</a>. The boundary between private and public has become and continues to be increasingly fuzzy.</p>
<p>The characters’ relationships in the movie made me think a lot about how people and machines might coexist, or even evolve together. Through much of the movie, even the humans talk to each other blandly, without much tone or emotion – as they might talk to a machine, or as a machine might talk to them. HAL’s famous death scene – in which Dave methodically disconnects its logic links – made me wonder whether intelligent machines will ever be afforded something equivalent to human rights. </p>
<p>Clarke believed it quite possible that humans’ time on Earth was but a “<a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Space-Odyssey/Michael-Benson/9781501163937">brief resting place</a>” and that the maturation and evolution of the species would necessarily take people well beyond this planet. “2001” ends optimistically, vaulting a human through the “Stargate” to mark the rebirth of the race. To do this in reality will require people to figure out how to make the best use of the machines and devices that they are building, and to make sure we don’t let those machines control us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel N. Rockmore is Associate Dean for the Sciences, Director of the Neukom Institute for Computational Science, and Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Dartmouth College. He is also on the Science Steering Committee of The Santa Fe Institute and a member of its External Faculty. </span></em></p>People are still wrestling with what artificial intelligence could and should do, half a century after the debut of the Kubrick-Clarke classic.Daniel N. Rockmore, Professor, Department of Mathematics, Computational Science, and Computer Science, Dartmouth CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1035702018-10-01T18:48:59Z2018-10-01T18:48:59ZPoliticians have long used the ‘forgotten man’ to win elections<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238753/original/file-20181001-195282-eokem7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Richard Nixon, Republican candidate for president, is seen in August 1968.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since Thomas Jefferson’s time, candidates have put themselves forward as representatives of the so-called “forgotten man.”</p>
<p>As a scholar of American political history, I cover this subject in my book on presidential politics, <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15723.html">“Republican Character: Nixon to Reagan</a>.”</p>
<p>Perhaps the best modern example of this is Richard Nixon, who declared that he won the 1968 presidential election because he represented what he called the “silent majority” of voters.</p>
<p>Exactly what did Nixon mean?</p>
<h2>The ‘forgotten man’ is born</h2>
<p>In the 1932 presidential race, candidate Franklin Roosevelt <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=88408">used the phrase</a> “the forgotten man” in his campaign against incumbent Herbert Hoover. At the time, Americans found themselves experiencing the effects of a global economic depression, and incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover seemed unable to implement effective recovery measures. </p>
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<p>Roosevelt’s use of the phrase “the forgotten man” proved effective – he won a landslide victory.</p>
<p>Roosevelt took the phrase from Yale sociology professor William Graham Summer, who wrote about “the forgotten man” in a <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Sumner.Forgotten.html">Harper’s Weekly article</a> published in 1883. Summer described the “forgotten man” as a “simple, honest laborer, ready to earn his living by productive work. We pass him by because he is independent, self-supporting, and asks no favors.”</p>
<p>Summer, an advocate for keeping government out of private enterprise, declared that the forgotten man sought “no paternal, undue government.” Roosevelt cleverly reversed the phrase to mean that the federal government needed to do more to relieve unemployment and promote recovery.</p>
<p>Since then the idea of the forgotten man, the little guy ignored by politicians, has loomed large in American political rhetoric. </p>
<h2>Law and order and Nixon in 1968</h2>
<p>In his early congressional races in 1946 and 1948, Nixon spoke of the forgotten man, whom he claimed to represent. Although his opponents depicted him as a tool of oil and big-money interests, Nixon <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Contender.html">portrayed himself</a> as representing the average American.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238752/original/file-20181001-195250-7e43n8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238752/original/file-20181001-195250-7e43n8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238752/original/file-20181001-195250-7e43n8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238752/original/file-20181001-195250-7e43n8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238752/original/file-20181001-195250-7e43n8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238752/original/file-20181001-195250-7e43n8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238752/original/file-20181001-195250-7e43n8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238752/original/file-20181001-195250-7e43n8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Protesters demonstrating at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-IL-USA-APHS164877-Anti-war-Demonstrators/f84c7ea13bd94a26a61eced0adeb2320/9/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>By the time of the 1968 presidential election, the American electorate had become deeply divided over the Vietnam War and <a href="https://theconversation.com/police-killings-of-3-black-men-left-a-mark-on-detroits-history-more-than-50-years-ago-101716">race issues</a>. Republicans tried to frame this divide as one of patriotism and law and order versus the “lawless” anti-war movement and inner-city rioters. </p>
<p>Many Americans were shocked by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-anti-trump-activists-can-learn-from-chicago-68-62741">anti-war demonstration that disrupted</a> the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in late August 1968. For Republicans, these antiwar demonstrators became an easy symbol for the break down in law and order that was occurring in America at that time. Republicans such as Nixon appealed to voter concerned with what they perceived as the breakdown of order in their societies.</p>
<p>In late February 1968, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/gh/article-abstract/36/1/154/4096498">a Gallup poll reported</a> that “crime and lawlessness” was the most important domestic issue on the mind of the American electorate. Voters saw riots, violent demonstrations, juvenile delinquency and street crime as a single problem in American society.</p>
<p>In 1968, Nixon defeated incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had received the Democratic Party presidential nomination with the support of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had announced that he was not going to seek reelection. The Humphrey campaign fumbled the law-and-order issue. His approach was to come out strong for law and order while calling for more social spending to address rising crime rates. To voters who believed that liberals just did not have much to offer than more anti-poverty programs and welfare handouts, this was not convincing.</p>
<h2>Nixon and the ‘silent majority’</h2>
<p>A year after his victory in a speech given in November 1969, Nixon translated the “forgotten man” into “the silent majority.” In the <a href="http://watergate.info/1969/11/03/nixons-silent-majority-speech.html">televised speech</a>, he asked average Americans, “the great silent majority” that stands against the small vocal minority, to support his policies in Vietnam. </p>
<p>Nixon’s use of the “forgotten man” and “the silent majority” was not just good campaign rhetoric. It reflected a substantive reality that many average Americans did not feel represented by the media, which seemed in their eyes to spend more time on antiwar protesters than on average patriotic Americans such as themselves. </p>
<p>The silent majority spoke in 1968 and again 1972 by voting a Republican into the White House, just as they did in 2016 when they voted for Donald Trump. Perhaps these voters in 2016 were not the popular majority, but they were decisive, just as they were in 1968.</p>
<p><em>Our new podcast “<a href="https://heatandlightpod.com">Heat and Light</a>” features Prof. Critchlow discussing this story in depth.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heat-and-light/id1424521855?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=134&fit=clip" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oZWF0YW5kbGlnaHRwb2QuY29tL2ZlZWQucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=134&fit=clip" alt="" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=221807&refid=stpr"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236756/original/file-20180917-158222-1w998g0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=116&fit=clip" alt="Listen on Stitcher" width="116" height="34"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/heat-and-light-WYDE55"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=105&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="105" height="34"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/History-Podcasts/Heat-and-Light-p1149068/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=86&fit=clip" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="86" height="34"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donald Critchlow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From Thomas Jefferson to Donald Trump, the idea of the little guy ignored by politicians has loomed large in American political rhetoric.Donald Critchlow, Professor of History, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/998142018-09-28T15:47:44Z2018-09-28T15:47:44ZLast Boeing 747 rolls out of the factory: How the ‘queen of the skies’ reigned over air travel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238459/original/file-20180928-48650-9u450f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C40%2C1468%2C1109&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 747 takes off on its maiden voyage. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Sept. 30, 1968, <a href="http://www.boeing.com/commercial/747">the first Boeing 747</a> rolled out of its custom-built assembly plant in Everett, Washington. From the beginning, everything about the plane <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-747-future-20170306-story.html">once known</a> as the “queen of the skies” was big. </p>
<p>It was the first wide-body “jumbo jet” ever built. <a href="https://www.boeing.com/history/products/747.page">About 50,000 construction workers</a>, mechanics, engineers and others <a href="http://www.boeing.com/history/products/747.page">took it from an idea to the air</a> in just 16 months in the late 1960s. Until 2007 and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7061164.stm">the introduction</a> of the <a href="https://www.aviationcv.com/aviation-blog/2015/top-largest-passenger-aircraft">Airbus A380</a>, it was the largest civilian airplane in the world. </p>
<p>Versions of the 747 have been used in a variety of famous ways. In 1990, for example, a pair of 747-200s <a href="https://www.boeing.com/history/products/vc-137c-air-force-one.page">began operating</a> as <a href="http://www.boeing.com/defense/air-force-one/index.page">Air Force One</a>, the plane that ferries around the U.S. president. </p>
<p>Just to produce the 747, Boeing first had to erect what was and <a href="https://www.livescience.com/38437-largest-building-in-the-world.html">still is</a> the <a href="http://www.boeing.com/company/about-bca/everett-production-facility.page">largest building by volume</a> ever constructed – <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/12/travel/la-tr-boeing-20110612">big enough to hold 75 football fields or all of Disneyland</a>.</p>
<p>But on Jan. 31, 2023, the last 747 that Boeing expects to build <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/last-boeing-747-jumbo-jet-washington-state-factory-2022/">rolled out of its factory</a>.</p>
<p>I’ve been <a href="http://academic.udayton.edu/JanetBednarek/">researching and teaching</a> the history of American aviation for more than a quarter-century. Even though all U.S. airlines have retired their 747s, marking the end of an era, I believe it’s worth remembering the amazing story of the airplane that helped make international air travel affordable. </p>
<h2>The jumbo jet is born</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.boeing-747.com/">story of the 747</a>, like those of many other aircraft, began with a military request.
In 1963, the U.S. Air Force <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/c-5-history.htm">issued a proposal</a> for a very large transport aircraft to carry heavier loads and have a longer range than then-existing transport aircraft such as the C-141.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238383/original/file-20180927-48631-ktfg9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238383/original/file-20180927-48631-ktfg9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238383/original/file-20180927-48631-ktfg9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238383/original/file-20180927-48631-ktfg9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238383/original/file-20180927-48631-ktfg9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238383/original/file-20180927-48631-ktfg9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238383/original/file-20180927-48631-ktfg9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238383/original/file-20180927-48631-ktfg9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The prototype 747 was first displayed to the public on Sept. 30, 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#/media/File:Boeing_747_rollout_(3).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although Boeing lost its bid for what is now known as the C5 Galaxy, the designs and studies that went into its proposal didn’t go to waste. That’s because around the same time, Juan Trippe, the hard-charging president of Pan American World Airways, <a href="http://www.modernairliners.com/boeing-747-jumbo/boeing-747-jumbo-history/">wanted</a> Boeing to build an airliner twice the size of the first-generation jet airliner, the 707. </p>
<p>It would be “a great weapon for peace, competing with intercontinental ballistic missiles for mankind’s destiny,” he <a href="https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/boeing-747-heading-retirement/any-other-business/article/1360694">insisted</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238386/original/file-20180927-48665-u5m2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238386/original/file-20180927-48665-u5m2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238386/original/file-20180927-48665-u5m2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238386/original/file-20180927-48665-u5m2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238386/original/file-20180927-48665-u5m2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238386/original/file-20180927-48665-u5m2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238386/original/file-20180927-48665-u5m2vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">First lady Pat Nixon ushered in the era of jumbo jets by christening the first commercial 747 in 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#/media/File:Pat_Nixon_christens_Boeing_747_2749-18.jpg">White House Photo Office</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A big risk</h2>
<p>But at the time, it was a very risky endeavor. </p>
<p>Many in the aviation industry – <a href="http://www.boeing-747.com">including at Boeing</a> – believed that the future of air travel belonged to the fast, not the large. They envisioned new fleets of supersonic aircraft – such as the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/Concorde">Concorde</a>, which began flying in 1976 – that would make the existing subsonic flight obsolete, especially on the long routes <a href="https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/delta-boeing-747-retirement-flight/index.html">the 747 was designed to fly</a>. For comparison, the Concorde could make the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/Concorde">trip from London to New York in about three hours</a>, while a flight on a 747 (or any other subsonic commercial airliner) could take <a href="https://www.quora.com/How-many-hours-does-it-take-to-fly-to-London-from-New-York">eight to 10 hours</a>.</p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.modernairliners.com/boeing-747-jumbo/boeing-747-jumbo-history/">Boeing plowed ahead with the project anyway</a>. The new plane had its first test flight on Feb. 9, 1969, and debuted to a world audience at the Paris Air Show later that summer. By the end of the year, the Federal Aviation Administration declared it airworthy, and Pan Am took delivery of its first 747 on Jan. 15, 1970.</p>
<p>Although the 747-100 at full capacity promised the airlines cost efficiency, the plane rarely flew that way, with 400 passengers. In part, this was because the 747 had the misfortune of launching during <a href="https://www.thebalance.com/opec-oil-embargo-causes-and-effects-of-the-crisis-3305806">a recession and the first oil crisis</a>, both of which resulted in fewer passengers.</p>
<p>In addition, the project’s size itself almost threatened the aerospace company – and its banks – with bankruptcy because the aircraft’s development <a href="http://www.liquisearch.com/boeing_747/development/development_and_testing">required Boeing to take on US$2 billion in debt</a>, or about $20 billion in today’s dollars. </p>
<p>Fortunately for Boeing, <a href="http://www.boeing-747.com/">it hedged its bets</a> by designing the aircraft to function both as a passenger airliner and as an air freighter. It was the freighter variant that required the “hump” at the top of the fuselage to hold the cockpit so that the nose section could swing open.</p>
<p>Since then, Boeing has built <a href="http://www.boeing.com/commercial/747">over 1,500 747s</a>, and about <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2017/07/19/news/companies/the-last-747-jumbo-jetliner/index.html">500 still fly today</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bKqQgNZylLw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Pam Am introduces jet travel to the American public.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The golden age of flight</h2>
<p>The 747 was – and is – probably the most easily recognizable jet airliner. While most people would have a hard time distinguishing between a Boeing 707 and a DC-8 – or pretty much any other pair of jet airliners – the 747’s large size and distinctive “hump” at the front make it unmistakable.</p>
<p>It debuted at the end of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/longing-for-the-golden-age-of-air-travel-be-careful-what-you-wish-for-34177">so-called golden age of flight</a>, a time when air travel still was seen as glamorous and most airlines catered to an elite clientele. As such, early operators used the upper deck as a passenger lounge for first-class passengers, rather than filling the plane to its full capacity.</p>
<p>In the late 1970s, in an <a href="https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/the-glamorous-airline-lounges-in-the-sky-from-the-1970s/">effort to entice more passengers</a>, American Airlines went one step further, turning the lounge into a “piano bar” complete with a Wurlitzer organ and entertainer who led singalongs with the passengers.</p>
<p>Deregulation, however, soon made such glamorous amenities obsolete as airlines focused on cutting costs rather than offering high-end services. And over time, smaller and more efficient long-range twin-engine aircraft like <a href="http://www.boeing.com/commercial/777">the 777</a> and <a href="http://www.boeing.com/commercial/787">787 diminished the need</a> for a hulking jumbo jet.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238388/original/file-20180927-48644-1hdudx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238388/original/file-20180927-48644-1hdudx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238388/original/file-20180927-48644-1hdudx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238388/original/file-20180927-48644-1hdudx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238388/original/file-20180927-48644-1hdudx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238388/original/file-20180927-48644-1hdudx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238388/original/file-20180927-48644-1hdudx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George H.W. Bush waves as he boards the Air Force One to take the maiden voyage on the converted jumbo Boeing 747.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Maryland-/e85fcf5553dc4e2399ebb608f04a04d2/7/0">AP Photo/Ron Edmonds</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Icon of aviation</h2>
<p>Despite its problems, the 747 won a coveted place in American popular culture.</p>
<p>It “starred” in two disaster movies – “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071110/">Airport 1975</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075648/">Airport ‘77</a>,” not to mention several films that involved <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116253/?ref_=ttls_li_tt">hijackings</a>, including “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118571/">Air Force One</a>.”</p>
<p>The 747 also gained further fame from certain specialty missions. NASA, for example, used a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-013-DFRC.html">specially modified 747</a> to transport the space shuttle between landing and launch sites.</p>
<p>And, of course, a 747 continues to fly around the “leader of the free world” and his entourage. In 2024, the 747-8 will take over the job, with a longer range, slightly higher speed and a higher maximum takeoff weight. </p>
<p>While the 747 that left the factory Jan. 31 may be the last one built, the airplane should still have a long life as a carrier of freight – not to mention ferrying around the American president – which means these icons of aviation will still fly well into the 21st century. </p>
<p><em>This article was updated on Jan. 31, 2023, with references to the last 747 built.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99814/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Bednarek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On Sept. 30, 1968, the first Boeing 747 rolled off the assembly line, ready to hit the skies as the biggest commercial jet at the time. Some 55 years later, the last one has left its factory.Janet Bednarek, Professor of History, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1033962018-09-17T19:58:23Z2018-09-17T19:58:23ZThe Mother of All Demos<p>A computer may have been the size of room in 1968, but it was still a watershed year for tech industry. That year saw the founding of the Intel Corporation that would revolutionize microprocessors and “the mother of all demos,” a landmark event that featured the first public demonstration of a computer mouse. Our guest, Margaret O’Mara, a professor of U.S. history at the University of Washington, became fascinated with the story of the Silicon Valley through a circuitous path that involved time spent in the White House and a close encounter with the Little Rock Nine. She tells Philip how this place, once a pastoral agricultural community, became a technological and economic powerhouse – and what that meant for the people who lived there. </p>
<p>Read more in this accompanying article from Margaret O'Mara:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-1968-computers-got-personal-how-the-mother-of-all-demos-changed-the-world-101654">In 1968, computers got personal: How the ‘mother of all demos’ changed the world</a></p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heat-and-light/id1424521855?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oZWF0YW5kbGlnaHRwb2QuY29tL2ZlZWQucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=221807&refid=stpr"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236756/original/file-20180917-158222-1w998g0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Stitcher" width="268" height="80"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/heat-and-light-WYDE55"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2pNAWvcME1HXB074Ys0dWM"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237984/original/file-20180925-149976-1ks72uy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" width="268" height="82"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/History-Podcasts/Heat-and-Light-p1149068/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="268" height="105"></a></p>
<p>Also: <a href="https://heatandlightpod.com/feed.rss">RSS Feed</a></p>
<p><strong>Music:</strong> “By Grace” by Podington Bear, found on <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Podington_Bear/Inspiring/ByGrace">FreeMusicArchive.org</a>, licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1</a></p>
<p>“Motions” by Rafael Krux, found on <a href="https://freepd.com/upbeat.php#LinkToRevealHideComments">FreePD.com</a>, licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1</a></p>
<p><strong>Archival:</strong> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv85FSf_6vw">Mother of All Demos - The Mouse</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARJ8cAGm6JE">HAL 9000: “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARJ8cAGm6JE">The First Microprocessor TV Commercial</a></p>
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In 1968 computers were the size of a room. But after the founding of Intel and the introduction of the mouse that year they would eventually fit in a pocket – and change the Silicon Valley forever.Phillip Martin, Podcast hostLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1016542018-09-17T19:45:19Z2018-09-17T19:45:19ZIn 1968, computers got personal: How the ‘mother of all demos’ changed the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232180/original/file-20180815-2903-1l8mkct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from Doug Engelbart's groundbreaking 1968 computer demo.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.dougengelbart.org/firsts/dougs-1968-demo.html#3">Doug Engelbart Institute</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a crisp California afternoon in early December 1968, a square-jawed, mild-mannered Stanford researcher named Douglas Engelbart took the stage at San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium and proceeded to <a href="https://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2015/04/from-the-vault-watching-and-re-watching-the-mother-of-all-demos/">blow everyone’s mind</a> about what computers could do. Sitting down at a keyboard, this computer-age Clark Kent calmly showed a rapt audience of computer engineers how <a href="http://dougengelbart.org/firsts/dougs-1968-demo.html">the devices they built could be utterly different kinds of machines</a> – ones that were “alive for you all day,” as he put it, immediately responsive to your input, and which didn’t require users to know programming languages in order to operate. </p>
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<span class="caption">The prototype computer mouse Doug Engelbart used in his demo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Douglas_Engelbart%27s_prototype_mouse_-_Computer_History_Museum.jpg">Michael Hicks</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Engelbart typed simple commands. He edited a grocery list. As he worked, he skipped the computer cursor across the screen using a strange wooden box that fit snugly under his palm. With small wheels underneath and a cord dangling from its rear, Engelbart dubbed it a “mouse.”</p>
<p>The 90-minute presentation went down in Silicon Valley history as the “<a href="https://www.wired.com/2010/12/1209computer-mouse-mother-of-all-demos/">mother of all demos</a>,” for it <a href="http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3954.html">previewed a world of personal and online computing</a> utterly different from 1968’s status quo. It wasn’t just the technology that was revelatory; it was the notion that a computer could be something a non-specialist individual user could control from their own desk. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The first part of the ‘mother of all demos.’</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Shrinking the massive machines</h2>
<p>In the America of 1968, computers weren’t at all personal. They were refrigerator-sized behemoths that hummed and blinked, calculating everything from consumer habits to missile trajectories, cloistered deep within corporate offices, government agencies and university labs. Their secrets were accessible only via punch card and teletype terminals.</p>
<p>The Vietnam-era counterculture already had made mainframe computers into ominous symbols of a soul-crushing Establishment. Four years before, the student protesters of <a href="https://fsm.berkeley.edu/free-speech-movement-timeline/">Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement</a> had pinned signs to their chests that bore a riff on the prim warning that appeared on every IBM punch card: “<a href="http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/FSM_fold_bend.html">I am a UC student. Please don’t bend, fold, spindle or mutilate me</a>.” </p>
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<p><strong>Hear Prof. O'Mara discuss this topic on our <a href="https://heatandlightpod.com">Heat and Light podcast</a>.</strong></p>
<p>Earlier in 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s trippy “2001: A Space Odyssey” mined moviegoers’ <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-and-father/">anxieties about computers run amok</a> with the tale of a malevolent mainframe that seized control of a spaceship from its human astronauts. </p>
<p>Voices rang out on Capitol Hill about the uses and abuses of electronic data-gathering, too. Missouri Senator Ed Long regularly delivered floor speeches he called “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/intruders-the-invasion-of-privacy-by-government-and-industry/oclc/468772015">Big Brother updates</a>.” North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin declared that mainframe power posed a threat to the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. “The computer,” <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/GPO-CRECB-1970-pt23/GPO-CRECB-1970-pt23-5/content-detail.html">Ervin warned darkly</a>, “never forgets.” As the Johnson administration unveiled plans to centralize government data in a single, centralized national database, New Jersey Congressman Cornelius Gallagher declared that it was just another grim step toward scientific thinking taking over modern life, “<a href="https://newspaperarchive.com/eureka-humboldt-times-sep-08-1966-p-47/">leaving as an end result a stack of computer cards where once were human beings</a>.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/thing-makers-tool-freaks-and-prototypers-how-the-whole-earth-catalogs-optimistic-message-reinvented-the-environmental-movement-in-1968-95915">zeitgeist of 1968</a> helps explain why Engelbart’s demo so quickly became a touchstone and inspiration for a <a href="http://www.dougengelbart.org/firsts/dougs-1968-demo.html#3">new, enduring definition of technological empowerment</a>. Here was a computer that didn’t override human intelligence or stomp out individuality, but instead could, as Engelbart put it, “augment human intellect.” </p>
<p>While Engelbart’s vision of how these tools might be used was rather conventionally corporate – a computer on every office desk and a mouse in every worker’s palm – his overarching notion of an individualized computer environment hit exactly the right note for the anti-Establishment technologists coming of age in 1968, who wanted to make <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3773600.html">technology personal and information free</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The second part of the ‘mother of all demos.’</span></figcaption>
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<p>Over the next decade, technologists from this new generation would turn what Engelbart called his “wild dream” into a mass-market reality – and profoundly transform Americans’ relationship to computer technology. </p>
<h2>Government involvement</h2>
<p>In the decade after the demo, the crisis of <a href="https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/primary-resources/watergate">Watergate</a> and revelations of <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB522-Church-Committee-Faced-White-House-Attempts-to-Curb-CIA-Probe/">CIA and FBI snooping</a> further seeded distrust in America’s political leadership and in the ability of large government bureaucracies to be responsible stewards of personal information. Economic uncertainty and an antiwar mood <a href="https://scienceprogress.org/2008/01/science-and-the-2009-budget/">slashed public spending</a> on high-tech research and development – the same money that once had paid for so many of those mainframe computers and for training engineers to program them. </p>
<p>Enabled by the miniaturizing technology of the <a href="http://www.computerhistory.org/visiblestorage/1960s-1980s/ics-microprocessors-memories/the-microprocessor/">microprocessor</a>, the size and price of computers <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/infographic-how-computing-power-has-changed-over-time-2017-11">plummeted</a>, turning them into affordable and soon indispensable tools for work and play. By the 1980s and 1990s, instead of being seen as machines made and controlled by government, computers had become <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=35897&st=Moscow+State+University&st1=">ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism</a>, hailed by business and political leaders alike as examples of what was possible when government got out of the way and let innovation bloom.</p>
<p>There lies the great irony in this pivotal turn in American high-tech history. For even though “the mother of all demos” provided inspiration for a personal, entrepreneurial, government-is-dangerous-and-small-is-beautiful computing era, Doug Engelbart’s audacious vision would never have made it to keyboard and mouse without government research funding in the first place.</p>
<p>Engelbart was keenly aware of this, flashing credits up on the screen at the presentation’s start listing those who funded his research team: the Defense Department’s Advanced Projects Research Agency, later known as DARPA; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; the U.S. Air Force. Only the public sector had the deep pockets, the patience and the tolerance for blue-sky ideas without any immediate commercial application.</p>
<p>Although government funding played a less visible role in the high-tech story after 1968, it continued to function as critical seed capital for next-generation ideas. Marc Andreessen and his fellow graduate students developed their groundbreaking web browser in a <a href="http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/enabling/mosaic">government-funded university laboratory</a>. DARPA and NASA money helped fund <a href="http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/">the graduate research project</a> that Sergey Brin and Larry Page would later commercialize as Google. Driverless car technology got a jump-start after a <a href="https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/-grand-challenge-for-autonomous-vehicles">government-sponsored competition</a>; so has nanotechnology, green tech and more. Government hasn’t gotten out of Silicon Valley’s way; it remained there all along, quietly funding the next generation of boundary-pushing technology.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The third part of the ‘mother of all demos.’</span></figcaption>
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<p>Today, public debate rages once again on Capitol Hill about computer-aided <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/us/politics/mark-zuckerberg-testimony.html">invasions of privacy</a>. Hollywood spins apocalyptic tales of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470752/">technology run amok</a>. Americans spend days staring into screens, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/magazine/facebook-google-privacy-data.html">tracked by the smartphones in our pockets</a>, hooked on <a href="https://www.recode.net/2018/6/25/17501224/instagram-facebook-snapchat-time-spent-growth-data">social media</a>. Technology companies are among the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-02/amazon-closes-on-apple-in-the-1-trillion-stakes">biggest and richest</a> in the world. It’s a long way from Engelbart’s humble grocery list.</p>
<p>But perhaps the current moment of high-tech angst can once again gain inspiration from the mother of all demos. Later in life, Engelbart described his life’s work as a quest to “<a href="http://archive.org/details/XD302_86ACM_Prese_AugKnowledgeWorkshopParts1and2&start=1">help humanity cope better with complexity and urgency</a>.” His solution was a computer that was remarkably different from the others of that era, one that was humane and personal, that augmented human capability rather than boxing it in. And he was able to bring this vision to life because government agencies funded his work. </p>
<p>Now it’s time for another mind-blowing demo of the possible future, one that moves beyond the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/technology/regulating-tech-companies.html">current adversarial moment</a> between big government and Big Tech. It could inspire people to enlist public and private resources and minds in crafting the next audacious vision for our digital future.</p>
<p><em>Our new podcast “<a href="https://heatandlightpod.com">Heat and Light</a>” features Prof. O'Mara discussing this story in depth.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heat-and-light/id1424521855?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=134&fit=clip" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oZWF0YW5kbGlnaHRwb2QuY29tL2ZlZWQucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=134&fit=clip" alt="" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=221807&refid=stpr"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236756/original/file-20180917-158222-1w998g0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=116&fit=clip" alt="Listen on Stitcher" width="116" height="34"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/heat-and-light-WYDE55"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=105&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="105" height="34"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/History-Podcasts/Heat-and-Light-p1149068/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=86&fit=clip" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="86" height="34"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101654/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Margaret O'Mara does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A 90-minute presentation in 1968 showed off the earliest desktop computer system. In the process it introduced the idea that technology could make individuals better – if government funded research.Margaret O'Mara, Professor of History, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1022912018-09-04T13:26:00Z2018-09-04T13:26:00ZHow a Beatles song about ‘revolution’ helped Nike become a billion dollar brand<p>Fifty years ago the Beatles released a single that sold over 8m copies – their highest selling 45rpm – Hey Jude. While Hey Jude made the greater impression, it was the B-side – Revolution – in which John Lennon addressed the <a href="https://theconversation.com/revolution-starts-on-campus-102243">global political upheaval of 1968</a> that has the more interesting story. Rare as it was for a pop song to address politics, the message in Revolution – which I outline in <a href="https://repeaterbooks.com/product/advertising-revolution-the-story-of-a-song-from-beatles-hit-to-nike-slogan/">my book</a> – attracted fierce resentment within the radical left before re-appearing in 1987 in one of the most seminal and <a href="https://vimeo.com/89811766">ground breaking advertisements ever made</a>.</p>
<p>Lennon wrote Revolution in India where the Beatles were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/09/indian-retreat-where-the-beatles-learned-to-meditate-is-opened-to-the-public">meditating with the Maharishi</a> while the Vietnam War and Chinese Cultural Revolution raged on. There was a major <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/march/17/newsid_4090000/4090886.stm">riot in London</a> and Paris was brought to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/may-1968-the-posters-that-inspired-a-movement-95619">brink of another revolution</a> in May of that year. </p>
<p>Upon their return to London, the Beatles recorded the song with Lennon lying down to sound serene. In one line he sings: “You say you want a revolution … but if you’re talking about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out.” And then, after a pause, he sings “in” (because he hadn’t made his mind up).</p>
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<p>The rest of the band argued that the slow bluesy number was insufficiently commercial and so a faster, rockier version with distorted guitars needed to be re-recorded. Lennon reluctantly agreed, despite worrying that the political message would be more difficult to understand.</p>
<p>The first version (Revolution No. 1) appeared on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/4b8c/">the White Album</a>, which was released later that year. The faster version, simply named Revolution, became the flipside to Hey Jude. A third version – Revolution No. 9 – was also included in the White Album. This was just a scramble of noise, static, and nonsensical phrases – though an early example of electronic mixing.</p>
<h2>‘A lamentable petty bourgeois cry of fear’</h2>
<p>Hey Jude was proclaimed as one of the Beatles’ <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/aug/21/how-hey-jude-became-our-favourite-beatles-song">best songs</a> by the pop media which largely ignored Lennon’s more political offering. Yet the radical underground media railed, with Ramparts, the American literary and politcal journal, declaring “Revolution preaches counter-revolution”. </p>
<p>The New Left Review called it a “lamentable petty bourgeois cry of fear”, while the Village Voice wrote: “It is puritanical to expect musicians, or anyone else, to hew the proper line. But it is reasonable to request that they do not go out of their way to oppose it.” The Berkeley Barb sneered “Revolution sounds like the hawk plank adopted in the Chicago convention of the Democratic Death Party” and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/mar/15/popandrock.pressandpublishing">Black Dwarf dismissed the song</a> as “no more revolutionary than Mrs. Dale’s Diary”.</p>
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<p>Then in 1987 the song reappeared when the small advertising agency, <a href="http://wklondon.com/">Wieden+Kennedy</a>, selected it for a Nike advert. It was the first major television advert Nike ever made. Wieden+Kennedy had previously attracted industry attention by featuring Miles Davis and Lou Reed in their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK6y9_0gsEg">adverts for Honda scooters</a> and were becoming the agency that could deliver coups. </p>
<p>They also managed to <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-sports/story-behind-nikes-controversial-1987-revolution-commercial-192421/">secure Yoko Ono’s support</a>. She explained that she didn’t “want to see John deified” nor for “John’s songs to be part of a cult of glorified martyrdom”. Instead she wanted his songs to be enjoyed by a “new generation” who would “make it part of their lives instead of a relic of the distant past”. So Revolution was licensed for a media campaign that cost between US$7m and US$10m.</p>
<p>The advert consisted of a jerky black and white, hand-held camera film that showed Nike athletes and ordinary people participating in a variety of sports at various levels of seriousness. It became a massive success. Nike sales doubled in two years and the advert’s theme of empowerment and transcendence with a personal philosophy of everyday life formed the basis of Nike’s branding for the following years and allowed them to dominate the newly emerging “sign economy” of brand culture (how brands started to gain value at a more cultural and aesthetic level). </p>
<p>By 1991, Nike held 29% of the global athletic shoe market and its sales had exceeded US$3 billion.</p>
<h2>Selling out?</h2>
<p>Yet the ad attracted controversy. Time magazine wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mark David Chapman killed him. But it took a couple of record execs, one sneaker company and a soul brother to turn him into a jingle writer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Chicago Tribune described the advert as “when rock idealism met cold-eyed greed” and the New Republic said: “The song had a meaning that Nike is destroying.” </p>
<p>Revolution, it seems, had apparently morphed from a “petty bourgeois cry of fear” into a sacred text, twisted and spoiled by a sneaker company. The most significant response was the US$15m lawsuit <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/05/arts/nike-calls-beatles-suit-groundless.html">filed by Apple Records</a> in an attempt to halt the commercial. Apple claimed that the advert used the Beatles “persona and good will” without permission. Reportedly, the action was settled out of court after the campaign had run its course, with Apple, EMI and Capitol agreeing that no Beatles version would ever be used again to sell products – truly the Nike Revolution was a one off.</p>
<p>Yet the critical attention generated by the advert appears to have had long term consequences for Nike. The <a href="https://business.nmsu.edu/%7Edboje/nikerpts.html">negative press coverage</a> on the brand accumulated, focusing on allegations of a “patriarchal culture” and <a href="https://qz.com/1042298/nike-is-facing-a-new-wave-of-anti-sweatshop-protests/">labour abuses</a>. The Nike Revolution advert did not just launch Nike into the stratosphere of brands. It singled it out for critical attention.</p>
<p>Yet it also helped normalise the everyday wearing of sports shoes.
Thirty years later, the everyday wearing of shoes designed for professional athletes is a normal part of consumer culture, demonstrating how society can live in the legacy of extraordinary marketing campaigns. Indeed, the possibility that so many people are wearing these shoes because Lennon, meditating in Rishikesh, decided to address the politics of 1968, is a reminder that the collision of culture and politics in the medium of advertising can often create the most unpredictable outcomes imaginable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102291/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Bradshaw is co-author with Linda Scott of Advertising Revolution: The Story of a Song From Beatles Hit to Nike Jingle, published by Repeater.</span></em></p>John Lennon’s Revolution was panned by the radical media as a ‘petty bourgeois cry of fear’ in 1968. Then, in 1987 it was claimed by Nike to be the controversial soundtrack of its most seminal advert.Alan Bradshaw, Professor of Marketing, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1017212018-09-03T20:57:57Z2018-09-03T20:57:57ZTV’s first interracial kiss launched a lifelong career in activism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233938/original/file-20180828-86141-n2d8cy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nervous about how southern television viewers would react, NBC executives closely monitored the filming of the kiss between Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.publicdomainfiles.com/show_file.php?id=13498604414055">U.S. Air Force</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Nov. 22, 1968, an episode of “Star Trek” titled “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708443/">Plato’s Stepchildren</a>” broadcast the first interracial kiss on American television. </p>
<p>The episode’s plot is bizarre: Aliens who worship the Greek philosopher Plato use telekinetic powers to force the Enterprise crew to sing, dance and kiss. At one point, the aliens compel Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) to embrace. Each character tries to resist, but eventually Kirk tilts Uhura back and the two kiss as the aliens lasciviously look on. </p>
<p>The smooch is not a romantic one. But in 1968 to show a black woman kissing a white man was a daring move.</p>
<p>The episode aired just one year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision struck down state laws against interracial marriage. At the time, Gallup polls showed that <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-whites.aspx">fewer than 20 percent of Americans approved of such relationships</a>. </p>
<p>As a historian of civil rights and media, I’ve been fascinated by the woman at the center of this landmark television moment. Casting Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura created possibilities for more creative and socially relevant <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&view_op=list_works&authuser=2&gmla=AJsN-F5Tq3S07JaTym4ggipQ2ywifKwXWexcK4OKzMurZJvHMSp4Ay3a-7D2FrPLHlppsoEw7gbBOO8SRsu2uxvQ50GkEDmajw&user=tMLTqzcAAAAJ">“Star Trek” storylines.</a></p>
<iframe src="https://tunein.com/embed/player/t123871983" style="width:100%;height:100px;" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p><strong>Hear Prof. Delmont discuss this topic and how it has influenced his life’s studies on our <a href="https://heatandlightpod.com">Heat and Light podcast</a></strong></p>
<p>But just as significant is Nichols’s off-screen activism. She leveraged her role on “Star Trek” to become a recruiter for NASA, where she pushed for change in the space program. Her career arc shows how diverse casting on the screen can have a profound impact in the real world, too.</p>
<h2>‘A triumph of modern-day TV’</h2>
<p>In 1966, “Star Trek” creator Gene Rodenberry decided to cast Nichelle Nichols to play Lieutenant Uhura, a translator and communications officer from the United States of Africa. In doing so, he made Nichols the first African-American woman to have a continuing co-starring role on television.</p>
<p>The African-American press was quick to heap praise on Nichols’s pioneering role. </p>
<p>The Norfolk Journal and Guide hoped that it would “broaden her race’s foothold on the tube.” </p>
<p>The magazine Ebony featured Nichols <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6iZkedjSfZoC&lpg=PA70&vq=%2522Nichelle%2520Nichols%2522&dq=%2522Nichelle%20Nichols%2522&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false">on its January 1967 cover</a> and described Uhura as “the first Negro astronaut, a triumph of modern-day TV over modern-day NASA.”</p>
<p>Yet the famous kiss between Uhura and Kirk almost never happened.</p>
<p>After the first season of “Star Trek” concluded in 1967, Nichols considered quitting after being offered a role on Broadway. She had started her career as a singer in New York and always dreamed of returning to the Big Apple. </p>
<p>But at a NAACP fundraiser in Los Angeles, she ran into Martin Luther King Jr.</p>
<p>Nichols would later recount their interaction. </p>
<p>“You must not leave,” <a href="https://youtu.be/pSq_UIuxba8">King told her</a>. “You have opened a door that must not be allowed to close…you changed the face of television forever…For the first time, the world sees us as we should be seen, as equals, as intelligent people.” </p>
<p>King went on to say that he and his family were fans of the show; <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/29/gene-roddenberry-son-star-trek_n_1119119.html">she was</a> a “hero” to his children.</p>
<p>With King’s encouragement, Nichols stayed on “Star Trek” for the original series’ full three-year run. </p>
<p>Nichols’ controversial kiss took place at the end of the third season. Nichols <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hKKkGhEDoU">recalled</a> that NBC executives closely monitored the filming because they were nervous about how Southern television stations and viewers would react.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gRfRXcP1Gsg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Nichelle Nichols recounts the reaction to filming the first interracial kiss on television.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After the episode aired, the network did receive an outpouring of letters from viewers – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRfRXcP1Gsg">and the majority were positive</a>. </p>
<p>In 1982, Nichols would tell the Baltimore Afro-American that she was amused by the amount of attention the kiss generated, especially because her own heritage was “a blend of races that includes Egyptian, Ethiopian, Moor, Spanish, Welsh, Cherokee Indian and a ‘blond blue-eyed ancestor or two.’”</p>
<h2>Space crusader</h2>
<p>But Nichols’s legacy would be defined by far more than a kiss.</p>
<p>After NBC canceled Star Trek in 1969, Nichols took minor acting roles on two television series, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053510/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Insight</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066645/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">The D.A.</a>” She would also play a madame in the 1974 blaxploitation film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072325/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Truck Turner</a>.” </p>
<p>She also started to dabble in activism and education. In 1975, Nichols established Women in Motion, Inc. and won several government contracts to produce educational programs related to space and science. By 1977, she had been appointed to the board of directors of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Space_Institute">National Space Institute</a>, a civil space advocacy organization.</p>
<p>That year she gave a speech at the institute’s annual meeting, “New Opportunities for the Humanization of Space, or Space: What’s in it for Me?” In it, she critiqued the lack of women and minorities in the astronaut corps, <a href="https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/30908/201302SH.pdf">challenging NASA</a> to “come down from your ivory tower of intellectual pursuit, because the next Einstein might have a Black face – and she’s female.”</p>
<p>Several of NASA’s top administrators were in the audience. They invited her to lead an astronaut recruitment program for the new space shuttle program. Soon, she packed her bags and began traveling the country, visiting high schools and colleges, speaking with professional organizations and legislators, and appearing on national television programs such as “Good Morning America.”</p>
<p>“The aim was to find qualified people among women and minorities, then to convince them that the opportunity was real and that it also was a duty, because this was historic,” Nichols told the Baltimore Afro-American in 1979. “I really had this sense of purpose about it myself.” </p>
<p>In her 1994 autobiography, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=AbtNPgAACAAJ&dq=Beyond+Uhura&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiatNz-xpDdAhXCTN8KHdQ2AdwQ6AEIJzAA">Beyond Uhura</a>,” Nichols recalled that in the seven months before the recruitment program began, “NASA had received only 1,600 applications, including fewer than 100 from women and 35 from minority candidates.” But by the end of June 1977, “just four months after we assumed our task, 8,400 applications were in, including 1,649 from women (a 15-fold increase) and an astounding 1,000 from minorities.” </p>
<p>Nichols’s campaign recruited several trailblazing astronauts, including Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, Guion Bluford, the first African-American in space, and Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233939/original/file-20180828-86153-6dakin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233939/original/file-20180828-86153-6dakin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233939/original/file-20180828-86153-6dakin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233939/original/file-20180828-86153-6dakin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233939/original/file-20180828-86153-6dakin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233939/original/file-20180828-86153-6dakin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233939/original/file-20180828-86153-6dakin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nichelle Nichols speaks after the Space Shuttle Endeavour landed at Los Angeles International Airport Friday in September 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Space-Shuttle-Last-Stop/f4c443def09a428c91ddcc7d6e228dde/1/0">AP Photo/Reed Saxon</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Relentless advocacy for inclusion</h2>
<p>Her advocacy for inclusion and diversity wasn’t limited to the space program.</p>
<p>As one of the first black women in a major television role, Nichols understood the importance of opening doors for minorities and women in entertainment. </p>
<p>Nichols continued to push for African-Americans to have more power in film and television. </p>
<p>“Until we Blacks and minorities become not only the producers, writers and directors, but the buyers and distributors, we’re not going to change anything,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7dgDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA150&ots=wbTFv3IH98&dq=nichelle%20nichols%20ebony%201985%20billy%20dee%20williams&pg=PA154#v=onepage&q=nichelle%20nichols%20ebony%201985%20billy%20dee%20williams&f=false">she told Ebony in 1985</a>. “Until we become industry, until we control media or at least have enough say, we will always be the chauffeurs and tap dancers.” </p>
<p>It’s an issue that, unfortunately, remains relevant today. In February of this year, UCLA’s <a href="http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/hollywood-diversity-report-2018-ucla">annual Hollywood Diversity Report</a> found that women and people of color continue to be underrepresented as directors and in studio board rooms. It concluded that “Hollywood studios are leaving money on the table by not developing films and TV shows with more diverse casts.”</p>
<p>Fifty years ago, Nichols’s kiss may have broken an important cultural barrier. But as Nichols well knows, the quest to secure opportunities for women and minorities persists to this day – an effort that requires relentless pressure.</p>
<p><em>Our new podcast “<a href="https://heatandlightpod.com">Heat and Light</a>” features Prof. Delmont discussing this story in depth.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heat-and-light/id1424521855?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=134&fit=clip" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oZWF0YW5kbGlnaHRwb2QuY29tL2ZlZWQucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=134&fit=clip" alt="" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=221807&refid=stpr"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236756/original/file-20180917-158222-1w998g0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=116&fit=clip" alt="Listen on Stitcher" width="116" height="34"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/heat-and-light-WYDE55"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=105&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="105" height="34"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/History-Podcasts/Heat-and-Light-p1149068/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=86&fit=clip" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="86" height="34"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Delmont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The career arc of Nichelle Nichols – the first black woman to have a continuing co-starring role on TV – shows how diverse casting can have as much of an impact off the screen as it does on it.Matthew Delmont, Professor of History, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1012992018-08-27T20:40:20Z2018-08-27T20:40:20ZRed-state politics in and out of the college classroom<p>For two decades, I have taught U.S. women’s and gender history at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, a blue town in a blue state, <a href="https://cola.siu.edu/history/faculty-and-staff/faculty/zaretsky.php">marooned in an ocean of red</a>. </p>
<p>Bordered by Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta and the Ozarks, Southern Illinois is surrounded by the country’s poorest rural regions.</p>
<p>Some of my students arrive from white farming communities and are the first in their families to attend college. They grow up on church, military, patriotism and traditional family, and they come from a world different from mine. I grew up in 1970s San Francisco, and my parents were leftists.</p>
<p>As I prepared to teach about abortion and gay rights for the first time in 2003, I approached the classroom with trepidation. I feared that our discussions would mirror the country’s culture wars and lead to tension among students. </p>
<p>One joy of teaching is when students surprise you, and I soon discovered that my fears had been unwarranted. </p>
<h2>Students surprise; teacher learns</h2>
<p>Classroom discussions of “hot button” issues turned out to be not so hot after all. </p>
<p>Sure, a student might declare that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but her declaration had no fight behind it. Most students simply did not get worked up about gay rights. By the early 2000s, almost all of them had a relative who had come out. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where author Zaretsky teaches.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Southern Illinois University</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Regardless of what they might have been told in church, they asserted, who were they to stand in the way of the happiness of an uncle or a cousin? </p>
<p>Three decades after gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk had urged his brothers and sisters to come out, this tactic had borne fruit everywhere, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300222616/harvey-milk">including the “heartland”</a> where I teach.</p>
<p>Thus, well before gay marriage became legal, I was telling friends back home that if my students were any indication, the question was not whether, but when.</p>
<p>It turned out that the issue that most angered my students was the Vietnam War. This was odd, I thought at first, because the conflict had ended years before they had been born. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fear-of-a-non-nuclear-family-102245">Fear of a Non-Nuclear Family</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But in one class, an older student who was the daughter of a Vietnam veteran recounted a story that had been passed down in her family since the early 1970s: Upon his return from overseas, her father had been spat on by anti-war activists. </p>
<p>Others chimed in that they had heard similar stories. These stories were mythical, not because such incidents had never occurred, but rather because opponents of the anti-war movement had overstated their frequency and intensity in order to brand wartime opposition as unpatriotic. When I gently suggested this was the case, <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9780814751473/">as one scholar has argued</a>, my students swung back, insisting that the stories were true.</p>
<p>It quickly became clear to me that these stories felt true to my students because they resonated with their own experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. </p>
<p>Those military interventions were not abstractions to them. Some were veterans themselves, a few suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, virtually all of them knew someone in the service and many came from military families. </p>
<p>The Vietnam stories struck a chord because they presented a portrait that my students found painfully familiar: loyal Americans who had served their country but who felt forgotten by U.S. institutions and the broader political culture.</p>
<h2>Developing a theory</h2>
<p>This classroom episode surprised me, but it shouldn’t have. </p>
<p>My students confirmed what I had discovered through my own research on the <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807857977/no-direction-home/">recent history of conservatism</a>, which revealed a deep sense of betrayal among Americans who had sacrificed their bodies on behalf of the U.S. military and felt that they had received little recognition in return. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prisoner of war Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm is greeted by his family as he returns home from Vietnam in 1973. Zaretsky’s students believed veterans were treated badly by the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP/Sal Veder</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scholars argue that in the early 1970s the “culture wars” erupted <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo20063403.html">and divided the country</a>. And there is no question that both conservative and liberal actors mobilized around issues like <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2006/05/23/is-there-a-culture-war/">abortion and gay rights</a>.</p>
<p>But my research pointed to something else that fueled the nation’s rightward march: the rise of an aggrieved nationalism rooted in a sense of bodily injury.</p>
<p>I first detected this nationalism when I studied the families of American POWs and MIAs in Southeast Asia, many of whom believed that their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807857977/no-direction-home/">had been left behind twice</a> — first by a U.S. government that had failed to bring them home, and then by a libertine culture that had turned against the war. </p>
<p>These were patriotic families who felt let down by their country.</p>
<p>Years later, I encountered something similar when I researched U.S. veterans who had sustained radiation injuries during their <a href="http://natashazaretskyonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/RadiationSufferingPatrioticBodyPolitics.pdf">World War II-era service</a> and who later became ill with cancer. </p>
<p>By the late 1970s, these “atomic veterans” and their relatives were leveling the same charge. They were forgotten men and women who had served their country, but who had been betrayed by the government, which refused to acknowledge that it had <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/radiation-nation/9780231179812">endangered its citizens</a>.</p>
<p>The 1970s gave rise to the culture wars, no question. But it also gave rise to the accusation that the most loyal Americans had suffered through sickness, injury and premature death, and had been forgotten and let down. </p>
<p>This claim fueled a rising hostility toward big government, which championed liberal reform on behalf of racial and sexual minorities ostensibly at the expense of white, <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809026746">hard-working, patriotic Americans</a>.</p>
<h2>Empathy in the classroom</h2>
<p>When my students became so angry toward Vietnam era anti-war activists, I was taken aback. I had to go beneath the surface of our debate and ask why this issue had stirred them. </p>
<p>Yes, the debate was about history, and I appealed to historical accuracy in order to challenge their assumptions about the past. That is, after all, my job. </p>
<p>But swimming just beneath the surface were their own experiences as young people who come from economically struggling rural communities whose members shoulder the burdens of U.S. militarism.</p>
<p>Simply telling them that they had gotten the history “wrong” would not have sufficed. </p>
<p>Instead, I had to pair my commitment to historical truth with a no-less-powerful commitment to empathy — an attempt to make sense of their anger historically and hopefully provide them with the tools to do the same.</p>
<p>My friends and relatives back home sometimes thank me for being out here in the heartland, “winning hearts and minds.” </p>
<p>But is that even my role?</p>
<p>Certainly, my students have changed my worldview, but how much have I changed theirs? That question is hard to answer, because my interactions with students are brief. They spend just over 37 hours with me over the course of one semester. That is not a lot of time. </p>
<p>But during those hours, we break away from the gerrymandered world of social media and encounter one another face to face. </p>
<p>Those encounters can be difficult and frustrating. Yet they have also yielded moments when the divisions and suspicions that dominate our political landscape fall away. </p>
<p>I am not here to win the hearts and minds of my students, but I like to imagine that I have opened some of them. What I know for sure is that they have opened mine. </p>
<p><em>Our new podcast “<a href="https://heatandlightpod.com">Heat and Light</a>” features Prof. Zaretsky discussing conservative reaction to the 1960s in depth.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heat-and-light/id1424521855?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oZWF0YW5kbGlnaHRwb2QuY29tL2ZlZWQucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=221807&refid=stpr"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="116" height="34"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/heat-and-light-WYDE55"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="105" height="34"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/History-Podcasts/Heat-and-Light-p1149068/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="86" height="34"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101299/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasha Zaretsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar raised by leftist San Francisco parents in the 1970s ends up teaching in the heartland, where her students represent a very different kind of politics. What she learns from them is profound.Natasha Zaretsky, Associate Professor of History, Southern Illinois UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1022432018-08-27T20:20:08Z2018-08-27T20:20:08ZRevolution Starts on Campus<p>The radical student takeover of Columbia University in 1968 sparked a worldwide student protest movement: From Eastern Europe to South America, students rose up against authoritarian governments, racial inequality and, most passionately, against the war in Vietnam. Host Phillip Martin talks to African-American studies professor Stefan Bradley about how the Columbia uprising inspired similar events at the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 28, 1968, and to historian Michael Kazin, who was arrested for his activism at that DNC. </p>
<p>Both scholars were student organizers: Kazin orchestrated a takeover of Harvard University in the ‘60s, and Bradley combated racial discrimination at Gonzaga University. Bradley was also on the ground in Ferguson, Missouri, among the young people protesting the killing of Michael Brown. He reflects on what current movements can learn from the protests of 1968.</p>
<p>Read more in this accompanying article from Stefan M. Bradley: <a href="https://theconversation.com/1968-protests-at-columbia-university-called-attention-to-gym-crow-and-got-worldwide-attention-102093">1968 protests at Columbia University called attention to ‘Gym Crow’ and got worldwide attention</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heat-and-light/id1424521855?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> </p>
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<p><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=221807&refid=stpr"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="300" height="88"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/heat-and-light-WYDE55"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="300" height="97"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/History-Podcasts/Heat-and-Light-p1149068/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="318" height="125"></a></p>
<p>Also: <a href="https://heatandlightpod.com/feed.rss">RSS Feed</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102243/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Fifty years ago, students rose up against authoritarian governments, racial inequality and, most passionately, the war in Vietnam. Two historians reflect on those momentous days in 1968 – and discuss what current movements learn from them.Phillip Martin, Podcast hostLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1020932018-08-27T20:17:57Z2018-08-27T20:17:57Z1968 protests at Columbia University called attention to ‘Gym Crow’ and got worldwide attention<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233695/original/file-20180827-75972-19v0afj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black power militant H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael (right) appeared at a sit-in protest at Columbia University in New York City on April 26, 1968.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-New-York-United-/1aea42ff04f2da11af9f0014c2589dfb/287/0">AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>“If they build the first story, blow it up. If they sneak back at night and build three stories, burn it down. And if they get nine stories built, it’s yours. Take it over, and maybe we’ll let them in on the weekends.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is what <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/the-story-of-sncc/">Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee</a> and Black Panther Party affiliate <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/h-rap-brown/">H. Rap Brown</a> told a crowd of Harlem residents at a community rally in February 1967.</p>
<p>They were there to protest Columbia University’s construction of a gymnasium in Morningside Park, the only land separating the Ivy League university from the historic black working-class neighborhood. The gym, along with the discovery that Columbia was affiliated with the <a href="https://www.ida.org/">Institute for Defense Analysis</a> – a national consortium of flagship universities and research organizations that provided strategy and weapons research to the U.S. Department of Defense – stirred students to protest for more decision-making power at their elite university. </p>
<p>When considering the key events of 1968, such as the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/tet-offensive">Tet Offensive</a>, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/01/01/1968s-chaos-the-assassinations-riots-and-protests-that-defined-our-world/?utm_term=.3eae1a9710a2">assassinations of national leaders</a>, demonstrations at the <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/protests-at-democratic-national-convention-in-chicago">Democratic National Convention</a> and the <a href="http://time.com/3880999/black-power-salute-tommie-smith-and-john-carlos-at-the-1968-olympics/">Olympics</a>, as well international events concerning democracy, the Columbia uprisings merit attention.</p>
<h2>Issues converge on campus</h2>
<p>As I detail in my book – <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/69erx5xt9780252034527.html">“Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s”</a> – all the issues of the 1960s and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Left">New Left</a> collided on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia. Students contended with the war in Vietnam, institutional racism, the generational divide, sexism, environmentalism and urban renewal – all while trying to find dates and attend classes.</p>
<p>Everything came to a head on April 23, 1968 – just weeks after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. That was when members of the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society hosted a <a href="http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/?a=d&d=cs19680424-01&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------">rally</a> on campus to decry the war – and, what many considered the racist gym in Morningside Park. Members of the Students’ Afro-American Society, or SAS, and Columbia varsity athletes – known as jocks – were in attendance as well. SAS followers showed up to resume an earlier fight they had with the jocks who supported the construction of the gymnasium.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/revolution-starts-on-campus-102243">Revolution Starts on Campus</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Some students had been working with Harlem community groups. They saw the gym as a symbol of the university’s “power” over a defenseless and poverty-stricken black neighborhood. They joined local politicians who opposed the gym for a myriad of reasons, including its concrete footprint in a green park and the inability of the community to have access to the entire structure once built.</p>
<h2>Troubled relations</h2>
<p>The situation was, of course, complex. Columbia had long been a contentious neighbor to Harlem and Morningside Heights. The campus gym was decrepit and prevented the university from competing with its Ivy peers effectively in terms of facilities and space. Regarding the park, Columbia had constructed softball fields that initially community members could use. By 1968, however, only campus affiliates could access the fields. Then, white faculty members had been mugged in the park.</p>
<p>The university, seeking to expand in the postwar period, purchased US$280 million of land, mortgages and residential buildings in Harlem and Morningside Heights. That resulted in the <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/69erx5xt9780252034527.html">eviction of nearly 10,000 residents</a> in a decade, 85 percent of whom were black or Puerto Rican.</p>
<p>Columbia acted in coordination with Morningside Heights, Inc., a confederacy of educational and religious institutions in the neighborhood that also sought to “renew” the area to serve their mostly white patrons. David Rockefeller, grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, acted as MHI’s first president. Columbia was the lead institution.</p>
<p>Despite being close to a black neighborhood, the university admitted few black students and employed a handful of black instructors. For instance, as I report in my book, in the 1964-1965 school year, there were only 35 black students out of 2,500 students enrolled in Columbia’s College of Arts and Sciences, and just one tenured black professor. By spring 1968, there were more than 150 black students enrolled. </p>
<p>On April 23, protesting students attempted to take over the administration building but were repelled by campus security. Then, they walked to the gym construction site where they tore down fencing and physically confronted police. From the park, they returned to campus where they finally succeeded in taking over a classroom building, Hamilton Hall. In doing so, they surrounded the dean of the college, Henry Coleman, who chose to stay in his office with his staff. To “protect” Coleman, <a href="http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/?a=d&d=cs19680424-01.2.2&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------">several jocks stood guard</a> outside his door.</p>
<h2>Clashes with police</h2>
<p>What started as a racially integrated demonstration of students took a turn in the late night when H. Rap Brown and several community activists showed up at the invitation of the Students’ Afro-American Society. The student group, Brown and the community activists agreed that black people solely should occupy Hamilton Hall and that white activists should commandeer other buildings. The white demonstrators accommodated, leaving Hamilton and taking over four other buildings. That forced Columbia officials to contend with not just a student protest but a black action on campus at that height of Black Power Movement. Incidentally, the community activists removed and replaced the jocks as sentries of the dean’s office.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233697/original/file-20180827-75996-1t09zhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233697/original/file-20180827-75996-1t09zhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233697/original/file-20180827-75996-1t09zhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233697/original/file-20180827-75996-1t09zhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233697/original/file-20180827-75996-1t09zhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233697/original/file-20180827-75996-1t09zhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233697/original/file-20180827-75996-1t09zhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Participants of a student sit-in assist each other in climbing up into the offices of Columbia University President Grayson Kirk on April 24, 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-New-York-United-/e464d889dde6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/297/0">AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To the ire of many white university administrators of the period, Stokely Carmichael of SNCC and the Black Panthers fame showed up to explain – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1968/04/27/archives/facultys-effort-fails-to-resolve-columbia-dispute-protest-leader.html">through the press</a> – that the university deal either with the student activists on campus or militants coming from Harlem. This insinuated the tone of the demonstrations would change drastically. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated less than three weeks before. From offices in Morningside Heights, Columbia administrators had watched Harlem burn as residents mourned and reacted to the black leader’s death. The only thing that separated the elite white institution from angry black rebels was the park in which the university was building a gymnasium <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/69erx5xt9780252034527.html">against the will of many community members</a>.</p>
<p>In consultation with New York Mayor John Lindsay, Columbia administrators chose to end the demonstrations by calling 1,000 New York police officers to clear the five occupied campus buildings on April 30. <a href="http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/?a=d&d=cs19680430-01&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------">Chaos and brutality prevailed</a>. As the NAACP and other Harlem community organizations stood watch, black students vacated Hamilton, which SAS had renamed Malcolm X Hall, and were arrested peacefully. In the building that national Students for a Democratic Society leader and <a href="http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antivietnamwar/exhibits/show/exhibit/origins-of-students-for-a-demo/port_huron_statement">Port Huron Statement</a> author Tom Hayden occupied, police and demonstrators collided physically. One of the most iconic documents of the postwar period, the 1962 Port Huron Statement outlined the need for young people to be in the vanguard of the movement to eradicate racism and grind the military-industrial complex to a halt; it centered the notion of participatory democracy, which called for greater inclusion of the citizenry in decision-making. In other buildings, students found themselves on the hurt end of police batons when they resisted arrest.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233699/original/file-20180827-75978-mpc9p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233699/original/file-20180827-75978-mpc9p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233699/original/file-20180827-75978-mpc9p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233699/original/file-20180827-75978-mpc9p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233699/original/file-20180827-75978-mpc9p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233699/original/file-20180827-75978-mpc9p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233699/original/file-20180827-75978-mpc9p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police rush toward student protesters outside Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library on April 30, 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Columbia-Protests-Anniversary/76748e36da3c4dac84fd27e87105c29f/9/0">AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Worldwide attention</h2>
<p>In opening the door to violence, the university turned what was a local matter into an <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/the-students-behind-the-1968-columbia-uprising">international story</a> and radicalized moderate students and neighborhood residents. Young radicals abroad learned of “Gym Crow” and university-sponsored defense research. In solidarity, they supported the Columbia student activists’ causes and chanted “two, three, many Columbias” – a refrain that gained popularity among American student protesters.</p>
<p>After the demonstrations in April, ensuing violent demonstrations in May, and a <a href="http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/?a=d&d=cs19680501-01&e=23-04-1968-30-06-1968--en-20--1--txt-txIN-Strike------">six-week student strike</a>, the university did not build the gym in the park and <a href="http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/?a=d&d=cs19680920-01.2.11&srpos=8&e=23-04-1968-30-12-1968--en-20--1--txt-txIN-IDA------">renounced its membership</a> in the Institute for Defense Analysis.</p>
<p>In my view, elements of the 1968 Columbia rebellion are inspiring and instructional for today’s students, protesters and community residents. As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/10/atlanta-super-gentrification-eminent-domain">gentrification threatens</a> the homes of poor black people in urban areas today, activists should recall that 50 years earlier young people believed they could cut their university’s ties to war research and prevent a prestigious white American institution from expanding into black spaces at the same time. They succeeded.</p>
<p><em>Our new podcast “<a href="https://heatandlightpod.com">Heat and Light</a>” features Prof. Bradley and Columbia University’s Michael Kazin discussing this issue in depth.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heat-and-light/id1424521855?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oZWF0YW5kbGlnaHRwb2QuY29tL2ZlZWQucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=221807&refid=stpr"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="116" height="34"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/heat-and-light-WYDE55"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="105" height="34"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/History-Podcasts/Heat-and-Light-p1149068/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="86" height="34"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102093/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stefan M. Bradley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 1968 protests at Columbia University led the institution to abandon a gym project that residents considered racist and cut off its defense work – and generated worldwide attention in the process.Stefan M. Bradley, Chair, Department of African American Studies, Loyola Marymount UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1007372018-08-02T20:24:54Z2018-08-02T20:24:54ZFriday essay: the ‘great Australian silence’ 50 years on<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230337/original/file-20180802-136652-ozcrpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail from Julie Shiels' 1954 poster White on black: The annihilation of Aboriginal people and their culture cannot be separated from the destruction of nature.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do;jsessionid=FAB4E763C4774179D87C1E946AE8F017?tabs=detailsTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=SLV_VOYAGER1786541&indx=16&recIds=SLV_VOYAGER1786541&recIdxs=15&elementId=15&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&query=any%2Ccontains%2Caboriginal+people&search_scope=Pictures&dscnt=0&vl(1UIStartWith0)=contains&scp.scps=scope%3A%28PICS%29&onCampus=false&vl(10247183UI0)=any&vid=MAIN&institution=SLVPRIMO&bulkSize=20&tab=default_tab&vl(freeText0)=aboriginal%20people&fromLogin=true&group=ALL&dstmp=1533170792328">State Library of Victoria</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s 50 years since the anthropologist <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stanner-william-edward-bill-15541">W.E.H. Stanner</a> gave the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/past-boyer-lectures/4998888">1968 Boyer Lectures</a> — a watershed moment for Australian history. Stanner argued that Australia’s sense of its past, its very collective memory, had been built on a state of forgetting, which couldn’t “be explained by absent-mindedness”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is a structural matter, a view from a window which has been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the landscape. What may well have begun as a simple forgetting of other possible views turned under habit and over time into something like a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His lectures profoundly influenced historians partly because of the image he captured: for a practice based on documentation, archiving and storytelling, silence is a compelling idea. And a whole-scale silence — a “cult of forgetfulness”, no less — indicated a bold re-imagining of a national historiography on Stanner’s part.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The print version of Stanner’s lectures.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Stanner insisted, this sort of silence was no “absent-mindedness”: the occlusion of Aboriginal people from Australian history wasn’t inevitable.</p>
<p>In the wake of his lectures, influential Australian historians conceived of their own historical awakening in these same terms. In an autobiographical essay, historian <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/how-empire-shaped-us-9781474222983/">Marilyn Lake</a> described the prevailing historical view in her small rural town: “Growing up in the former colony of Tasmania we did our fair share of forgetting too.” And in his evocative memoir, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/why-werent-we-told-9780140278422">Why Weren’t We Told?</a>, Henry Reynolds famously pondered that shift away from silence as people endeavoured to write in Indigenous perspectives from the 1970s onwards. </p>
<p>It’s a common refrain. I remember my dad describing how he also “hadn’t been told” about Australia’s Aboriginal history when Reynolds’s book came out. And a colleague and friend recently recounted visiting Myall Creek as part of a Sunday school picnic in the 1980s: no-one mentioned its dark history as the site of an infamous Aboriginal massacre in 1838.</p>
<p>Yet the move from “great Australian silence” to historical “truth-telling” isn’t quite as clear-cut as Stanner’s description might suggest. “Too often it is taken to imply a kind of historiographical periodisation where there was no Aboriginal history before Stanner’s own lecture and an end to the silence after it,” writes <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/publications/products/appreciation-difference-weh-stanner-and-aboriginal-australia/paperback">Ann Curthoys</a>. Yet that doesn’t capture the whole picture: “there is neither complete silence before 1968, nor was it completely ended afterwards”.</p>
<p>While we now have important interventions into Aboriginal history that amplify Australia’s uncomfortable past, such as Lyndall Ryan’s <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php">massacre map</a> and the <a href="https://www.referendumcouncil.org.au/sites/default/files/2017-05/Uluru_Statement_From_The_Heart_0.PDF">Uluru Statement from the Heart</a>, those reverberations continue to cause anxiety. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dancers from Mutitjulu at the opening ceremony for the National Indigenous Constitutional Convention near Uluru on May 23, 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lucy Hughes Jones/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Statement from the Heart called for a “truth-telling about our history” but still <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/26/a-year-on-the-key-goal-of-uluru-statement-remains-elusive">awaits bipartisan support</a>. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/frontier-massacres-map-lists-250-sites/news-story/3ee10c7017a859584690bcbd45279e36#story-comments">online commentary</a> in response to the release of Ryan’s massacre database shows the persistence of historical refusal in Australia. </p>
<h2>‘Black crows’</h2>
<p>The “great Australian silence” is also historically a little more complex. I’m writing a history of history-making in Australia and have been struck by the detailed interest in Aboriginal life as well as the often graphic accounts of frontier violence in works from the early and mid-19th century. For want of colonial history “texts”, I’ve also been reading travelogues and emigrant’s guides. While these books and pamphlets are largely observational, they also frequently present historical narratives and interpretation.</p>
<p>Many of them didn’t hold back in their tales from the colonial frontier, cataloguing extensive episodes of violent conflict between Aboriginal people and colonialists.</p>
<p>Have a look at this description of the 1838 Myall Creek massacre from Godfrey Charles Mundy in his travelogue, <a href="http://purl.library.usyd.edu.au/setis/id/munoura">Our Australian Antipodes</a>, published in 1852:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… they captured
the whole of them, with the exception of a child or two; and having bound them together with thongs, fired into the mass until the entire tribe, 27 in number, were killed or mortally wounded. The white savages then chopped in pieces their victims, and threw them, some yet living, on a large fire; a detachment of the stockmen remaining for several days on the spot to complete the destruction of the bodies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is graphic historical writing.</p>
<p>The horror of Mundy’s Myall Creek account is paradoxically eclipsed by the chilling official silence he observes after most attacks: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Reprisals [against Aboriginal people] are undertaken on a large scale – a scale that either never reaches the ears of the Government, which is bound to protect alike the white and the black subject; or, if it reaches them at all, finds them conveniently deaf.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Godfrey Charles Mundy (1840): Encounter. Mounted police and blacks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National LIbrary of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>James Demark’s <a href="https://archive.org/stream/adventuresinaus01demagoog#page/n5">Adventures in Australia Fifty Years Ago</a>, from 1893, similarly reports a structural and deliberate deafness in response to the violent, eerie echoes across the frontier: “The settlers retaliated in their own way”, he writes, and “there were no Government regulations to check these irregular proceedings”.</p>
<p>Even self-described histories, such as those by James Bonwick and John West, explicitly link frontier violence with Australia’s colonisation. West’s <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/n00012.html">History of Tasmania</a>, first published in 1852, even uses the terms “black hunts” and “black war” to describe the first 50 years of Van Diemen’s Land. West was an abolitionist, and a tone of historical injustice inflects his writing about the Tasmanian Aborigines in <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00115.html">volume 2</a>.</p>
<p>Take this excerpt, where he relates the perverse logic of colonial expansion: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was better that the blacks should die, than that they should stain the settler’s heath with the blood of his children.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And this one, where he mourns the destruction of Tasmanian Aboriginal society in only two generations: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>At length the secret comes out: the tribe which welcomed the first settler with shouts and dancing, or at worst looked on with indifference, has ceased to live.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bonwick’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Last_of_the_Tasmanians.html?id=nVX67wKoHHkC">1870 history of Tasmania</a> is similarly full of sentiment. In a tone curiously analogous to Paul Keating’s <a href="https://antar.org.au/sites/default/files/paul_keating_speech_transcript.pdf">Redfern Park speech 120 years later</a>, Bonwick offers this lament on the effects of colonisation on Tasmania’s Aboriginal people:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We came upon them as evil genii, and blasted them with the breath of our presence. We broke up their home circles. We arrested their laughing corrobory. We turned their song into weeping, and their mirth to sadness.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hhqAFLud228?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Bonwick also reveals the ease with which colonial discourse accounted for murder. During his time in Tasmania, <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Last_of_the_Tasmanians/Chapter_3">Bonwick writes</a>, he had heard several people explain that “they thought no more of shooting a Black than bringing down a bird”. He went on: “Indeed, in those distant times, it was common enough to hear men talk of the number of black crows they had destroyed.”</p>
<p>Those recollections of euphemistic colonial vernacular hint at some of Bonwick’s method as a historian. In the introduction to his history and in an 1895 talk to the Royal Colonial Institute in London, he gives a more detailed explanation of that approach. </p>
<p>It was not a hunt through blue books [government records], that provided the source material for his research, he explains. Rather, it was conversation and hearsay, from sly-grog sellers, ex-bushrangers and colonial gentry alike, that furnish his historical narrative. </p>
<p>How else could you write about <em>hunting crows</em>?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thomas John Domville Taylor: Squatters attack on an Aboriginal camp, One Tree Hill, Queensland, 1843.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Alongside those histories was a humanitarian public discourse that anguished over frontier violence. Media commentary, public debates and lectures, as well as letters to the editor from the frontier that related specific episodes of violence, are explored in detail by Henry Reynolds in <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/black-arm-band/">This Whispering in Our Hearts</a>. </p>
<p>Likewise, poetry such as <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/36861275">The Aboriginal Mother</a> (1838) by Eliza Hamilton Dunlop reveals a form of popular and creative history-making in response to colonisation that can be seen in the work of writers such as Judith Wright and Eleanor Dark a century later.</p>
<p>So why was that reverberation replaced with euphemism and omission? Partly the silence was a fear of punishment, as <a href="https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/hwj/dbx029/3960239?redirectedFrom=PDF">Bain Attwood</a> argues in a recent essay on historical denial. </p>
<p>Especially after the successful prosecution of the Myall Creek massacre perpetrators, colonial front lines and allegiances became a little murkier. “There were good reasons to be silent,” historian Tom Griffiths has similarly insisted.</p>
<p>Mundy’s 1852 account of his “ramble” through the Antipodes confirms Attwood’s and Griffiths’ explanation, and reveals how stories quietly murmured along the frontier provided a catalogue of violence. He writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dreadful tales of cold-blooded carnage have found their way into print, or are whispered about in the provinces. And although there be Crown land commissioners, police magistrates, and settlers of mark, who deny, qualify, or ignore these wholesale massacres of the black population, there can be no real doubt their extirpation from the land is rapidly going on.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>‘Historia nullius’</h2>
<p>It wasn’t simply a case of an uncomfortable frontier that came to characterise the silence Stanner identified in his Boyer Lectures, however. </p>
<p>The historians Stanner named in his lectures (such as M. Barnard Eldershaw, Hartley Grattan, Max Crawford and Brian Fitzpatrick) were largely silent on Aboriginal policy and history in their mid-20th-century histories — despite being written after the 1930s, a decade that Stanner notes for its influence in shapeshifting on Aboriginal policy. </p>
<p>Yet this form of history writing had begun in the late 19th century. At a time when Australian nationhood and national identity were being formed around Federation, the historical discipline was moving into a particular form of narrative writing oriented towards (non-Indigenous) Australian exceptionalism based on democratic and economic progress.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A decorative flag used in Sydney, 1901, as part of Australian Federation celebrations. Australian nationhood and national identity were formed around Federation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Australia’s national consciousness emerged, it required a historical consciousness of its own origin. Education departments commissioned history texts and universities appointed history professors. As history became increasingly professionalised, “blue books” and official archives were in; hearsay and poetry out.</p>
<p>So what did disciplinary “silence” look like in Australia? It saw History (with a capital “H”) arriving with colonisation: “She alone of all the continents has no history,” <a href="https://archive.org/stream/no3journalofroyalco25royauoft/no3journalofroyalco25royauoft_djvu.txt">proclaimed journalist Flora Shaw</a> in a presentation about Australia to the Royal Colonial Institute in London in 1894. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>She offers the introductory chapter of a new history and bases her claim to the attention of the world upon the future which she is shaping for herself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13688790701488155">Lorenzo Veracini </a> has described that settler-colonial vision of the Australian continent as a sort of <em>historia nullius</em>, where “Australian history” only existed thanks to the selective creation and curation by colonial historians.</p>
<p>For Australian historians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the silence of pre- and post-contact Indigenous experience occurred because it existed outside the Whiggish historical narrative of imperial progress. “The federation of (white) Australia and the birth of ‘national’ historical consciousness thus represent … a moment of disciplinary origin,” historian <a href="https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/5848/1/Frontmatter_Creating-White-Australia.pdf">Leigh Boucher</a> asserts. </p>
<p>In his 1916 <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=rMh3-35M44oC&q=vast+tracts+of+land#v=snippet&q=vast%20tracts%20of%20land&f=false">Short History of Australia</a>, Ernest Scott described “vast tracts of fertile country which had never rung under the hoof of a horse and where the bleat of a sheep had never been heard”. In these texts, silence is counterposed against the ringing of axes and “industry”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tom Roberts Wood Splitters, 1886.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scott writes that Australia “begins with a blank space on the map, and ends with the record of a new name on the map, that of Anzac”. It’s worth dissecting this quote here, to unpack that form of history writing: the inevitability of historical progress and national formation is telling. </p>
<p>We shouldn’t assume that this early national history writing was completely silent on Indigenous matters: Coghlan and Ewing’s 1902 <a href="https://archive.org/details/progressaustral00ewingoog">Progress of Australasia in the Nineteenth Century</a> described the “invasion” of parts of southern Australia by the colonists, and related in some detail the colonial massacre of Aboriginal people at Risden Cove in Tasmania; and Scott’s 1916 short history included ghastly and violent accounts of murder on the colonial frontier, as well as the deliberate planting of arsenic in flour destined for Aboriginal people.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Stanner gave voice to an emergent idea about silence that understands history as a method that changes over time and place, rather than an objective interpretation of the past. It reminds me of what narrative psychologist Jerome Bruner explains as the “coherence” we “impose” on the past, to “make it into history”.</p>
<p>In other words, the 1930s histories that Stanner identified in his Boyer Lectures exist in a historical structure where Indigenous perspectives have been locked out. As Stanner himself articulated,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have been able for so long to disremember the Aborigines that we are now hard put to keep them in mind even when we most want to do so.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Still a work-in-progress</h2>
<p>Stanner’s point raises an important question: if “History” itself is tied to the process of colonisation, can it accommodate perspectives outside its colonial apparatus? Stanner sensed that history would overcome its own silences, but doing so would require major methodological shifts, such as the incorporation of Aboriginal Studies and oral history:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In Aboriginal Australia there is an oral history which is providing these people with a coherent principle of explanation … It has a directness and a candour which cut like a knife through most of what we say and write.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>His predictions played out, and such approaches, applied by Indigenous and non-Indigenous historians such as Hobbles Danyari, Heather Goodall, Peter Read, <a href="http://www.goolarabooloo.org.au/paddys_story.html">Paddy Roe</a> and Deborah Bird Rose, overturned Aboriginal historiography in Australia.</p>
<p>The murmurings have since turned into a groundswell: Indigenous histories have become increasingly prominent and Indigenous perspectives are now mandated across school curricula. Conspicuous public and political debates over Australian history are further indication of how this counter narrative has become a significant historical lens.</p>
<p>“I hardly think that what I have called ‘the great Australian silence’ will survive the research that is now in course,” <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=IJsPBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA351&lpg=PA351&dq=%22I+hardly+think+that+what+I+have+called+%27the+great+Australian+silence%27+will+survive+the+research+that+is+now+in+course%22&source=bl&ots=P3N1q9E238&sig=wZybwiibWrkSDA7asrT2NYz0YmE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiimMO7vpPdAhWJBIgKHZzQDR0Q6AEwBXoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22I%20hardly%20think%20that%20what%20I%20have%20called%20'the%20great%20Australian%20silence'%20will%20survive%20the%20research%20that%20is%20now%20in%20course%22&f=false">Stanner anticipated</a>. And, to a large degree, he was right — a substantial historical revision has taken place in Australia. </p>
<p>If anything, that change has accelerated since Stanner’s death in 1981. Yet in university history departments, Indigenous historians still remain vastly underrepresented. </p>
<p>Indigenous perspectives have increasingly informed, critiqued and revised historical approaches. But Indigenous histories are often relegated to “memoir”, “story”, “family history”, “narratives of place” or “political protest”, rather than acknowledged as part of a disciplinary practice. </p>
<p>And with the possible exception of oral history and pre-history/deep time, there is still a marked absence of Indigenous historiography in Australia’s historical “canon”. </p>
<p>We may have developed new critical approaches and a growing understanding of the genealogy of historical “silence”. Yet the meaning and the consequences of that understanding are still a work in progress.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100737/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Clark receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>It is 50 years since anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner gave the Boyer Lectures in which he coined the phrase ‘the great Australian silence’. How far have we come since?Anna Clark, Australian Research Council Future Fellow in Public History, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/920092018-07-26T10:36:26Z2018-07-26T10:36:26ZA conservative activist’s quest to preserve all network news broadcasts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229155/original/file-20180724-194143-1l0jvgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon smiles for the cameras during a 1968 news conference.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, in the middle of a typically hot and humid Nashville summer, a Metropolitan Life insurance manager named Paul Simpson sat with Frank Grisham, the director of the Vanderbilt University Library, in the rare books room of the main library building.</p>
<p>Using three <a href="https://www.ampex.com/ampex-history/">Ampex video recording machines</a>, three television sets and $4,000 of Simpson’s own money, they began what they thought would be a 90-day experiment: From then until election night in November, they would record the ABC, NBC and CBS evening news broadcasts, which usually aired at the same time.</p>
<p>The day Simpson and Grisham started taping, August 5, 1968, was an eventful one. The Republican Convention began, <a href="http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/campaign68/timeline.html">and Ronald Reagan officially announced his candidacy for the presidential nomination</a>, joining with liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller in an attempt to stop Richard Nixon’s hopes of a first ballot nomination.</p>
<p>The news broadcasts also included the era’s biggest stories: fighting in Vietnam, communist leaders meeting in Eastern Europe and the civil war in Nigeria. Other reports from that day sound hauntingly familiar: an Israeli strike into Jordan and a violent incident at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, in which an American and North Korean soldier were killed. </p>
<p>Such was the modest beginning of what Rutgers University historian David Greenberg <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7oQsWVsy6tkC&pg=PA185&dq=Do+Historians+Watch+Enough+TV?+Broadcast+News+as+a+Primary+Source&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLh6Dq-rXcAhVDGt8KHXjCDw8Q6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=Do%20Historians%20Watch%20Enough%20TV%3F%20Broadcast%20News%20as%20a%20Primary%20Source&f=false">has called</a> the “preeminent video resource for scholars of TV news.” </p>
<p>Although legal and copyright issues continue to hinder access, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive – a repository of television news recordings from the past 50 years – is a national archival treasure.</p>
<p>But the archive’s beginnings are rooted in the political and cultural conflicts of the late 1960s. Simpson, the archive’s founder, first financial backer and chief fundraiser, was deeply conservative. <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/Network-Television-News-Conviction-Controversy-Point/22707912691/bd">And he was convinced</a> that the network news broadcasts, with their executive producers living in New York’s “liberal atmosphere,” were contributing to social turmoil and unrest throughout the country.</p>
<p>For this reason, he sought to save the recordings for posterity – to be able to show, years later, that CBS, NBC and ABC were as much a part of the problem as the anti-war movement, drug culture and free love.</p>
<h2>The most trusted men?</h2>
<p>Although he later downplayed political motivations in <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?152200-1/television-news-archives">a 1985 C-SPAN interview</a>, Simpson had long been passionate in his concern about television’s malign influence over “the American mind.” </p>
<p>In 1964, <a href="https://collections.library.vanderbilt.edu/repositories/2/resources/1605">he wrote to CBS</a> to complain about Walter Cronkite’s coverage of the Goldwater campaign. He wasn’t necessarily wrong: Cronkite, who enjoyed his reputation as the “most trusted man” in America, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=XWv46Na-PIcC&lpg=PP1&dq=cronkite&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">did detest Goldwater</a> and was liberal in his politics.</p>
<p>Simpson also believed that television news unfairly blamed President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on the “conservative atmosphere” in Dallas, <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/Network-Television-News-Conviction-Controversy-Point/22707912691/bd">and he recalled with particular disgust</a> a 1967 network interview with psychologist <a href="https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/timothy-leary">Timothy Leary</a>, who was encouraging young people to try LSD.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229293/original/file-20180725-194134-1bo0v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Simpson was deeply suspicious of Walter Cronkite’s motives and beliefs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/charleskremenak/9399912564">Charles Kremenak</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On a business trip to New York in March 1968, Simpson toured each of the three networks. At each stop, he asked to see a broadcast from the previous month. They all told him that they weren’t available – they only saved their broadcasts for about two weeks because it was too expensive to preserve them.</p>
<p>Simpson was shocked. He viewed nightly newscasts as the equivalent of America’s national newspaper. How could they be held accountable if no record existed of their stories, segments and analysis?</p>
<p>When he returned to Nashville, Simpson found an ally in Vanderbilt librarian Frank Grisham. </p>
<p>Grisham didn’t share Simpson’s politics but did believe that the broadcasts should be preserved. The two took the idea to Vanderbilt’s chancellor, <a href="https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2009/07/25/alexander-heard-vanderbilts-fifth-chancellor-dies-85205/">Alexander Heard</a>, a political scientist <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Gone_with_the_Ivy.html?id=G5hlQgAACAAJ">whom historian Paul Conkin described</a> as a true believer in “an open society, one in which divergent views could find expression” and compete for public acceptance. Heard got the board of trustees to approve a short-term experiment, hoping that the Library of Congress might eventually take it over.</p>
<h2>Preserving bias for posterity</h2>
<p>The expensive project may have ended after its three-month test run were it not for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, held a few weeks after the Republican gathering.</p>
<p>On August 28, 1968, the night Hubert Humphrey was nominated, the news networks aired footage of the swelling crowds of protesters, the outbreak of violence in the streets and the demonstrators shouting, “The whole world is watching” as the police attacked them. It was dramatic stuff – and Simpson and Grisham preserved it all.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7_9OJnRnZjU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The dramatic images that emerged from the 1968 Democratic National Convention horrified a huge swath of the electorate.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although the protesters believed media coverage would create sympathy for their cause, <a href="https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/the-whole-world-was-watching/">a substantial majority of Americans</a>
– including Paul Simpson – sided with the police. When editing the tapes, Simpson realized that NBC had shown the same arrest of one violent protester from three different angles without acknowledging that it was the same person. <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/Network-Television-News-Conviction-Controversy-Point/22707912691/bd">In Simpson’s view</a>, this exaggerated the scale of violence and discredited the police. </p>
<p>In the heated atmosphere of 1968, it was enough to fuel suspicions of media bias. Simpson now had his smoking gun – and a potent fundraising tool.</p>
<p>Over the next two years, the tape of the Chicago violence played a critical role in the survival of the archive. Simpson argued that the only way to be able to study the media’s impact was to ensure copies existed for critics, researchers and academics to review. Two conservative Nashville business executives, one of whom sat on the Vanderbilt board of trustees, made substantial donations to keep the archive functioning. </p>
<p>Nixon’s election made the White House receptive to the project. Simpson sent the tape to <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/249080/nixons-white-house-wars-by-patrick-j-buchanan/9781101902868/">Patrick Buchanan</a>, a Nixon speechwriter who shared the president’s deep distaste for the media. Buchanan even included a reference to the protest footage in Vice President Spiro Agnew’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQpQyJQm2Mk">famous 1969 speech attacking television news as biased</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229157/original/file-20180724-194128-16o7vkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vice President Spiro Agnew laid into the press, citing the same footage from the 1968 DNC protests that infuriated Paul Simpson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-NM-USA-APHS437970-Agnew-Native-Americans/9778c5b3869c4c9f932504345e7ffd9f/58/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Another network,” Agnew announced, “showed virtually the same scene of violence from three separate angles without making clear it was the same scene.”</p>
<h2>The networks fight back</h2>
<p>The networks had never been singled out by elected officials in this way, and they weren’t happy about the scrutiny. Operating as they did with government licenses, they saw Agnew’s speech as intimidation.</p>
<p>With a hubris that, in retrospect, was certain to invite further scrutiny, the three networks pushed back, arguing that they were objective and impartial watchdogs looking out for the public interest. They saw themselves as above politics. As media historian Charles L. Ponce De Leon <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo12345529.html">wrote</a> in 2015, “It was news from Olympus, presented in a tone that suggested the voice of God.” </p>
<p>NBC’s Reuven Frank <a href="https://collections.library.vanderbilt.edu/repositories/2/resources/1605">sarcastically dismissed</a> Simpson’s claim that he was acting in the “spirit of free inquiry,” remarking that “I have never known a self-proclaimed objective student who sought to evaluate my performance because he thought I was doing great.” </p>
<p>The networks also worried that if Vanderbilt continued recording their broadcasts, they would lose the ability to repackage and resell their footage. People could just go to Vanderbilt for it.</p>
<p>CBS accused the Vanderbilt Television News Archive of violating its copyright and sued in December 1973. Amazingly, CBS stated it would destroy the Vanderbilt tapes if it won in court.</p>
<p>Thankfully, Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker helped insert <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108">a clause in the revision of the copyright law</a> that protected the right of libraries to record the news. CBS dropped its lawsuit, but some of the restrictions it insisted upon were put in place.</p>
<p>While the entire collection was digitalized in the early 2000s, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive is only allowed to stream NBC and CNN to researchers. Examining ABC, CBS or Fox segments requires a trip to Nashville. </p>
<p>The recording of the evening newscasts of the big three networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – continues to this day. In 1995, the archive began recording an one hour a day of CNN, and in 2004, an hour of FOX. Over the years it’s been used by researchers to study topics as diffuse as political bias, gender stereotyping and even the evolution of television advertising, since the commercials during the news broadcasts are also recorded.</p>
<p>In recent times, the archive was used in the 2015 documentary “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3518012/">Best of Enemies</a>” because it contained lost footage of the debate between conservative commentator William F. Buckley and liberal writer Gore Vidal. More poignantly, <a href="http://www.newsknowledge.today/episode-002/">it was used by the mother of an American soldier</a> who died in Vietnam; after someone told her that her wounded son had been photographed lying on the ground during a network news segment, she traveled to the archives to review footage and confirm the account.</p>
<p>Even if one thinks Simpson’s perception of deliberate political bias was misguided, his insistence on preserving the evening news in order to study and analyze its presentation was an extraordinarily important contribution.</p>
<p>The British writer Christopher Hitchens <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/boycott-the-gop/550907/">once remarked</a> that political partisanship makes us stupid. </p>
<p>But in the case of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, partisanship led to unintended, historically enriching results.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92009/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Alan Schwartz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fifty years ago, an insurance agent named Paul Simpson was convinced of rampant bias on the evening news. So he embarked on a project to record each broadcast and store them at Vanderbilt University.Thomas Alan Schwartz, Professor of History, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/959152018-07-17T10:45:45Z2018-07-17T10:45:45ZThing-makers, tool freaks and prototypers: How the Whole Earth Catalog’s optimistic message reinvented the environmental movement in 1968<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221064/original/file-20180530-120487-m6qllc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Earthrise,' which appeared on the cover of the second and third Whole Earth Catalog, was taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders during lunar orbit, Dec. 24, 1968.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise#/media/File:NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpg">NASA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the fall of 1968 a Stanford-trained biologist, organizer of the legendary <a href="http://experiments.californiahistoricalsociety.org/what-was-the-trips-festival/">Trips Festival</a> and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/trip-of-a-lifetime-ken-kesey-lsd-the-merry-pranksters-and-the-bi/">Merry Prankster</a> named <a href="http://sb.longnow.org/SB_homepage/Bio.html">Stewart Brand</a> published the first Whole Earth Catalog. Between 1968 and 1972, the Catalog reached millions of readers and won the National Book Award.</p>
<p>The title and iconic cover image of this counterculture classic celebrated the first publicly released <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATS-3">NASA photographs</a> showing the whole planet Earth from space. These images profoundly changed the way humans thought about the environment. And the Catalog played an important role in that change. </p>
<p>Today many know Brand and his Catalog as part of the information revolution and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/07/opinion/stewart-brand-hippie-silicon.html">cyberculture</a> it spawned. As an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KeYPzn8AAAAJ&hl=en">environmental historian</a>, however, I see the Whole Earth Catalog as relevant 50 years later for another reason.</p>
<p>Starting with that amazing image of the planet in a sea of inky black space, Brand helped change the trajectory and constituency of the American environmental movement by bringing together a new community of environmental thinkers and advocates who invented what came to be known as “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brundtland_Commission">sustainability</a>.” </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LZLIAa6LZRs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Stewart Brand believed that a photograph of the whole Earth – ‘complete, tiny, adrift’ – would help people understand that the planet was finite.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An optimistic vision</h2>
<p>Brand’s unique catalog brought together the products and ideas of an eclectic mix of intellectuals, computer hackers, hippies, alternative designers, architects, builders and environmentalists. All of them were innovators and iconoclasts, linked by a shared rejection of traditional ways of learning, doing business, building things and organizing communities. </p>
<p>Sections titled “Understanding Whole Systems,” “Land Use,” “Shelter,” “Industry,” “Craft,” “Community,” “Nomatics,” “Communications” and “Learning” led readers toward a holistic view of environment. The Catalog linked wilderness and technology, country and city, culture and nature in a way that was unconventional at that time. </p>
<p>The format was irresistible. The catalogs were huge, with pages overflowing with photos, drawings, mini-essays, reviews and psychedelic graphics. The result was a newsprint celebration of an emerging San Francisco Bay-area creative community of “Thing-Makers, Tool Freaks and Prototypers.” It captured a generation of readers by offering a tantalizing burst of creative optimism in a year marred by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, riots at the Democratic National Convention and the shocking Tet Offensive in South Vietnam. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227895/original/file-20180716-44073-rj1zuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227895/original/file-20180716-44073-rj1zuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227895/original/file-20180716-44073-rj1zuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227895/original/file-20180716-44073-rj1zuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227895/original/file-20180716-44073-rj1zuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227895/original/file-20180716-44073-rj1zuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227895/original/file-20180716-44073-rj1zuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227895/original/file-20180716-44073-rj1zuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Whole Earth Catalog was published from 1968 through 1972, with a few special issues in later years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/y79Dxi">Christian Guthier</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Commune bible</h2>
<p>Brand had spent several years earlier in the 1960s traveling across the American West, visiting Indian reservations and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/us/stephen-gaskin-hippie-who-founded-an-enduring-commune-dies-at-79.html">communes</a>. These trips directly inspired the Catalog, which he conceived of as a new information system – one that might subvert existing media and markets, and better connect dispersed creative communities in new ways. </p>
<p>As he explained it, the Catalog was an “access service,” filled with examples of “what was worth getting and information on where to get it … a catalog, continuously updated, in part by the users.” It answered a direct call from commune dwellers who wanted to know, “Where to buy a windmill. Where to get good information on beekeeping. Where to lay hands on a computer.”</p>
<h2>Remaking society</h2>
<p>From the first sentence of the first issue, “We are as gods and might as well get good at it,” Brand issued a bold call for a new kind of environmentalism.
Decades before the term was coined, he argued that we were living in the <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/anthropocene-the-human-age-1.17085">Anthropocene</a>, where human influences were altering conditions for life on Earth. In Brand’s view, the logical response was to make a plan. </p>
<p>The Catalog featured traditional environmental topics, but urged readers to see nature everywhere – not just in remote places without people. Nothing made that point more clearly than the image of the Earth from space. </p>
<p>Brand’s genius was understanding the links between windmills, bees and computers. In his view, connections between high and low technology and between nature and culture united hippies in Taos with geeks building computers in the Bay Area. On his commune trips, he saw growing demand for a new type of hybrid knowledge absent from the mainstream media of the day. The Whole Earth Catalog became a bible for tens of thousands of Americans living in communes in the 1960s and 70s. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sJqRnoOn6bs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In a modern-day commune in Washington, D.C., residents pool their incomes and disavow capitalist values.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Appropriate technology</h2>
<p>Brand’s optimistic vision of reconciling American technological know-how with environmentalism also appealed to broader audiences. With its call for readers to recognize their status as “gods,” and its celebration of good tools and green technologies, the Whole Earth Catalog helped popularize the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology">appropriate technology</a>” movement, which advocated for small-scale, decentralized and environmentally benign options. Brand introduced readers to key thinkers like economist E.F. Schumacher, whose 1973 classic “Small Is Beautiful” offered an influential argument for appropriate technology and “economics as if people mattered.” </p>
<p>The Catalog provided a forum for environmentalists like Schumacher who celebrated human ingenuity at a time when the mainstream movement focused on wilderness, wildlife and the non-human. And by showcasing green technologies like windmills, ecological design, solar power and alternative energy, it offered a widely accessible “<a href="https://www.nature.org/greenliving/gogreen/everydayenvironmentalist/index.htm">everyday environmentalism</a>” that was open to urbanites and others unable to visit remote wilderness areas. </p>
<p>Appropriate technology worked in tandem with the emerging <a href="https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice">environmental justice</a> movement. These ideals spread globally, taking root most deeply in the developing world.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227857/original/file-20180716-44088-kpgr71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227857/original/file-20180716-44088-kpgr71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227857/original/file-20180716-44088-kpgr71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227857/original/file-20180716-44088-kpgr71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227857/original/file-20180716-44088-kpgr71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227857/original/file-20180716-44088-kpgr71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227857/original/file-20180716-44088-kpgr71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227857/original/file-20180716-44088-kpgr71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stewart Brand, 32, publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog works on the last issue of the Whole Earth Catalog at Menlo Park, Calif., May 28, 1971.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Californi-/0806943a11054e77a120897da545e16a/7/0">AP Photo/Richard Drew</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over the next several decades Brand was omnipresent at many of the most critical moments in the rise of personal computers and the internet. He witnessed the first use of a mouse, mingled with the first hackers, and co-founded the <a href="https://www.well.com/">WELL</a>, one of the first online communities and proto-social networks. </p>
<p>The Whole Earth Catalog featured information on all of these cyber-trends long before most people saw them coming. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/steve-jobs-told-students-stay-hungry-stay-foolish/2011/10/05/gIQA1qVjOL_blog.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.422690721750">Steve Jobs</a> claimed that the Catalog was the paperback prototype for Google. This cyber-pioneering helped spread the environmental message.</p>
<h2>A more human-centered movement</h2>
<p>Fifty years after its publication, the Whole Earth Catalog remains insightful and urgent, even though it has been out of print since 1998. The American environmental movement now embraces appropriate technologies and the human-centered everyday environmentalism that the Catalog first presented to millions. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"983897983283376129"}"></div></p>
<p>Though environmentalism remains a deeply polarizing issue, the constituency for environmental change is much broader and more diverse than it was in 1968. A new generation of advocates assume people and their tools are part of nature, and believe that thoughtful personal choices can be part of saving the planet. This evolution happened in part because a groovy counterculture publication offered a new way to understand the whole Earth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Kirk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Whole Earth Catalog was a blueprint for sustainability that envisioned humans living in balance with nature. Its creative spirit was welcomed in a year riven by war, assassinations and riots.Andy Kirk, Professor of History, University of Nevada, Las VegasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/960902018-07-10T10:41:08Z2018-07-10T10:41:08ZA long fuse: ‘The Population Bomb’ is still ticking 50 years after its publication<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226788/original/file-20180709-122271-1ubedx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Slums like this one in Rio de Janeiro embody the problems Paul Ehrlich warned of in 'The Population Bomb.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/gRVAe7">dany13</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” Stanford biologist and ecologist Paul Erhlich declared on the first page of his 1968 best-seller, “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb">The Population Bomb</a>.” Because the “stork had passed the plow,” he predicted, “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” </p>
<p>Ehrlich’s book identified dramatically accelerating world population growth as the central underlying cause of myriad problems, from a food crisis in India to the Vietnam War to smog and urban riots in the United States. It sold more than 2 million copies and went through 20 reprints by 1971. Ehrlich <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQxLJCjH58s">appeared more than 20 times on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson”</a>, and became the first president of Zero Population Growth, a Washington D.C.–based advocacy organization, while remaining a professor at Stanford.</p>
<p>“The Population Bomb” created more space to hold radical views on population matters, but its impact was fleeting, and maybe even harmful to the population movement. By the early 1970s, many critics were savaging Ehrlich and the larger goal of achieving zero population growth. And the politics of “morning in America” in the 1980s successfully marginalized Erhlich as a doomsdayer.</p>
<p>However, as a historian who has <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo13590005.html">studied</a> debates about population growth throughout U.S. history, I believe that Ehrlich’s warnings deserve a new and less hysterical hearing. While Ehrlich has acknowledged significant errors, he was correct that lowering birth rates was – and remains – a crucial plank in addressing global environmental crises. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226791/original/file-20180709-122253-calowj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226791/original/file-20180709-122253-calowj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226791/original/file-20180709-122253-calowj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226791/original/file-20180709-122253-calowj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226791/original/file-20180709-122253-calowj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226791/original/file-20180709-122253-calowj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226791/original/file-20180709-122253-calowj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226791/original/file-20180709-122253-calowj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Ehrlich in 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_R_Ehrlich.png">Paul R. Ehrlich</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A Malthusian warning</h2>
<p>Ehrlich drew on nearly 200 years of thinking inspired by British pastor and political economist Robert Thomas Malthus. In his 1798 study, “<a href="http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf">An Essay on the Principle of Population</a>,” Malthus famously predicted that “geometric” population growth would overwhelm “arithmetic” gains in agricultural production, leading to wars, famines and societal collapse. </p>
<p>Fears of the potentially dangerous social and ecological effects of population growth intensified after World War II. Global population surged as public health improved greatly in developing nations, increasing life expectancy. At the same time, the new science of ecology demonstrated the fragility of Earth’s interconnected systems. And the Cold War promoted worries that <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25660">population-induced poverty would breed communism</a>. </p>
<p>Mainstream advocates of arresting population growth emphasized better access to family planning and education, but Ehrlich had no use for such baby steps. “Well-spaced children will starve, vaporize in thermonuclear war, or die of plague just as well as unplanned children,” he wrote. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PUwmA3Q0_OE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">It took 200,000 years for Earth’s human population to reach 1 billion – and only 200 years to reach 7 billion. But growth has begun slowing as fertility rates decline.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Technological optimists pointed to the “Green Revolution” in agriculture, which had vastly increased crop yields up until the late 1960s. But Erhlich, <a href="https://theconversation.com/farmers-and-cropdusting-pilots-on-the-great-plains-worried-about-pesticide-risks-before-silent-spring-91976">echoing a growing chorus of farmers and agricultural scientists</a>, warned that pesticides ruined the environment and would eventually backfire as weeds and pests developed resistance. </p>
<p>Erhlich never called population the only variable. With physicist <a href="https://www.belfercenter.org/person/john-p-holdren">John Holdren</a>, he proposed the <a href="https://e4anet.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/610_wk1-ehrlich-and-holdren-one-dimensional-ecology.pdf">I = P x A x T formula</a>, which describes human impact as the product of population, affluence (the effects of consumption) and technology. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, Ehrlich believed that population was the key multiplier and massive reductions in global population were critical for human survival. He hoped that a combination of policy carrots and sticks would reduce fertility sufficiently and preserve voluntary family planning. But he held out the possibility that coercive measures, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499/">including compulsory sterilizations</a>, might be needed.</p>
<h2>Backlash and a new population politics</h2>
<p>Millions of Americans shared Ehrlich’s anxieties in 1968. Concerns about the ecological impact of global population growth had <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Malthusian-Moment-Population-Environmentalism-Environment/dp/0813552729">helped birth modern American environmentalism</a>. Feminists cited overpopulation to buttress the case for reproductive and abortion rights. Politicians on both sides of the aisle urged action to lower birth rates, and Republican President Richard Nixon signed into law a Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. </p>
<p>But the “culture wars” of the 1970s subsumed and reconfigured population issues. On the right, the “pro-life” movement that crystallized in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 1973 <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-roe-v-wade-changed-the-lives-of-american-women-99130">Roe v. Wade decision</a> considered any talk of population reduction anathema. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-child-policy-led-to-forced-abortions-30-million-bachelors">China’s one-child policy</a>, launched around 1980, led to serious human rights abuses that allowed anti–family planning conservatives to paint all population programs in a negative light. Conservatives subsequently ignored China’s significant reforms to the policy, as well as research indicating that slowing population growth <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.38938.412593.80">contributed to China’s economic miracle</a>. </p>
<p>Moreover, newly ascendant anti-Keynesian economists rejected an older consensus that slowing population growth would yield economic benefits. These market-oriented economists asserted that denser populations created economies of scale, and that individual fertility decisions would adjust to any temporary population problems. President Ronald Reagan, who once had dabbled with Malthusianism, tellingly labeled advocates who worried about scarce resources “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=F8V-YzywyaIC&pg=PA209&lpg=PA209&dq=ronald+reagan+doomsday+crowd&source=bl&ots=EpxPTC-lbO&sig=MNQ7S3aX0s3EU8kdjP_R3eMNjWo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi4qtzptIjcAhWqzlkKHSTiAGkQ6AEIcDAT#v=onepage&q=ronald%20reagan%20doomsday%20crowd&f=false">Doomsday prophets</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226792/original/file-20180709-122277-g2q5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226792/original/file-20180709-122277-g2q5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226792/original/file-20180709-122277-g2q5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226792/original/file-20180709-122277-g2q5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226792/original/file-20180709-122277-g2q5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226792/original/file-20180709-122277-g2q5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226792/original/file-20180709-122277-g2q5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226792/original/file-20180709-122277-g2q5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As nations develop economically, couples have fewer children and fertility rates decline.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After Congress <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/us-immigration-since-1965">eliminated national-origin immigration quotas</a> in 1965, immigration rose steadily and accounted for a growing share of population growth in the U.S. In this context, white liberals increasingly risked being branded racist for supporting population reduction. </p>
<p>By the late 1970s, both liberals and conservatives had bought into exaggerated talk of an “aging crisis” – too few workers to pay for the bulge of baby boomers headed toward retirement. This perspective bolstered calls for higher birth rates and further reduced the sting of the overpopulation critique. </p>
<h2>An unsolved equation</h2>
<p>Today Ehrlich is a largely forgotten prophet, although some small population-centric organizations continue to tilt at windmills and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/talking-about-overpopulation-is-still-taboo-that-has-to-change/2018/06/18/ca7c1838-6e6f-11e8-afd5-778aca903bbe_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.cd1e5338d7c6">mainstream press occasionally dips its toes in the water</a>. After some very public rifts over immigration policy, mainstream environmental groups generally <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/science/earth/bringing-up-the-issue-of-population-growth.html">avoid or downplay the issue</a>. Meanwhile, the Right continues to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-population-bomb-was-a-dud-1525125341">dismiss talk of population problems</a>.</p>
<p>Looking back with the benefit of time, it’s clear Ehrlich was wrong to view population as all-encompassing. In addition, <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?">the global total fertility rate</a> has declined more than he anticipated – although the development and modernization that has helped lower birth rates, a process known as the demographic transition, comes at great environmental cost. </p>
<p>Ehrlich underestimated human ingenuity. And for now, one can reasonably argue that food insecurity remains <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/the-world-produces-enough-food-to-feed-everyone-so-why-do-people-go-hungry">primarily political rather than technological</a>. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/22/collapse-civilisation-near-certain-decades-population-bomb-paul-ehrlich">In Ehrlich’s own words</a>, the book’s weaknesses were “not [focusing] enough on overconsumption and equity issues.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226794/original/file-20180709-122280-xsm8wf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226794/original/file-20180709-122280-xsm8wf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226794/original/file-20180709-122280-xsm8wf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226794/original/file-20180709-122280-xsm8wf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226794/original/file-20180709-122280-xsm8wf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226794/original/file-20180709-122280-xsm8wf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226794/original/file-20180709-122280-xsm8wf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226794/original/file-20180709-122280-xsm8wf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The demographic transition is a pattern in which countries tend to transition from high birth and death rates to lower birth and death rates as they industrialize.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Demographic-TransitionOWID.png">Max Roser</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But he got much right, even if many details and his timing were off. Global population has increased at a remarkably steady rate since 1968, and the United Nations projects that it will reach <a href="http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf/other/21/21June_FINAL%20PRESS%20RELEASE_WPP17.pdf">9.8 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100</a>. Scientists continue to extend his prescient warnings that efforts to feed all these people through <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aar3780">pesticide-intensive monoculture</a> may backfire. And although Ehrlich exaggerated the threat of mass starvation, <a href="https://www.unicefusa.org/press/releases/unicef-too-many-children-dying-malnutrition/8259">about 8,500 young children die from malnutrition every day</a>.</p>
<p>Human-driven climate change is an overriding threat, and is unambiguously worsened by population growth. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that limiting warming in this century to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) would require cutting global greenhouse gas emissions <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf">40 to 70 percent by 2050 and nearly eliminating them by 2100</a>. “Globally, economic and population growth continue to be the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion,” the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers.pdf">panel observes</a>. </p>
<p>There lies an enduring flaw in Ehrlich’s approach. If impact equals people times affluence times technology, then reducing population alone is not sufficient to solve our ecological crises. But reducing affluence is neither possible nor desirable, since it would condemn millions to lifelong poverty. Ultimately, “The Population Bomb” offered no road map for transitioning away from capitalism without causing human ruin as serious as the environmental ruin that seems to be our destiny.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96090/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek Hoff serves on the board of the Utah Population and Environment Council. </span></em></p>Fifty years ago biologist Paul Ehrlich published ‘The Population Bomb,’ an apocalyptic warning that overcrowding would lead to wars and famine. Here’s what the book got right and wrong.Derek Hoff, Associate Professor, Lecturer in Business and Humanities, University of UtahLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/956942018-07-09T10:28:27Z2018-07-09T10:28:27ZHow the Catholic Church came to oppose birth control<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226532/original/file-20180706-122265-1v4apf9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pope Paul VI banned contraception for Catholics in the 1968 encyclical, "Humanae Vitae."</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jim Pringle</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This month marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark “Humanae Vitae,” Pope Paul VI’s strict prohibition against artificial contraception, issued in the aftermath of the development of the birth control pill. At the time, the decision <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">shocked</a> many Catholic priests and laypeople. Conservative Catholics, however, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholic_Intellectuals_and_Conservative.html?id=LK51AAAAMAAJ">praised the pope</a> for what they saw as a confirmation of traditional teachings.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=8S1ydcsAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&gmla=AJsN-F6AaDdh2HOAlzKGJw3Xk7ZwuHYTAvpym2jdDa8KTvuGKSxei-9Oix4I84Ka55hX765CxCjr35WrEqZX0DxcLADUp0HY8Q">scholar</a> specializing in both the history of the Catholic Church and gender studies, I can attest that for almost 2,000 years, the Catholic Church’s stance on contraception has been one of constant change and development. </p>
<p>And although Catholic moral theology has consistently condemned contraception, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Contraception.html?id=S-fBxgQoYQ0C">it has not always been the church battleground</a> that it is today. </p>
<h2>Early church practice</h2>
<p>The first Christians <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Contraception.html?id=S-fBxgQoYQ0C">knew about contraception and likely practiced it</a>. Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek and Roman texts, for example, discuss well-known contraceptive practices, ranging from the withdrawal method to the use of crocodile dung, dates and honey to block or kill semen. </p>
<p>Indeed, while Judeo-Christian scripture encourages humans to <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1%3A28&version=KJV">“be fruitful and multiply,”</a> nothing in Scripture <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">explicitly prohibits contraception</a>. </p>
<p>When the first Christian theologians condemned contraception, they did so not on the basis of religion but <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JbzwS6MzK1gC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=Christine+E.+Gudorf+%22Contraception+and+Abortion+in+Roman+Catholicism%22&source=bl&ots=5WJffub6wK&sig=rCNxnaAIZFq7tmfZ787O5KIePOE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwia_vX5savb%20AhXtHDQIHZuqBqwQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=Christine%20E.%20Gudorf%20%22Contraception%20and%20Abortion%20in%20Roman%20Catholicism%22&f=false">in a give-and-take with cultural practices and social pressures</a>. Early opposition to contraception was often <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Contraception.html?id=S-fBxgQoYQ0C">a reaction to the threat of heretic groups,</a> such as the Gnostics and Manichees. And before the 20th century, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JbzwS6MzK1gC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=Christine+E.+Gudorf+%22Contraception+and+Abortion+in+Roman+Catholicism%22&source=bl&ots=5WJffub6wK&sig=rCNxnaAIZFq7tmfZ787O5KIePOE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwia_vX5savb%20AhXtHDQIHZuqBqwQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=Christine%20E.%20Gudorf%20%22Contraception%20and%20Abortion%20in%20Roman%20Catholicism%22&f=false">theologians assumed</a> that those who practiced contraception were “fornicators” and “prostitutes.” </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1309.htm">purpose of marriage</a>, they believed, was producing offspring. While sex within marriage was not itself considered a sin, <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15071.htm">pleasure in sex was</a>. The fourth-century Christian theologian Augustine characterized the sexual act between spouses as <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360211064.htm">immoral self-indulgence</a> if the couple tried to prevent conception. </p>
<h2>Not a church priority</h2>
<p>The church, however, had little to say about contraception for many centuries. For example, after the decline of the Roman Empire, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/A_History_of_Contraception.html?id=9-R4QgAACAAJ">the church did little to explicitly</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Theology_of_Marriage.html?id=sASAQgAACAAJ">prohibit contraception</a>, teach against it, or stop it, though people undoubtedly practiced it. </p>
<p>Most penitence manuals from the Middle Ages, which directed priests what types of sins to ask parishioners about, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JbzwS6MzK1gC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=Christine+E.+Gudorf+%22Contraception+and+Abortion+in+Roman+Catholicism%22&source=bl&ots=5WJffub6wK&sig=rCNxnaAIZFq7tmfZ787O5KIePOE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwia_vX5savb%20AhXtHDQIHZuqBqwQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=Christine%20E.%20Gudorf%20%22Contraception%20and%20Abortion%20in%20Roman%20Catholicism%22&f=false">did not even mention contraception</a>.</p>
<p>It was only in 1588 that Pope Sixtus V took the strongest conservative stance against contraception in Catholic history. With his papal bull “Effraenatam,” he ordered all church and civil penalties for homicide to be brought against those who practiced contraception. </p>
<p>However, both church and civil authorities refused to enforce his orders, and laypeople virtually ignored them. In fact, three years after Sixtus’s death, the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Contraception.html?id=S-fBxgQoYQ0C">next pope repealed</a> most of the sanctions and told Christians to treat “Effraenatam” “as if it had never been issued.” </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/como-vino-la-iglesia-catolica-a-oponerse-al-control-de-natalidad-99634">Cómo vino la Iglesia Católica a oponerse al control de natalidad</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>By the mid-17th century, some church leaders <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">even admitted couples might have legitimate reasons to limit family size</a> to better provide for the children they already had.</p>
<h2>Birth control becomes more visible</h2>
<p>By the 19th century, scientific knowledge about the human reproductive system advanced, and contraceptive technologies improved. New discussions were needed. </p>
<p>Victorian-era sensibilities, however, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholics_and_Contraception.html?id=31-_B3EaBskC">deterred most Catholic clergy</a> from preaching on issues of sex and contraception. </p>
<p>When an 1886 penitential manual instructed confessors to ask parishioners explicitly whether they practiced contraception and to refuse absolution for sins unless they stopped, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">“the order was virtually ignored.”</a> </p>
<p>By the 20th century, Christians in some of the most heavily Catholic countries in the world, such as France and Brazil, were <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JbzwS6MzK1gC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=Christine+E.+Gudorf+%22Contraception+and+Abortion+in+Roman+Catholicism%22&source=bl&ots=5WJffub6wK&sig=rCNxnaAIZFq7tmfZ787O5KIePOE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwia_vX5savb%20AhXtHDQIHZuqBqwQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=Christine%20E.%20Gudorf%20%22Contraception%20and%20Abortion%20in%20Roman%20Catholicism%22&f=false">among the most prodigious users</a> of artificial contraception, leading to dramatic decline in family size.</p>
<p>As a consequence of this increasing availability and use of contraceptives by Catholics, church teaching on birth control – which had always been there – began to <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholics_and_Contraception.html?id=31-_B3EaBskC">become a visible priority</a>. The papacy decided to bring the dialogue about contraception <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Devices_and_Desires.html?id=Im8RdEyDX8cC">out of scholarly theological discussions</a> between clergy into ordinary exchanges between Catholic couples and their priests.</p>
<p>Regarding his frank 1930 pronouncement on birth control, “Casti Connubii,” Pope Pius XI declared that contraception was inherently evil and any spouse practicing any act of contraception <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=S-fBxgQoYQ0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=John+T.+Noonan+contraception&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj55YrnnbPbAhXjIjQIHbfPAqcQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=John%20T.%20Noonan%20contraception&f=false;%20https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19301231_casti-connubii.html">“violates the law of God and nature” and was “stained by a great and mortal flaw.”</a> </p>
<p>Condoms, diaphragms, the rhythm method and even the withdrawal method were forbidden. Only abstinence was permissible to prevent conception. Priests were to teach this so clearly and so often that no Catholic could claim ignorance of the Church’s prohibition of contraception. Many theologians presumed this to be an <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholics_and_Contraception.html?id=31-_B3EaBskC">“infallible statement”</a> and taught it thus to Catholic laypersons for decades. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholics_and_Contraception.html?id=31-_B3EaBskC">Other theologians saw it</a> as binding but “subject to future reconsideration.”</p>
<p>In 1951, the church modified its stance again. Without overturning “Casti Connubii’s” prohibition of artificial birth control, Pius XI’s successor, Pius XII, deviated from its intent. He approved the rhythm method for couples who had <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Contraception.html?id=S-fBxgQoYQ0C">“morally valid reasons for avoiding procreation,” </a> defining such situations quite broadly.</p>
<h2>The pill and the church</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226537/original/file-20180706-122268-lwwtjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Museum of Sex, in New York, marks the 50th anniversary of the world’s first oral contraceptive in 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the early 1950s, however, options for artificial contraception were growing, including the pill. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=0PgkAAAAYAAJ&q=Bromley+Catholics+on+Birth+Control&dq=Bromley+Catholics+on+Birth+Control&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjumsaDurXbAhXdFjQIHRF0DeEQ6AEIJzAA">Devout Catholics wanted explicit permission to use them</a>. </p>
<p>Church leaders confronted the issue head-on, expressing a variety of viewpoints.</p>
<p>In light of these new contraceptive technologies and developing scientific knowledge about when and how conception occurs, some leaders believed the church could not know God’s will on this issue and should stop pretending that it did, as Dutch Bishop William Bekkers <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">said outright on national television</a> in 1963.</p>
<p>Even Paul VI <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">admitted his confusion</a>. In an interview with an Italian journalist in 1965, he stated, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The world asks what we think and we find ourselves trying to give an answer. But what answer? We can’t keep silent. And yet to speak is a real problem. But what? The Church has never in her history confronted such a problem.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>There were others, however, such as <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani</a>, leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the body that promotes and defends Catholic doctrine – who disagreed. Among those adamantly convinced of the truth of the prohibitions was the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/John_Cuthbert_Ford_SJ.html?id=F8luZnjkVdAC">Jesuit John Ford</a>, perhaps the most influential U.S. Catholic moralist of the last century. Although no Scripture mentioned contraception, Ford believed the church’s teachings were grounded in divine revelation and therefore not to be questioned.</p>
<p>The question was left for consideration by the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control, held between 1963 to 1966. This commission by an overwhelming majority – a reported 80 percent – recommended the church <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholics_and_Contraception.html?id=31-_B3EaBskC">expand its teaching</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholic_Intellectuals_and_Conservative.html?id=LK51AAAAMAAJ">to accept artificial contraception</a>. </p>
<p>That was not at all unusual. The Catholic Church had changed its stance on many controversial issues over the centuries, such as slavery, usury and Galileo’s theory that the Earth revolves around the sun. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">Minority opinion</a>, however, feared that to suggest the church had been wrong these last decades would be to admit the church had been lacking in direction by the Holy Spirit. </p>
<h2>‘Humanae Vitae’ ignored</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226535/original/file-20180706-122271-16d09ed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protest in Charleston, S.C., in 2012, against a federal mandate requiring employers to provide health insurance that includes birth control for workers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Bruce Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Paul VI eventually sided with this minority view and issued “Humanae Vitae,” <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html">prohibiting all forms of artificial birth control</a>. His decision, many argue, was not about contraception per se but the preservation of church authority. An <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Catholic_Intellectuals_and_Conservative.html?id=LK51AAAAMAAJ">outcry ensued from both priests and laypeople</a>. One lay member of the commission <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">commented</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It was as if they had found some old unpublished encyclical from the 1920s in a drawer somewhere in the Vatican, dusted it off, and handed it out.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Much has changed in the Catholic Church since 1968. Today, priests make it a pastoral priority to encourage sexual pleasure between spouses. While prohibitions on birth control continue, many pastors <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Vatican_Diaries.html?id=i_aMPEpHpBkC">discuss the reasons</a> a couple might want to use artificial contraception, from protecting one partner against a sexually transmitted disease to limiting family size for the good of the family or the planet. </p>
<p>Despite the changes in the church’s attitudes about sex, the prohibitions of “Humanae Vitae” remain. <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2016/09/28/4-very-few-americans-see-contraception-as-morally-wrong/">Millions of Catholics</a> around the world, however, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=5lf4xeSt5-AC&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=Ruth+Macklin+Cultural+Difference+and+Long+Acting&source=bl&ots=_OUwvw8IKP&sig=KyE41_vBGQXQ9rxGaQANdbSbayY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDmImKq6vbAhV0JDQIHVr9AusQ6AEILzAB#v=onepage&q=Ruth%20&f=false">have simply chosen to ignore them</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95694/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa McClain does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>July marks 50 years of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical prohibiting contraceptive use. For many years prior to it, the church had not been so explicit on its stance. How did it become such a thorny issue?Lisa McClain, Professor of History and Gender Studies, Boise State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/945442018-06-25T10:34:54Z2018-06-25T10:34:54ZHow Catholic women fought against Vatican’s prohibition on contraceptives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224300/original/file-20180621-137720-o2jmwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People dressed as sperm cells at Papal Nuncio building in The Hague for the sixth birthday of the encyclical, 'Humanae Vitae.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationaalarchief/3328265536/">Nationaal Archief</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago a fierce debate erupted in the Catholic Church over the papal document <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html">“Humanae Vitae,”</a> which reiterated the church’s ban on artificial contraception. Six hundred scholars, including many clergy, <a href="http://www.kha.at/downloads/statementbycatholictheologians.pdf">dissented from its teaching</a>, sparking a debate that caused a crisis over authority in the worldwide church. </p>
<p>While much attention is focused on the epic battle between theologians and the institutional church, which undoubtedly was significant, as a <a href="https://directory.roanoke.edu/faculty/160">historian of Catholic women</a>, I find the responses of Catholic laywomen even more compelling. </p>
<p>As theologians dissented, bishops raged and popes dug in their heels, Catholic laywomen and their partners made their own family planning decisions, as they had for many years before and would for decades after. </p>
<h2>What is Humanae Vitae?</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224297/original/file-20180621-137746-1heyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224297/original/file-20180621-137746-1heyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224297/original/file-20180621-137746-1heyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224297/original/file-20180621-137746-1heyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224297/original/file-20180621-137746-1heyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224297/original/file-20180621-137746-1heyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224297/original/file-20180621-137746-1heyc56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pope Paul VI.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paulaudenece1977.jpg">Ambrosius007</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html">Humanae Vitae</a> was a papal encyclical released by Pope Paul VI in 1968. However, it wasn’t the first papal document to prohibit contraception use. Thirty-eight years prior to that encyclical, Pope Pius XI had released a <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19301231_casti-connubii.html">document called “Casti Connubbi,”</a> barring Catholics from using artificial contraception. </p>
<p>There were some clear differences between the two encyclicals. The first insisted that procreation was the chief purpose of the sexual act. The second said that the “unitive” purpose – that is, the use of sex as a means of expressing love and strengthening the marital union – was equally important.</p>
<p>But Paul VI ultimately insisted that the unitive could not be separated from the procreative. According to the Catholic Church, each and every conjugal act must be open to life.</p>
<p>Even though Humanae Vitae largely affirmed an established teaching, <a href="http://press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/sex-violence-and-justice">it was still controversial</a>. This was because the debates among theologians and laypeople in the 30 years following Casti Connubi caused many to believe that the 1968 encyclical would overturn the Church’s ban on artificial contraception. </p>
<h2>Role of Catholic women</h2>
<p>What is important to note is that well before the 600 theologians expressed dissent, Catholic laywomen had already begun to reject this teaching. One major reason was what many believed to be a major flaw in the Vatican’s argument.</p>
<p>As early as the 1940s, large numbers of Catholic couples were encouraged to use the <a href="https://case.edu/affil/skuyhistcontraception/online-2012/Rhythm-method.html">rhythm method</a>, or timing sex to coincide with “the safe period” in a woman’s cycle, most commonly determined by charting a daily temperature reading. This was the accepted way to avoid conception, as they were not allowed to use a barrier method to achieve the same end.</p>
<p>Many failed to <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199734122.001.0001/acprof-9780199734122">understand or accept</a> this logic. If the church was admitting that couples could choose to limit their family size, why wouldn’t it allow them a more effective means of doing so, is what many women asked. They were also not convinced every sexual act need be open to life if the couple was open to having children.</p>
<p>So, starting in the 1940s, Catholic laywomen and men began to publicly discuss the church’s teaching on contraception. By the early 1960s, <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/fertility-doctor">when the birth control pill came into common use</a>, these questions became especially pressing. Catholic laywomen regularly wrote in the Catholic press and elsewhere expressing their views as married women and <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100616460">fostering a conversation that called the ban into question</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100616460">They wrote eloquently</a> about their marriages, their sex lives, their struggles with endless pregnancies and, increasingly, their frustration with rhythm. The only method of family limitation allowed them failed over and over again while the necessity of denying themselves sex caused rifts in couples already stressed by the care of large families. </p>
<p>Those frustrations often included the priests who promoted rhythm. “To me and many Catholics rhythm is a manifestation of an attitude of many clergymen looking down from their pedestals, offering us glib platitudes and the letter of the law, without seeing our real problems,” wrote Carolyn Scheibelhut, an American Catholic laywoman, in a letter to the editor of the Catholic magazine Marriage, in 1964. </p>
<h2>Did the Vatican hear laywomen’s voices?</h2>
<p>Laywomen’s voices finally reached the Vatican through the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">papal birth control commission</a> assembled by Pope John XXIII, between 1963 to 1966, to study the issue of artificial contraception.</p>
<p>Patty Crowley, co-founder of <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Disturbing_the_Peace.html?id=SnslAQAAIAAJ">the Christian Family Movement</a> and one of the few married women invited to participate, brought with her the results of a survey of Catholic couples who overwhelmingly described their struggles with the teaching, despite often heroic attempts to abide by it.</p>
<p>She later <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">remarked</a>, “It just struck me as ridiculous….How could they be talking about marriage and birth control of all things without a lot more input from the persons involved?” Crowley <a href="https://www.wjkbooks.com/Products/0664222854/in-our-own-voices.aspx">testified before the commission</a>, telling them that, besides being unreliable, rhythm was psychologically harmful, did not foster married love or unity and, moreover, was unnatural.</p>
<p>In what was surely a first in this group of primarily celibate men, Crowley explained that the majority of women most desire sexual intercourse during ovulation, precisely when they were taught to avoid sex. “Any simple psychology book tells us that people who are in a constant state of stricture in an area that should be open and free and loving are damaging themselves and consequently others,” she insisted.</p>
<p>Collette Potvin, another married woman <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Turning_Point.html?id=0a2RAAAAIAAJ">who testified</a>, recalled thinking “When you die, God is going to say, ‘Did you love?’ He isn’t going to say, ‘Did you take your temperature?’”</p>
<p>Persuaded by these testimonies and others, the commission voted to overturn the ban. Leaked to the press in 1967, this decision raised the hopes of laypeople all over the world. These expectations fed the outrage when Pope Paul VI chose to disregard the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/encyclical-that-never-was-9780722034057/">majority report of his own commission</a> in 1968.</p>
<h2>Use of contraception today</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224302/original/file-20180621-137725-58uwac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224302/original/file-20180621-137725-58uwac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224302/original/file-20180621-137725-58uwac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224302/original/file-20180621-137725-58uwac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224302/original/file-20180621-137725-58uwac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224302/original/file-20180621-137725-58uwac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224302/original/file-20180621-137725-58uwac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Majority of Catholic women around the world use contraceptives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dioceseofsaginaw/14368610797">Catholic Diocese of Saginaw Follow</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So, do the majority of Catholic women follow the teachings of Humanae Vitae on contraceptive use?</p>
<p>Available data show they do not. Their choice to disregard this teaching <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4682130">started well before the letter was released.</a> Among American Catholic women, for example, as of 1955, 30 percent used artificial contraception. Ten years later, that number had reached 51 percent, all before the ban was reiterated in 1968. </p>
<p>By 1970 the number of Catholic women in the U.S. using birth control hit 68 percent, and today there is <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-united-states">almost no difference</a> between the birth control practices of Catholics and non-Catholics in the United States. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2016/mar/08/contraception-and-family-planning-around-the-world-interactive">Globally, as of 2015</a>, there is little difference between Catholic and non-Catholic regions. For example, the percentage of contraceptive use in heavily Catholic Latin America and the Caribbean was 72.7 percent, – a 36.9 percent increase since 1970 – compared to 74.8 percent in North America.</p>
<p>I would argue the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae is a moment to remember the laywomen who changed Catholic history before, during and after 1968. It was laywomen’s collective decision to disregard the teaching that truly shaped Catholics’ modern attitudes toward birth control.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94544/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary J. Henold is affiliated with Roanoke Indivisible.</span></em></p>On the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, an encyclical released by Pope Paul VI calling for prohibition on contraceptive use, a scholar describes the struggles of Catholic women, as well as their activism.Mary J. Henold, John R. Turbyfill Professor of History, Roanoke CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/943442018-05-23T10:38:23Z2018-05-23T10:38:23ZAmerica’s graying population in 3 maps<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218161/original/file-20180508-34021-15540aq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Where do baby boomers live?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/group-senior-people-resting-park-mature-551227891?src=o0aJrfRLQhMZDMSlMJoqsw-1-5">oneinchpunch/shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. population has <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/data.html">changed substantially in the last half century</a>, growing by nearly 63 percent.</p>
<p>Perhaps the two most prominent demographic changes over the past 50 years relate to age. In 1968, the baby boom had just ended, and the oldest members of its cohort were only 22 years old. </p>
<p>As baby boomers age, the nation has substantially aged as well. In 1970, the median age in the U.S. was 28.1. In 2016, it was 37.9.</p>
<p>Demographers and geographers like myself have watched as this aging cohort transformed the U.S., from young children in the 1950s and 1960s to senior citizens today. This graying of America has left a distinctive geographical fingerprint. </p>
<h2>Where older Americans live</h2>
<p>Unsurprisingly, popular retirement states like Florida and Arizona have high concentrations of older Americans. </p>
<p>What may be more of a surprise is the broad swaths of elderly running through the Midwest and the Appalachians. These regions have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1066742">aged significantly</a>, as many younger residents headed toward the coasts. </p>
<p>Younger people have also moved out of New England, primarily in search of jobs. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut are among the seven states with a median age of over 40 in 2010; Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida are the others. </p>
<p><iframe id="GVyze" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/GVyze/1/" height="500px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Not only is the U.S. aging, but <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr66/nvsr66_06.pdf">the number of deaths is rising</a>. This trend will accelerate over the next few decades. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr67/nvsr67_01.pdf">the number of births</a> has declined since 2007. In fact, in 2013, over 30 percent of all U.S. counties experienced a phenomenon known as “natural decrease,” due the greater number of deaths than births. Natural decrease is now most prominent in Maine, the Appalachian region, the Great Plains and the Midwest. </p>
<p>Demographers expect this phenomenon to expand geographically over the coming years, as the general population continues to age. </p>
<p><iframe id="4jZb5" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/4jZb5/2/" height="500px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Movement around the US</h2>
<p>Over the last half century, Americans have steadily redistributed themselves, moving from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West. From 1970 to 2010, the Northeast and Midwest grew 15.7 percent, while the South and West nearly doubled in population.</p>
<p>The country has also become more urban. The percentage of the population living in urban areas increased by about 7 percentage points between 1970 and 2010. Urbanization increased in all states except Oklahoma and Maine. </p>
<p>Despite this trend, many cities <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/shrinking-cities-understanding-urban-decline-in-the-united-states/oclc/953735478">are now shrinking</a> – particularly cities in the Northeast and Midwest. More people, particularly young adults, are leaving these places for economic opportunity than are coming in. The percentage of the population <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2015/demo/p25-1142.html">living in large cities</a> has declined since 2013, while the percentage living in smaller cities increased from 17.9 to 20.1 percent. </p>
<p>Today, Americans are far less likely to move than they were 50 years ago. In 1968, 19 percent of the population changed their principal place of residence. This figure declined to just 11 percent in 2015. </p>
<p>In fact, despite a much larger population today, fewer total people are moving. In 1968, 37.3 million changed residence, while only 34.9 million did so in 2015. Indeed, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/shrinking-cities-understanding-urban-decline-in-the-united-states/oclc/95373547">the mobility rate in 2016</a> was the lowest it had been in decades.</p>
<p>Much of this change is attributable to age. People are <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2017/demo/geographic-mobility/cps-2017.html">less likely to move</a> as they age. In 1968, parents of the baby boomers were in their highly mobile, young adult years, but today boomers are older and more apt to stay where they are. </p>
<h2>Coast to coast</h2>
<p>Migration over the last 50 years has led the population to become <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0507318102">more bicoastal</a>. In 2010, 46.2 percent of Americans lived in states bordering the ocean – up from 43.2 percent in 1970.</p>
<p><iframe id="AOyPe" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/AOyPe/7/" height="500px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0507318102">Baby boomers</a> have contributed to this trend. Fifty years ago, this group was spread out evenly among the rest of the general population. By 1990, they had became more bicoastal and were concentrated in a small number of dynamic, growing metropolitan areas. </p>
<p>Between 1990 and 2000, a substantial number of boomers flocked from these metro areas to amenity-laden retirement and pre-retirement regions, like the Pacific Northwest, Florida, northern Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as some areas of the South, like the Ozark region and the Western Carolinas. </p>
<p>These areas have continued to grow, while baby boomers moved away in their greatest numbers from the southern Great Plains and the area along the Mississippi River Valley. </p>
<p>With the aging of the baby boomers, <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/11/millennials-largest-generation-us-labor-force/ft_18-04-02_generationsdefined2017_working-age/">Generation X and millennials</a> are now beginning to drive demographic change. With time, these groups will take an increasing role in determining the evolving geography of the U.S.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94344/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Rogerson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Over the last 50 years, Americans have steadily gotten older, more bicoastal and less likely to move to a new city.Peter Rogerson, Professor of Geography, University at BuffaloLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/956192018-05-11T14:55:45Z2018-05-11T14:55:45ZMay 1968: the posters that inspired a movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216507/original/file-20180426-175074-15cnam8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C114%2C1523%2C1064&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/12533165@N05/1345676945/in/photostream/">jonandsamfreecycle</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The uprisings that took hold of France in <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/1968-50th-anniversary-48869">May 1968</a> provided a blueprint for the kind of widespread social unrest capable of unifying students and factory workers. Beginning with protests over university reform, action escalated quickly to widespread strikes and occupations. The country’s leaders feared an actual revolution could be about to take place. </p>
<p>The movement also produced an important visual language for protest that still resonates half a century later. While often aesthetically crude in design, posters were pasted up in the streets calling for solidarity in the fight against capitalism.</p>
<p>Emanating from the printing room of Paris’ École des Beaux Arts, a group calling itself Atelier Populaire (“Popular Workshop”) subsequently produced the posters. They called them “weapons in the service of the struggle”. This extensive series depicted the tools of the proletariat, including the hammer, the spanner, the paintbrush, and reclaimed them as objects of power rather than subservience.</p>
<p>To create their posters, the group used a production technique – screen print – that was as immediate as the messages they sought to communicate through the work. It harnessed the kind of grass roots energy that is evident in thousands of hastily-produced banners and placards that continue to challenge the status quo around the globe today.</p>
<p>Atelier Populaire’s approach was to work in an egalitarian way. Each print was attributed to the collective rather than the individual designer. Its approach remains a veritable touchstone for those whose work and activism is driven by disillusion and disenfranchisement with the current system – especially those representing organisations which work anonymously to highlight their grievances.</p>
<p>The output is referenced in a huge number of works from protests movements that have taken place since 1968. Its influence is clear throughout high profile exhibitions of political materials such as <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/disobedient-objects/how-to-guides/">Disobedient Objects</a> and <a href="https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/hope-to-nope-graphics-and-politics-2008-18">From Hope to Nope</a> in London and <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/get-action/">Get With the Action</a> in San Francisco.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Be young and shut up’: a poster from the movement on display in Paris.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But this reverence really shouldn’t be the case. Atelier Populaire was clear that it did not want its work to be displayed, or even kept for posterity. “The struggle,” it argued, “is of such primary importance.”</p>
<p>However, these political posters – supposedly mere ephemera – retain power well beyond their original intentions. Perhaps that’s because some of the issues they addressed have refused to go away. In 1968, a single-colour print depicting an officer wielding a baton behind a shield emblazoned with a lightning bolt-like “SS”, raised questions about the heavy-handed police response to protests. </p>
<p>But the same is true today. The image still works as a criticism of police brutality and its associations with totalitarianism at a time when campaigners are seeking an official inquiry into the <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-files-add-weight-to-calls-for-battle-of-orgreave-inquiry-85697">Battle of Orgreave</a> and organisations such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/black-lives-matter-14463">Black Lives Matter</a> highlight cases of police aggression in the US. As one famous design reminds us: “La lutte continue” (the struggle continues). </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"992137445952155654"}"></div></p>
<h2>Ink remains</h2>
<p>Still, works on paper may be viewed as a relic from a bygone age. Even in the late-1960s, Atelier Populaire had declared that its posters “should not be taken as the final outcome of an experience, but as an inducement for finding, through contact with the masses, new levels of action both on the cultural and the political plane”. Writing in 2011’s <a href="https://www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk/books/beauty-is-in-the-street/">Beauty is in the Street</a> – an essential and comprehensive overview of material by Atelier Populaire – the group’s co-founder Philippe Vermès indeed suggested that “it’d be different now if we ran the same scenario through current times. Twitter and Facebook and cell phones didn’t exist in May ’68”.</p>
<p>Lucienne Roberts, one of the curators of the <a href="https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/hope-to-nope-graphics-and-politics-2008-18">Hope to Nope</a> exhibition in London, seemingly disagrees that those means of communication necessarily require updating. “I can’t help but think print is the best way to disseminate ideas free of surveillance,” she told me.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A famous poster from the time depicts a police officer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And that is an all-important point in 2018. Yes, digital platforms may be seen as having more reach, but as allegations continue to circulate regarding the online tactics of everything from <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43093390">Russian troll farms</a> to data companies such as <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/exposed-undercover-secrets-of-donald-trump-data-firm-cambridge-analytica">Cambridge Analytica</a>, it’s not just democracy but also dissent that is in danger of being subverted; hijacked, even. And while a trending hashtag or some anonymous <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9a3g97/block-4chan-to-stop-the-alt-right-from-spreading-racist-memes-scientists-say">4chan-sourced meme</a> might then appear to be the bleeding edge of a modern political movement, the lack of transparency and, indeed, physicality offers no indication of the how genuine or widely held any particular affiliation may be.</p>
<p>But 50 years after the ink dried on that very first call for solidarity – “Usines Universités Union” (Factories, Universities, Union) – it’s difficult to find a medium that more reliably encapsulates a true demonstration of discord and resistance than that of the political poster.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Cookney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Atelier Populaire produced many of the iconic images of the student and worker movement that gripped France 50 years ago.Daniel Cookney, Lecturer in Graphic Design, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/958952018-05-09T10:22:19Z2018-05-09T10:22:19ZEmmanuel Macron and echoes of May 1968<p>As France marks the 50th anniversary of the revolts of May 1968, Emmanuel Macron might get more than he bargained for. Instead of celebrating the occasion, the French president appears to be inadvertently recreating it. He has proposed a controversial higher education reform at a particularly inopportune moment, sparking major protests.</p>
<p>May ’68 had a significant impact on French society, politics and culture. Beginning with student protests, civil unrest soon spread and took on a philosophical dimension, touching every social milieu. Today these events have become a globally recognised myth of French culture and social change.</p>
<p>Macron, who has barely completed his first year in power, designated the anniversary an opportunity for France to <a href="https://www.lopinion.fr/edition/politique/l-elysee-reflechit-a-commemoration-mai-68-136101">“come out of the ‘morose’ ways in which the events that contributed to the modernisation of French society are discussed”</a>. For years, this period in French history was talked about in a negative way, and blamed for France’s ongoing social ills, including by <a href="https://www.nouvelobs.com/politique/elections-2007/20070430.OBS4781/nicolas-sarkozy-veut-liquider-l-heritage-de-mai-68.html">former presidents</a>. <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/egalit-libert-sexualit-paris-may-1968-784703.html">Contradictions of aims and demands</a> at the time (clear on the part of the workers, vague and mixed on the part of the students) made May ‘68 a messy affair. Opinions in its wake have been so divided that memory of it is often distorted.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Have I … messed this up?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Macron, as the first French president born after May '68, seemed to want to instill <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/2017/10/20/25001-20171020ARTFIG00161-emmanuel-macron-veut-commemorer-le-cinquantenaire-de-mai-68.php">a more positive attitude</a>. Nevertheless, he soon <a href="https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/finalement-pas-de-mai-68-pour-emmanuel-macron_1957826.html">changed his mind</a>, deciding not to commemorate it at all, but without giving a real reason. It’s against this backdrop that he brought in his reforms, perhaps explaining why he finds himself facing a rerun.</p>
<p>Macron’s proposed reforms include competitive selection and specialisation processes for universities in a bid to tackle oversubscription and high failure rates. The plans have been greeted with outrage among the general population and targeted action on campuses. Universities across France have suffered closures over the last month as students resist these changes, decrying elitism and social injustice. </p>
<p>Students have occupied campuses, set up blockades, and taken to the streets to protest. Banners and placards have taken inspiration from '68 to give a visual voice to the crowds. This is all as exam season enters into full swing, preventing many from sitting assessments. </p>
<h2>Philosophical roots</h2>
<p>France’s education system has its egalitarian roots in the 19th century. A series of <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/constitutional-right-to-an-education/france.php">laws</a> progressively made school education mandatory, secular and free. Central to the higher education system is the rule that anyone holding the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/sep/24/alevels2002.schools">baccalaureate</a> qualification (roughly equivalent to A-Level) is free to attend university. The reform of this qualification is one of the central points of contention in the student protests.</p>
<p>This history adds up to a fierce sense of pedagogical morals, and woe betide anyone who threatens them. If the laws and entry requirements add up to equality and liberty of access, the only remaining strand of the <a href="https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/coming-to-france/france-facts/symbols-of-the-republic/article/liberty-equality-fraternity">French national motto</a> is the fraternity required to stand up and defend the right to education. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, these shining ideals bring with them a different cost: success. While around 90% of pupils pass the baccalaureate, less than 40% of university students complete the degree which they initially began. This discrepancy was what caused Macron’s government to launch a wide reaching reform of the baccalaureate. The <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do;jsessionid=B828BEACEFDAE7DEDFFCFAD017491017.tplgfr21s_2?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000036683777&dateTexte=&oldAction=rechJO&categorieLien=id&idJO=JORFCONT000036683774">new law</a>, introduced in March 2018, will give universities the power to introduce selection criteria and candidate ranking, in the hope of only taking on students equipped to stay the course.</p>
<h2>2018: the anti-May '68?</h2>
<p>Centre-left French newspaper Libération began the year asking <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2018/01/01/2018-sera-t-il-l-anti-mai-68_1619824">“Will 2018 be the anti-May '68?”</a> Singing the praises of May '68’s revolt and revolutionary spirit, the paper presented a counter-revolutionary 2018, in which the freedom, equality and fraternity sought back then are stifled under <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/10/18/16490818/france-me-too-weinstein-sexual-harassment">harassment</a>, threats to <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f5309ff8-a521-11e7-9e4f-7f5e6a7c98a2">security </a>, and social <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/opinion/probing-the-heart-of-french-malaise.html">malaise</a>. Little did the newspaper realise that May 2018 would actually bear a striking resemblance to its predecessor.</p>
<p>Social unrest sprang up in similar ways in both cases. Today’s students have been occupying campuses across the country, against a background of <a href="https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2018/04/14/2780166-trains-avions-la-vie-en-temps-de-greve.html">transport strikes</a>, railway workers protesting in the streets, and Air France being grounded as staff strike over pay. The events of May '68, like those of May '18, stem from student resistance to measures to counter chronic oversubscription. Both have been mirrored by protest in other key groups. And both instances have exploded into a fierce defence of French principles.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Parisian students march in 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The current student protests may sit in a radically different context to those of '68 (with a shift from the socio-cultural to the socio-economic), but there is no denying the continuity of spirit. In both cases, we have a “convergence des luttes” (convergence of struggles) that shows that the threat to the French social model is at stake.</p>
<p>The numbers aren’t looking good for Macron if he wants to avoid a scene. Recent YouGov polls indicate that in the context of the current protests, <a href="https://fr.yougov.com/news/2018/04/09/commemoration-des-evenements-de-mai-68/">52% of French people</a> support a return to the events of May '68. With <a href="https://fr.yougov.com/news/2018/05/03/emmanuel-macron-un-de-pouvoir/">only 28% satisfied with Macron’s first year</a>, the French president could find himself reliving rather than commemorating May '68.</p>
<p>Despite the poor timing of Macron’s reform proposals, the May '68 / May '18 convergence highlights an engagement with socio-political issues that could be used to his advantage. In the same poll that indicated dissatisfaction with the president’s first year, over half of French people estimated that Macron carries out his promises. The French collective voice will clearly not be silenced, and Macron would do well to provide an ear to its message. Revolutionary ideals die hard, especially in France.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Benjamin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 50th anniversary of major student unrest was perhaps not the ideal moment to propose controversial higher education reforms.Elizabeth Benjamin, Lecturer in French, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/908022018-05-02T10:41:36Z2018-05-02T10:41:36ZAnti-war protests 50 years ago helped mold the modern Christian right<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217112/original/file-20180501-135806-bej79x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">William Sloane Coffin Jr., followed by his sister, arrives at federal building in Boston on May 20, 1968.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In May of 1968, a high-profile trial began in Boston that dramatically illustrated a larger phenomenon fueling the rise of conservative Christianity in the United States.</p>
<p>Five men had been charged with conspiracy for encouraging Americans to evade the draft. One of the prominent defendants in the trial was a Presbyterian minister and Yale University chaplain, William Sloane Coffin Jr.. </p>
<p>Coffin, like many ministers, vehemently opposed the Vietnam War, but many ordinary churchgoers supported it. This disagreement divided denominations.</p>
<p>Eventually, many alienated Protestants abandoned mainline churches in favor of the evangelical congregations that formed the core of the new conservative Christianity.</p>
<h2>Who was Coffin?</h2>
<p>Coffin was a prominent figure in <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/appendix-b-classification-of-protestant-denominations/">mainline Protestantism</a>, the term given to denominations like Episcopalians, Methodists and Presbyterians. These were the churches of the middle- and upper-class establishment, and their leaders had long enjoyed close connections to political elites.</p>
<p>The Coffin family belonged to the upper-class circles of New York City. Coffin’s father led the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his uncle, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Sloane-Coffin">Henry</a>, had been minister of the prestigious Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church as well as president of Union Theological Seminary, the divinity school <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-history-of-union-theological-seminary-in-new-york/9780231064552">that trained</a> generations of noted ministers and theologians.</p>
<p>Coffin’s own life exemplified the overlapping circles of government, academia and religion in which elite Protestants moved. He was a CIA officer during the Korean War, and after completing his studies at Yale, he became the university’s chaplain. </p>
<h2>From cold warrior to anti-war defendant</h2>
<p>Coffin, however, turned against the government when it came to Vietnam. In 1965, he <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/us/rev-william-sloane-coffin-dies-at-81-fought-for-civil-rights-and-against.html">helped establish</a> an anti-war group, “Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam.” At Yale, he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1967/10/13/archives/yale-chaplain-urges-students-to-ponder-spurning-the-draft.html">openly argued</a> against the war.</p>
<p>His trial stemmed from a 1967 antiwar rally in Boston. During the protests, Coffin collected the draft cards of men who refused to serve in Vietnam, which was a crime. He later publicized his actions and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/spock-indicted.html">sought arrest</a> to force a national debate about the draft. </p>
<p>He was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/spock-indicted.html">charged</a> with encouraging young men to “refuse or evade registration in the armed forces” and faced up to five years in federal prison.</p>
<h2>Anti-war action among the clergy</h2>
<p>Coffin was far from the only mainline Protestant minister to oppose the Vietnam War. Many ministers, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0009640715000943">in a departure from previous wars</a>, began criticizing U.S. policy in Vietnam in the mid-1960s. </p>
<p>This critique among Protestant leaders grew stronger in early 1968. A crucial event was North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive, a large-scale surprise attack on targets throughout South Vietnam, including the U.S. embassy. Though the attacks were ultimately unsuccessful, they <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-10-11/tet-offensive-shocked-nation-and-permanently-changed-us-attitudes-toward-vietnam">caused</a> many Americans to doubt President Lyndon Johnson’s assurances that the war’s end was in sight. </p>
<p>Soon after, leading Protestant journals <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1968/01/07/archives/religion-the-clergy-on-vietnam.html">offered</a> bolder criticism. The Christian Century, a nondenominational magazine that for decades had been the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-christian-century-and-the-rise-of-the-protestant-mainline-9780199938599?cc=us&lang=en&">voice of mainline Protestantism</a>, published an article that condemned the war as antithetical to religious values. Its authors <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1968/01/07/archives/religion-the-clergy-on-vietnam.html">wrote,</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A growing consensus among mature, morally sensitive people is that the spiritual integrity of the United States…cannot be secured by our present policy in Vietnam.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These ministers also joined Coffin in matching their rhetoric with action. The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1968/01/07/archives/religion-the-clergy-on-vietnam.html">reported</a> “an increasing number of churchmen are moving toward civil disobedience as a means of expressing dissent.”</p>
<p>Clergy promised to support draft resisters, even if it meant they too might be arrested. Younger ministers and divinity school students returned their own draft cards to signal their resistance.</p>
<h2>Support for the war in the pews</h2>
<p>As it became apparent that many mainline church leaders had embraced the anti-war position, it became equally clear that not all U.S. Protestants agreed with them. As The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1968/01/07/archives/religion-the-clergy-on-vietnam.html">noted</a> at the time, even the editors of the Christian Century and other Protestant journals recognized that “the majority of church members” did not “share such opposition to American policy in Vietnam.” </p>
<p>The most that could be hoped for was that churchgoers would be “willing to listen to reservations about the war.”</p>
<p>Times reporter Edward B. Fiske <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1968/02/11/archives/religion-some-clergy-say-no-on-war.html">observed</a> how conservative evangelical Protestants supported the war. Many, like the theologian and editor of Christianity Today, Carl F. Henry, believed it to be morally defensible. Fiske wrote that “the majority of laymen and clergy in this country” were more in agreement with Carl Henry than with William Sloane Coffin.</p>
<h2>The simmering divisions that boiled over</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217117/original/file-20180501-135844-io44oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217117/original/file-20180501-135844-io44oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217117/original/file-20180501-135844-io44oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217117/original/file-20180501-135844-io44oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217117/original/file-20180501-135844-io44oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217117/original/file-20180501-135844-io44oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217117/original/file-20180501-135844-io44oi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr. with Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Henry Burroughs</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was not the first time that prominent Protestant leaders found themselves at odds with regular churchgoers or even ordinary ministers.</p>
<p>As I have shown in <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100411860">my work on mainline Protestantism</a>, in the early 20th century, a division had long existed between liberal Protestant leaders and more conservative churchgoers. A significant number of ministers, for example, championed civil rights efforts and affirmed interfaith cooperation with Catholics and Jews – efforts staunchly opposed by many of their congregants. </p>
<p>But, it was in the Vietnam era, when a large numbers of Protestant leaders actively campaigned against U.S. military policy, that for many churchgoers the opposition went too far. </p>
<p>As Cambridge University historian <a href="https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/directory/amp33%40cam.ac.uk">Andrew Preston</a> has <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/133770/sword-of-the-spirit-shield-of-faith-by-andrew-preston/">written</a>, “divisions between liberal clerics and conservative congregants had always existed…but they were rarely as wide as on Vietnam.”</p>
<h2>Aftermath</h2>
<p>These attacks on U.S. war efforts by Coffin and other church leaders alienated many Protestant Americans – with lasting repercussions.</p>
<p>In terms of Coffin and his trial, the minister himself faced few <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2006/04/13/william-sloane-coffin-jr/0de8decb-56f9-4c1b-95d3-aab58cac785a/?utm_term=.8d59f23a2e5d">consequences</a>. Though initially found guilty, his conviction was overturned on appeal. He returned to Yale and later became minister of New York’s prestigious Riverside Church. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217115/original/file-20180501-135825-gsm4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217115/original/file-20180501-135825-gsm4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217115/original/file-20180501-135825-gsm4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217115/original/file-20180501-135825-gsm4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217115/original/file-20180501-135825-gsm4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217115/original/file-20180501-135825-gsm4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217115/original/file-20180501-135825-gsm4vq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Coffin’s activism: William Sloane Coffin Jr. greets captured American pilots in Hanoi, Vietnam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Peter Arnett</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mainline Protestant denominations, however, did not fare as well. They <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=D74aCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA434&pg=PA434#v=onepage&q&f=false">went into decline</a>, losing nearly one in six members between 1970 and 1985. </p>
<p>In the same years, Evangelical churches grew by double-digit percentages. They welcomed Americans who had abandoned mainline denominations to protest the liberal views of clergy on many social issues, including the Vietnam War. These churches supported the religious right and its brand of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-new-generation-is-changing-evangelical-christianity-67044">conservative politics</a>.</p>
<p>As historian George Bogaski <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739179963/American-Protestants-and-the-Debate-over-the-Vietnam-War-Evil-was-Loose-in-the-World">observed</a>, in the Vietnam War, “mainline churches lost.” When prominent ministers like Coffin and writers in leading periodicals attacked the war, they alienated people in the pews.</p>
<p>For decades, mainline Protestant denominations had united liberal leaders with more conservative churchgoers. That union proved unsustainable in the wake of 1968.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90802/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Mislin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The anti-Vietnam War efforts of Yale University chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr. and other church leaders alienated many Protestant Americans – with lasting repercussions.David Mislin, Assistant Professor of Intellectual Heritage, Temple UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.