 Black Power by Stokely Carmichael
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Chapter 3
o View that black people will only gain rights through coalitions with
liberal, labor, church and other liberal left forces
o This viewpoint considers black power as separatist, although black power
advocates are not against alliances
o Coalitionists don’t realize three major concepts:
 Issue 1: Interests of black people are not identical to those of
liberal, labor, and reform groups. They do not want major
reorientation of the society
 White liberals see racial inequality differently than blacks
 Black power advocates think its impossible to ally with
someone who accepts the “anglo-conformity and other
prevailing norms and institutions”
 Anglo-conformity= assumption that what is good for
whites is good for blacks
 Issue 2: A viable coalition cannot be effective between the rich and
powerful and the poor and disenfranchised
 Rich and the poor are seen as having different goals by
definition
 Perception that the black issues will be disregarded as soon
as they come into conflict with the issues of the coalition it
is in
 The whites are secure in their political position, so the
coalition with the blacks is unnecessary in most cases
 Issue 3: Coalitions cannot be sustained by appeals to conscience,
or a sentimental basis
 Coalitions cannot survive on goodwill because everything
political is driven by self-interest
 Allies can withdraw their good will without any retribution,
hence why goodwill relationships are meaningless
o What are grounds of viable coalitions?
 Coalition must be based on a mutually beneficial goal, all parties
must be self interested, that there’s a self interest in both the long
term goal as well as the allegiance with the other members of the
coalition
 Coalition must have a power base, not just beg for the sympathy of
the nation
 Coalitions must deal with specific and identifiable, not vague and
general goals
 Coalitions can be useful for minor issues, but they are dangerous in
that one must not assume that the long term goals of blacks and
whites are the same or that the minor issues are all that are capable
of being solved
o Role of whites in black power
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Educative- whites need to educated their neighbors about need for
the black power movement
 Organizational- whites need to organize their own poor, so that
there isn’t resentment to the efforts made to combat black poverty
 Supportive- blacks and whites need to consider each other coequals in pursuit of common goal
Chapter 4- Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)
o MFDP based in SNCC, push for black political power
o Political disenfranchisement of blacks came from MS Dem. Party,
freedom vote a response to that oppression
o MFDP one of the first coalitions talked about above, northern delegations
gained from support MFDP because it would dislodge sr. southern
senators that held committee chair positions
o MFDP had four main points:
 Open party, anyone can join
 Supported nat’l party platform, which MS Dems had rejected
 Willing to sign oath of loyalty to nat’l party, which only 4 of 68
regular MS Dems would do
 Supported and actively campaigned for nat’l democratic
candidates, while “regular” MS Dems worked for goldwater
o Nat’l party rejected MFDP, rewards for sticking to party line by MFDP
supporters outweighed the benefits that sticking to MFDP, so they lost all
support
o MFDP rejected compromise of two seats on the regular party’s delegation
to the convention, bc they wanted to replace the racist party, not join it
o Moral taken away from this betrayal was that Mississippi blacks couldn’t
trust their “allies”
Chapter 5-First Electoral Chance
o November 1966 first election in black belt with a large registered black
population
o Catalyst for change was SNCC workers in 1965
o In looking for black leaders, there were the black teachers and principals
who had power given to them by the white power structure, but they
weren’t good leaders because they couldn’t challenge their white bosses
without losing their jobs
o Ministers had divine authority over their parishes but no power within
white power structure
o Ministers did have influence over community though, principals were out
of touch with their social group
o Once federal registrars came in to register voters and the absurd tests were
eliminated, black voter registrants skyrocketed
o Registration gave sense of power to black community because of its
defiance of so many years of oppression.
o Lowndes County Freedom Organization Party formed, made a platform,
and elected primary candidates
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o On election day, decision was made to challenge the right to vote of the
whites by the blacks as a preemptive move
o In the end though, many blacks voted for whites, and the LCFO won no
seats that day
Chapter 6- politics of deference
o Booker T Washington advocated for personal education and economic
development, not as much on the political involvement
o In Tuskegee the blacks were relegated to running the VA Hospital and the
Tuskegee Institute, while the whites ran all political and commercial
operations in the city.
o Many blacks withdrew from society rather than to participate in the shams
o The semi-powerful blacks envisioned working within the system to make
better changes, so that blacks could be on a democratic party ticket
o As the blacks tried to gain gradual political power, they were forced to
resort to boycotts of white businesses to exert their will
o Independent blacks ran other candidates because the democratic party only
ran one candidate in 1964 elections, not all positions in order to show that
there was no “danger” from black vote, that blacks could gain
“experience” with such a mild introduction to politics, and that whites
wouldn’t want to leave with an all black government
o Democratic ticket won, and blacks still had little voice in politics
o Black sheriff was elected in 66, but his power was undercut financially
and in terms of man-power
o The middle class blacks of Tuskegee basically soothed themselves into a
complacency, and did not address the issues at hand when one of their
own was shot for trying to enter a “white” restroom, instead they stuck to
the theory that eventually the whites would treat them correctly
o Tuskegee blacks had the potential in terms of education and economics,
but they refused to admit that they had leadership capabilities and
therefore did not take advantage of their potential and had to suffer more
years of white power.
Chapter 7: DYNAMITE in the Ghetto
The authors cite the city as “the major domestic problem facing this nation in the
second half of the twentieth century.” The relocation of corporate powers,
technology development, and federalism has given the government more power
as cities become regional administrations, and this has also caused the lower
class who can’t afford to stay in the city to transform “from production to
permanently unemployed.” The problems of the city and institutional racism are
connected because the ghetto hosts the most expendable people in the
corporate world and yet it is also the place where black people hold the most
power.
To understand the black ghetto one must look at the history of black migration to
the north. Though many had moved north after emancipation, those who stayed
in the south were forced to endure a high level of racism and murder by whites in
the 1870s in an effort to destroy their new political power. When Hayes became
president in 1876 he withdrew troops and gave control back to the white planters
that only allowed this racism to grow. The authors quote DuBois’ Black
Reconstruction to show how black people began to give up their right to
enfranchisement and hence their political power due to outside pressures (p
150). Black people began to want to move again, but a new migration didn’t
really get under way until war production demanded more workers during WWI,
and it continued into the 20s, 30s and another boom during WWII. Another
reason for the move is the mechanization of southern plantations.
The problems that blacks had to endure when they moved to the city included:
being crowded in the slums (with ridiculously high rents), daily fights for menial
work as they were rejected industry jobs and were the first ones fired, and little to
no education. Bombing of black homes began in 1917 and 1919, especially in
Chicago, and then blacks began to retaliate. Commissions began to appear to
regulate the hiring of principals and teachers in black schools as well as try to
keep violence to a minimum. In the fifties, blacks finally got to see a light at the
end of the tunnel in the Brown vs. Board of Education decision and the
Montgomery Bus Boycott. The authors then give a small summary of the race
riots of the 60s, and say that the brief scan of history they’ve provided show that
the disturbances were not just isolated reactions to the cry of “Black Power,” but
a pattern.
Nowadays things like American judgment and urban renewal programs have
caused blacks to get even deeper in the ghetto. The authors write: “Here we
begin to understand the pervasive, cyclic implications of institutional racism.
Barred fro most housing, black people are forced to live in segregated
neighborhoods and with this comes de facto segregated schooling, which means
poor education, which in turn leads to ill-paying jobs.” They say that integration is
impossible and not the answer, but one should look to quality education instead.
This cycle and the poor health conditions in the ghetto is what causes the
dynamite in the ghetto.
Chapter 8: THE SEARCH for New Forms
The authors state that modern institutions only look to manage conflict and its up
to the black community to create the initiative for change in order to solve their
problems. Ghetto schools have to be taken out of the hands of white
“professionals” who carry with them the biases of the middle class. Black parents
should emphasize race in a positive way, not to “subordinate or rule over others
but to overcome the effects of centuries in which race has been used to the
detriment of the black man” in order to avoid reverse segregation. They tell the
story about how black parents fought to become advisors in the NYC school
systems in Harlem (pp 167-171).
The authors write that tenant in black buildings should form their own kind of
unions to demand just rents for their living conditions. This will prevent the
slumloard from perpetuating socially detrimental conditions. Black people should
also recognize that the white people are aware of them as a consumer class and
should only buy from markets that they respect. This could soon provide more
jobs for black people and donate money to schools. The authors also feel that
the black people should elect their own party representatives wisely and
recognize their numbers and thus everyone should vote. In summary, the
potential for power in the ghettos is high, people just need to take advantage of it.
Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, chs 6-10
Chapter 6: The Bus
•spring 1964, wanted to get a station wagon for Kesey and a few others to drive to the
New York world’s fair, this would coincide with Kesey’s second novel’s publication
(Sometimes a Great Notion),
•found classified ad for school bus, had bunks and benches, refrigerator, sink, cabinets,
shelves, Kesey bought it for $1,500, Pranksters gave it their own touches: painted it,
wired it for sound, could play music in it, broadcast from it, said “Furthur” on the front,
“Caution: Weird Load” on back, they take acid and film themselves,
•the Non-People (the guy who said he was no mechanic but told them what the problem
with their bus was): “The whole freaking world was full of people who were bound to tell
you they weren’t qualified to do this or that but they were determined to go ahead and do
just that thing anyway. Kesey decided he was the Non-navigator. Babbs was the Nondoctor. The bus trip was already becoming an allegory of life.”pg 72
•the point of the trip was for everybody to be what they are, and don’t deny anybody else
•all the drugs they were on made it seem like a “great secret life. The befuddled citizens
could only see the outward manifestations of the incredible stuff going on inside their
skulls.” Pg 77 They all took new names for their movie characters and then just started
going by them.
•”Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially
this: ‘You’re either on the bus…or off the bus.’”
•took the southern route on the way there, TX, LA, FL, then north up the seaboard to NY
Chapter 7: Unauthorized Acid
•Hagen’s girl (Stark Naked—the witch-looking girl) had jumped off the bus and scooped
up a little boy she thought was her own, she was taken by the cops, put in a psychiatric
ward, and the Pranksters considered this “completing her trip. She had done her thing.”
•Pranksters go swimming on acid, don’t realize they are at a segregated Blacks only
beach, cops come and send them along
• “Sandy knew that Kesey was the key to whatever was going right and whatever was
going wrong on this trip, and nobody, not one of them who ever took this trip, got in this
movie, would ever have even the will to talk up to Kesey and announce irrevocably: I am
off the bus. It would be like saying, I am off this…Unspoken Thing we are into…” pg 93
•Sandy has insomnia, feels like he hasn’t had a good high the whole trip, takes “big slug
of Unauthorized Acid”, feels wrong, he can’t tell anyone because it was wrong, told Jane
but no one else can know, Kesey says he will no longer be his guide for this trip,
Chapter 8: Tootling the Multitudes
•Kesey held a briefing, all felt that the trip was becoming a mission, wanted the
Pranksters to keep doing their thing, but to also be “deadly competent” and always alert
•tootling: they got on top of the bus and played people like they were music, did this once
they reached NYC
•Pranksters got an apartment in NYC, had party where Cassady’s friends Jack Kerouac
and Allan Ginsberg attended, Kerouac was the old star, Kesey was the new star
•Sometimes a Great Notion came out to either great or terrible reviews
Chapter 9: The Crypt Trip
•bus headed for Millbrook, NY where Timothy Leary and his group, the League for
Spiritual Discovery, lived (house was owned by Hitchcocks)
•Learyites treat the Pranksters as if they have “something rather deep and meditative
going on here, and you California crazies are a sour note.” Pg 105
•the Crypt Trip: Pranksters making fun of the Learyites, a play on their revered text, The
Tibetan Book of the Dead, saying they took their high followers to the crypt to hang them
up: “The clear message was Fuck you, Millbrook, for your freaking frostiness.” Pg 106
Chapter 10: Dream Wars
•took the Northern route back to CA
•Sandy and Kesey get into a fight, Kesey pins him up against the side of the bus, the first
time that anyone saw Kesey use force, they talk, Kesey asks why Sandy is still getting off
the bus continuously, Sandy explains he is constantly “remounting” and it enhances his
experience
•Sandy remained very paranoid, thought the Pranksters were out to get him,
•Dream Wars: Sandy’s dreams, power vs. Kesey’s, one of them will kill the other in the
dream war,
•Sandy went crazy, ended up in jail, his brother took him back to NY for treatment
Chapters 10-20:
Summary:
The book follows the story of Ken Kesey, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's
Nest” and his friends the Merry Pranksters. Tom Wolfe basically followed these people
around and wrote about their adventures on a cross country road trip where mind altering
drugs like LSD were used. As a result, the book really doesn’t make much sense, which
actually suggests the mindset of a lot of the people during this era.
From Chapter 10 to 20, Kesey has set up a new base of operations at La Honda
where he introduces mind altering drugs to his friends. Throughout the course of the
story more and more people join their group and believe in their cause in trying to
influence others in seeing the world in a different way, both literally and figuratively.
They try to bring their views to the masses by setting up “acid tests.” These tests were
giant parties with blacklights, dayglow paint, colorful costumes, and massive amounts of
LSD. The pranksters becomes more and more famous within the hip community and
they also become infamous with the FBI. Kesey is captured on a roof with Mountain
Girl, another prankster with marijuana. He is arrested, and while out on bail, tries to fake
his own suicide and flee to Mexico. The truck that was supposed to be crashed into the
tree broke down, and thus didn’t go right with the suicide note, and the boots that were
supposed to land at the bottom of the cliff were taken away by the sea. The feds were not
fooled.
The longer he lived in Mexico away from the other pranksters, he became more
and more paranoid much of the time, alternating with periods when he felt invincible
against law enforcement. During his paranoid periods, he would disappear into the jungle
for days at a time, so as to elude the “cops” that were right on his tail. This pattern of
paranoia followed by periods of complete indifference to the police and law enforcement
would continue though the next several months, both in Mexico and the USA.
Eventually, the Merry Pranksters drive the bus down to Mexico, to visit Kesey, and he
decides to make his triumphant return, slipping through the US-Mexico border as a
drunken country/western singer on horseback.
Key Terms:
Merry Pranksters- group of people who hung around Kesey. The Pranksters were heavy
users of marijuana and LSD, and in the process of their journey they are said to have
"turned on" many people whom they introduced to these drugs by performing “acid
tests.”
Kesey- wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and was the leader of the Merry
Pranksters.
Themes to think about:
was it a revolution and/or movement?
What did they try to achieve?
They didn’t have goals but they:
Do whatever they wanted
Against authority
Against conformity
Drugs, lsd, a way to get to a higher level of understanding
Joan Didion, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”
This is an essay Didion wrote in 1967 about her experience traveling to San
Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. There she explored the counterculture of the Haight
Street area, populated—in her telling—mostly by lonely and lost adolescents who called
themselves “hippies.”
Style of Writing, Basic Content Summary
Didion’s style of writing belongs to the experiential and experimental nonfictionwriting of the period. She tries to capture the dialect and experience of her subjects,
giving tiny anecdotes and scenes, always in the present tense, often in their forms of
speech (“We drink some more green tea and talk about going up to Malakoff Diggings in
Nevada County because some people are starting a commune there and Max thinks it
would be a groove to take acid in the diggings”).
The narrative is broken into what seem at first to be random vignettes and cultural
relics. The general sense is of sexual experimentation, persistent boredom and apathy,
lots and lots of ecstasy, and—above all—decline. She even says flat out, as she quotes
from a neighborhood newspaper column: these “are a couple of items from Herb Caen’s
column one morning as the West declined in the spring of 1967.” And the title of the
essay refers to a line from a Yeats poem, the same one with the famous line: “Things fall
apart; the center cannot hold,” as well as the concluding lines: “The darkness drops again;
but now I know / That twenty centuries of stony sleep / Were vexed to nightmare by a
rocking cradle, / And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards
Bethelem to be born?”
What Didion is Saying About the Counterculture: They Are Completely Lost, Depressed,
No Community, No Values
The disjointed style is part of Didion’s larger conclusions about the empty
promises of American liberalism. Didion starts the essay by describing a nation that was
falling apart into a kind of anomie, a collapse of social wholeness: “The center was not
holding…Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the
future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now
learn the games that had held the society together.” She juxtaposes that picture with the
great prosperity of the times, and the optimism it gave some people for the possibility of
social change and “national promise.” But, she says, though “it might have been a spring
of brave hopes…it was not.”
The hippies indeed seem to have no values and no hope. “There’ve been times I
felt like packing up and taking off for the East Coast again, at least there I had a target.
At least there you expect that it’s going to happen,” one of them says. “Here you know
it’s not going to.” When Didion asks him “what it is that is supposed to happen,” he
replies: “I don’t know. Something. Anything.” Having lost a sense of meaning and
purpose in their lives, but still desperately searching for both, the hippies put all their
hopes in drugs. A girl named Sharon tells Didion that she wants to “turn on” her brother
to acid and the counterculture, saying, “He’s fourteen now, that’s the perfect age.” But
the drugs do not actually make them happy; Didion describes their trips as the epitome of
non-experience, of nothingness.
The meaningful experiences the hippies do claim to have, Didion suggests, are
also meaningless. For instance, the same Sharon is involved with a man named Max.
Didion showcases their relationship as an example of the emptiness of hippies’ claim to
feel things deeply, suggesting that actually they have turned themselves completely
numb. At one point, discussing their relationship, Sharon says: “It’s stronger than
anything in the world.” And Max says: “Nothing can break it up…As long as it lasts.”
The implied reference is “love,” but it turns out really they are talking about acid—
“Because once you drop acid with somebody you flash on, you see the whole world melt
in her eyes,” Max explains. Artificial stimulation has replaced real experience.
Her Historical Analysis of the Time: Lost Political Potential
Didion becomes most explicit about the point she is trying to make at the end of
the essay. Mainstream observers misinterpret the hippies when they say “the movement”
is depoliticized and apolitical, claiming that “there really were no activists in HaightAshbury.” In her experience, the young people gathered in San Francisco were making a
political statement, if a weak and misplaced one. The movement was in fact a response to
American society’s total failure to provide a community for these children, many of
whom, Didion had explained, were the children of divorced parents who ran away
because their home life wasn’t satisfying. They came to Haight-Ashbury in search of
community, which had died in the late twentieth century, and the values and rules it
enforces. “These were children who grew up cut loose from the web of cousins and greataunts and family doctors and lifelong neighbors who had traditionally suggested and
enforced the society’s values,” she explains.
The media has failed to grasp this deeper political meaning in the “hippie”
phenomenon, she argues, because the participants in it also cannot articulate it. The only
education they have is that which the society has provided them; “their only proficient
vocabulary is in the society’s platitudes.” So they speak in the sound bites of that
society—“Vietnam, Saran-Wrap, diet pills, the Bomb”—without knowing what they
really mean. In this way, Didion explains, they are “an army of children waiting to be
given the words”—she doesn’t say which words, but we should probably assume she
means words to express the fact of their anomie, to describe the fact that their parents’
divorces have been painful and left them cut off, without community and without
purpose.
The worst part, however, is that these children failed to make for themselves what
society first failed to give them: community and values. Instead, they have created, she
suggests at the end, one more generation of lost souls. The essay ends with a description
of something called “High Kindergarten,” which the teenage resident of a commune has
created for her daughter, and then with a description of the child of another young
mother, Sue Ann, scolding her son for “chewing on an electric cord,” which the other
commune residents hadn’t noticed “because they were in the kitchen trying to retrieve
some very good Mexican hash…”
The Birth of the Yippie Conspiracy by Paul Krassner
Brief Summary/Thesis:
In The Birth of the Yippie Conspiracy, Krassner talks about the hypocrisies of the
Vietnam War and with American society. While people talk about the birth of hippies,
Krassner argues that the real talk should be the death of the straight world. Krassner is
criticizing this new consumer culture where everything is televised and people don’t have
any control.
There is not much to summarize, so instead I have provided some quotes. There are not
really any important figures mentioned in the reading.
Quotes:
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Now that Lynda Bird Johnson has publicly revealed in McCall’s magazine the
occasional bedroom togetherness of her parents, the slogan Make Love, Not War
can no longer be thought of as necessarily requiring a choice between those two
alternatives
“You don’t decide something is absurd—you recognize something is absurd.”
I’m writing here on a tiny island off the coast of Florida. There are four of us:
Abbie Hoffman and his wife, Anita; me, and my temporary soul mate. Yesterday
we all took a lil ol LSD tripereeno, and either it was very powerful acid or else
there was an actual hurricane.
I was in Cuba on the first anniversary of the revolution. I had always been Against
Violence. But as I learned what total inhumanity my own country had fostered
there, I realized that there would be no alternative but a violent revolution to
overthrow the Batista regime.
And when I was asked about future plans, I could only smile and say, “You think
I’m going to tell you?” I went on to suggest that we were going to put truth serum
in reporters’ drinks, but they left that out.
I remember a press conference in Cuba held by a group of visiting professors…I
watched how correspondents took notes on negative aspects of the revolution but
kept their pencils poised during the exposition of positive accomplishments.
Hippies, black people, Viet Cong—they’re all expendable. It’s not far-fetched to
draw a link between sentencing a young person to prison for smoking flowers and
dropping napalm on a suspected guerilla stronghold. What these acts have in
common is exercise of power without compassion.
I don’t want to see a single American killed in Vietnam, but in a battle between
right and wrong, one must take sides. How many years can you go on listening to
General Westmoreland say that we have to continue the bombing as long as they
keep using those anti-aircraft guns?
Between the emotion of Labor and the rationale of anthropology, an imaginary
leader named General Consensus is telling a convention of Gold Star mothers in
limbo that the International Communist Conspiracy is more threatening than ever.
They desperately need this reassurance that their sons have not died in vain
insanity.
A young black man stops a hippie on the street and says, “Hey, you guys are the
new niggers.” Now they’re increasingly learning how much they have in
common, including the enemy: coercive authority.
What blacks and hippies and Vietnamese share is a goal: to have power over their
own lives. The notion is crystallized by an SDS button on draft resistance: “Not
with my life you don’t.” It doesn’t matter whether or not you take LSD, have an
abortion, vote, drop out; the only thing that mattes is your right to do with your
body and soul what you will.
And so the Second American Revolution is coming…draft resistance will become
a fraternity initiation rite…armed violence will be interrupted by TV
commercials…
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No more marches. No more rallies. No more speeches. The dialogue is over,
baby. Tolerance of rational dissent has become an insidious form of repression.
The goal now is to disrupt an insane society.
Do It! By Jerry Rubin
Thesis/Brief Summary:
Drop out of school and participate in life… think for yourself, don’t do as others do.
Summary/Quotes:

On the surface of the world of the 1950’s was all Eisenhower calm. A cover story
of “I Like Ike” father-figure contentment. Under the surface, silent people railed
at the chains upon their souls. A latent drama of repression and discontent.
Amerika was trapped by her contradictions.
 We were conditioned in self-denial.
 Elvis Presley ripped off Ike Eisenhower by turning our uptight young awakening
bodies around.
THE MIDDLE OF THE BEAST
 As Che rapped on for four hours, we fantasized taking up rifles. Growing beards.
Going into the hills as guerrillas. Joining Che to create revolutions throughout
Latin America. None of us looked forward to returning home to the political
bullshit in the United States.
 Then Che jolted us out of our dream and said to us: “You North Amerikans are
very lucky. You live in the middle of the beast. You are fighting the most
important fight of all, in the center of the battle.
EVERY REVOLUTIONARY NEEDS A TV
 A government survey shows that three out of every five high schools in the
country had some form of active protest in 1969.
 TV is raising a generation of kids who want to grow up and become
demonstrators
 The media is not neutral. The presence of a camera transforms a demonstration,
turning us into heroes. We take more chances when the press is there because we
know whatever happens will be known to the entire world within hours.
 Television keeps us escalating our tactics; a tactic becomes ineffective when it
stops generating gossip or interest.
 I never understand the radical who comes on TV in a suit and tie. Turn off the
sound and he could be mayor.
 Our power lies in our ability to strike fear in the enemy’s heart: so the more the
media exaggerate, the better. When the media start saying nice things about us,
we should get worried.
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If the yippies controlled national TV, we could make the Viet Kong and the Black
Panthers the heroes of swooning American middle-aged housewives everywhere
within a week.
 You can’t be a revolutionary today without a television set—its as important as a
gun. Every guerrilla must know how to use the terrain of the culture that he is
trying to destroy.
REVOLUTION is THEATER-IN-THE-STREETS
 The only role of theater is to take people out of the auditorium and into the streets.
The role of the revolutionary theater group is to make the revolution.
BURN DOWN THE SCHOOLS
 Summary: Goes into a psychology class called “Thinking.” Teacher says “Good
morning class,” and someone writes that down and asks if they have to know it
for the exam.
o He starts to roll a joint in the class and smokes it, no one says
anything…starts to make out with someone and no one says anything…
people start to get very uncomfortable, finally someone asks them to leave
and goes to get the police
o “This is a class on thinking! We are thinking! You can’t separate thinking
from kissing, feeling, touching.”
 Schools—high schools and colleges—are the biggest obstacle to education in
Amerika today.
 Taking an exam is like taking a shit. You hold it in for weeks, memorizing, just
waiting for the right time. Then the time comes, and you sit on the toilet.
 Look at both sides of the argument, take no action, take no stands, commit
yourself to nothing, because you’re always looking for more arguments, more
information, always examining, criticizing.
 Our generation is in rebellion against abstract intellectualism and critical thinking.
 We admire the Viet Kong guerrilla, the Black Panther, the stoned hippie, not the
abstract intellectual vegetable.
 They’re so thankful for their “intellectual freedom in Amerika” that they’re not
going to waste it fighting on issues like poverty, war, drugs, and revolution. They
insist upon the freedom to be irrelevant.
 The goal of revolution is to eliminate all intellectuals, create a society in which
there is no distinction between intellectual and physical work: a society without
intellectuals.
 School addicts people to the heroin of middle-class life: busy work for grades
(money) stored in your records (banks) for the future (death). We become
replaceable parts for corporate Amerika.
 The professors and students are the dropouts—people who have dropped out of
Life. The dropouts from school are people who have dropped into Living. Our
generation is making history in the streets, so why waste our lives in plastic
classrooms?
 Why stay in school? To get a degree? Print your own. Can you smoke a diploma?
 The same people who control the universities own the major capitalist
corporations, carry out the wars, fuck over black people, run the police forces and

eat money and flesh for breakfast. They are absentee dictators who make rules but
don’t live under them.
The war on the campuses is similar to e war in Vietnam; a guerrilla peoples’ war.
We’re using the campus as a lunching pad to foment revolution everywhere.
Sara Evans Personal Politics Chapters 4-8
Chapter 4 Black Power – Catalyst for Feminism
lackness
Summer of 1964, group of women in SNCC led by Ruby Doris Smith Robinson and
including Mary King, Casey Hayden, Mary Varela sit down to write a paper on
SNCC’s inability to achieve sexual equality. Yet King, Hayden hesitant to sign. White
women’s roles, precarious within black rights movement, held back from direct
engagement on issue of sex roles. Paper circulated without authors names about
relegation fto clerical role, exclusion from ecisionmaking and leading positions, Stokely
Carmichael’s rebuttal: “Only position for womenin SNCC is prone.”
After conference, black women confront black men about just hooking up with white
women. Leades to earch for definitions of femininity that include blackness. Growing
bitterness/disillusionsment in movement after violence of summer of 1964m no
interventions of federal government, real dangers within field. Hostility toward whites
reflects rising militance, impatience with nonviolence. Position of whites within
movement on decline after 1965. In fall of 1965, King and Hayden write memo
addressed to a “number of other women in the peace and freedom movements” talks abot
caste system, woemen’s subordination.
Chapter 5 Reassertion of the Personal
Movement a conglomeration of movements, for young blacks, civil rights (SNCC, SCLC,
CORE), for whites, civil rights, SDS, Student Peace Union, northern Student Movement.
Activism of SDS, northern activists learned about southern activism, develop
analytical/abstract version of southern concepts, view as moral crusade. They organize
around issues that are remoted from their daily lives. Intellectual work in SDS was male
work, intellectual core was a group of young men. Public positions monopolized by men.
At Port Huron, atmosphere warm community, women were not conscious of being put
aside. Problem was not a lack of knowledge of intellectual sophistication but a matter of
style (competition, domineering). Oppression of women seen as peripheral issue,
devastation of McCarthy era meant more important issues to be dealt with. Girls raised
in activist families were taught independence, self confidence, egalitarian ideals
Chapter 6 Let the People Decide
SDS intellectual approach inadequate in face of violence, led to push toward community
organizing (ERAP). SDS set out to reate interracial movement of poor (influenced by
Michael Harringtn’s The Other America). ERAP-ers romanticized poverty, provided
radicalizing experiences for students (like had happened with SNCC), infuned left with
anti-leaderhip, anarchic democreacy. Student not prepared for reality of day to day
organizing, did not have clear plan what they were organized for, people did not
necessarily like meetings with unclear goals. There were no visible oppressors. SDS-ers
came tobelieve their own movement should embody the type of future they were working
for. Tensions of leaderless movment and organizers lead ERAP to decentralize. Some
have problems with violence in areas the were working, others “red-baited”
(investigations by FBI into Communisty activity). ERAP first time women were
independent organizers, had self respect, command. Two of most successful projects led
by women, Clevelend (Sharon Jeffry and Carol McEldowney). Also Boston (Marya
Levensen and Pat Hansen). Other most well known projects, led by men in Newark and
Chicago. Smetime men drawn into romanticizing and emulating exaggerated macho
subculture, hanging out in street corners, bars. ERAP became embroiled in sexual
revolution, sleeping around, women brought into movment as girlfriends, status rises/falls
according to changes in sex life
Chapter 7 The Failure of Success Women in the Movement
Rethinking conference for SDS Dec 1965, movement grew in reaction to Vietnam War.
Hayden and King’s memo on positin of women circulated at this conference. Women’s
workshop convened, rbeaks off into subgroups, some men told to leave. Mail out notes
from subgroups/workshops. Focuson question of women’s identity, focus on male
approval, discussion of sex (suggestion raised that both women and men should raise
children), issue statement that says SDS must promoted “honest and open discussion”
issue framed as an internal one. But movement groups, odl guard replaced by new,
ERAP network kind of disintegrates, movement drifts toward counter culture ,w hich is
more alientating, competitive and sexually exploitative. Counter culture says women
who do not have sex, “uptight” or “apolitical.” Women’s liberation became sexual
liberation. Anti-draft movement complicates this, because only men can truly participate,
women relegated to service/supportive role. Draft movement, counterculture, push
women to background. Heather Tobis organizes “women’s workshop” at “We Won’t
Go” conference, most women feel beside the point. “woman question” stimulatd
occasional small workshop, not until April 1967, National Council meeting did “women
question” gain statue of official workshop. Jane Adams publishes issue of women’s
equality in pages of New Left Notes.
Chapter 8 The Dam Breaks
Women in mid twenties faced with expectations otherwise obscured (marriage,
traditional sex roles, having children). Movement increasingly fragemented National
Conference for New Politics split with black power, adult/student, anti-war, anti-poverty.
At end of conference, women write manifesto. Women gain women’s liberation In need
of support.affirmation. Pam Parker Allen, originally SNCC organizer, alienated by
racism, sidelined in anti0war movement, marries and becomes social worker. Husband
activist, goes to N Vietnam, she becomes organizer along with Shulamith Firestone.
Women talkabout themselves, relationships, hopes, angers. Proliferation of womens’
groups continues through 1968.
IDs
Casey Hayden wife of Tom Hayden, one of the leaders of SDS in the mid 1960s, worte a
position paper along with Mary king about the position of women in the movement
Red Diaper babies the children of Communist activists who were raised in the 1950s
and 1960s with political consciousness and became activists themselves
National Conference for New Politics a revisionist meeting for SDS held in 1967 after
which many women’s focus groups began
Mary King co writer of the SDS position paper on the status of women along with Casey
Hayden
Shulamith Firestone leader of one of first women’s focus groups along with pam parker
allen
Jane Adams wrote articles in New Left Notes, journal of SDS and student movement,
about position of women
New Left Notes journal/publication of student movement
Pam Parker Allen originally SNCC organizer, alienated by racism, sidelined in anti0war
movement, marries and becomes social worker. Husband activist, goes to N Vietnam,
she becomes organizer along with Shulamith Firestone
Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo
Casey Hayden and Mary King
Hayden and King write this short memo as a summary of the recurring themes in their
speeches and writings on the women’s movement. They believe that the treatment of
blacks by the rest of society mimics the treatment of women—just as blacks in society
are of a lower class or caste, women remain subservient to men. There are some
differences, however: this caste system is not institutionalized in law, women cannot
withdraw or rebel against it, and biological differences exist between men and women.
Moreover, those “hip” to the civil rights movement are not hip to women’s issues. This
affects women’s roles within the movement, removing them from front-line positions and
relegating them to cleaning and other “womanly” duties. While working for the
movement, women came to believe strongly in the worth of the individual and
challenging traditional societal roles, leading inevitably to women questioning their own
place both within the movement and society as a whole. Men are generally not
responsive to these questions, and no one seems to be writing about or discussing
women’s issues.
Kate Millet, “Sexual Politics: Manifesto for a Revolution”
o Millet says that all historical civilizations are patriarchies with ideologies of male
supremacy
o Women are kept out of positions of power, confined to economic dependence on
men
o Her basic argument is that sexuality is political
o Sexual category defined by stereotypes
o Sex roles assign women domestic duties, assign men achievement and
ambition
o Male rule is imposed through social institutions
o Millet goes on to define the terms of a Sexual Revolution
o End to sexual repression
o Unisex personality (no gendered personality stereotypes)
o Reexamination of masculine/feminine qualities
o End to sex roles/status
o End of oppression
o End of sexual polarization into male/female, hetero-/homosexuality
o End to sexual violence
o Full freedom for female sex (what she terms as full human status)
“Declaration of War” from The Sixties Papers
By: Ti-Grace Atkinson
- unclear idea of the true enemy of the women’s rights movement (society? men?)
- first wave feminism = 1850-1920
* problem: women who tried to solve their problems only proposed dilemmas, not
solutions
- traditional feminists want equal rights for women with men, but this cannot be achieved
if women serve a different function from men in society
- radical feminists believe that women somehow fit into society as a distinct class, yet fail
to explore the significance and uniqueness of this class
- first step of feminist movement is to engage in the “battle” against men and resist,
hopefully leading to negotiations and, later, peace
* Women’s Movement is NOT considered a political movement because women did not
diplomatically handle their problems and did not have a clear direction for women as a
class
- “battle of the sexes” and other military terms used because the movement truly did
symbolize a battle between men and women and against tradition for equal rights
- in order to be successful, women must be grouped together as a broad class; address
both terms: woman (sociological) v. female (biological)
- inferiority of women began at the beginning of the race of “Mankind,” in which women
were burdened with the reproductive process and men took/continue to take advantage of
women
* conclusion: sex roles (male and female) should be destroyed in order to achieve
equality; men disagree because they need to maintain the role of Oppressor, not only as
represented by the “battle of the sexes”, but also by slavery
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone
The basic argument of this article is that current studies of sexism have all fallen short in
being able to offer a sufficient remedy for the problem because they only look at the
current snap shot of history, rather than the evolution of the oppression of women.
Firestone cites Marx’s study of the evolution of class struggle throughout the ages as the
appropriate method of study that should be used to study the struggle of women over time
as well. In looking at how historical circumstances led for the necessity of a working
class and the birth of a powerful class who controlled this working class, or means of
production, Firestone feels that Marx employs the proper means to explain how things
have come to be the way that they are in terms of class in the 1900’s. Firestone feels that
this same method of social science employed by Marx is what should be used to study the
oppression of women.
When she applies Marx’s social evolution theory to women Firestone comes to
believe that early biological differences between men and women are what led to
women’s eventual subjugation to men. Because of their need to carry child and their
dependency on men for survival both while they were with child and after they gave birth
Firestone states that women naturally began being treated as the dependent “race”.
However, she believes that while this was once necessary it is no longer the case in our
modern world and that women should no longer accept such treatment. She notes that
men will not easily give up their power and inorder to force them to do so women should
withhold from giving birth, “for unless revolution uproots the basic social organization,
the biological family, the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated.” While
offering a more complex, and in my opinion, accurate view of how the oppression of
women came to be, her solution is most extreme and will be very difficult, if not
impossible to implement.
The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak
“The struggle of the generations is one of the obvious constants of human affairs.”
Roszak writes that everything that is currently happening (in the 60’s of course) that is
new, provocative, and relevant to politics, education, the arts and social relations (love,
courtship, family, community) is the creation of the youth of society.
The age old struggle of the generations, he continues, is changing from a peripheral
position of existence towards a movement capable of radical social change. Roszak
believes that this mobilization is necessary.
The young are the only effective radical opposition within their societies. It is a militant
minority pitted against sluggish consensus-and-coalition politics of the middle class
elders.
Roszak stresses that the youth of America have grasped the bigger picture. Despite the
immediate emergencies of Vietnam, racial injustice and poverty, they must fight against
the technocracy.
Roszak’s technocracy refers to his vision of America as an industrial society which has
reached the peak of its organizational integration. He speaks of the constant trends of
modernizing, up-dating, rationalizing and planning. He talks about the political rhetoric
of efficiency, social security, the large scale coordination of men and resources, higher
levels of affluence and collective human power.
The great secrecy if the technocracy lies in its capacity to convince the populace of three
interlocking premises.
1. That the vital needs of man are purely technical in character.
2. That the formal analysis of human needs has now achieved 99% completion
3. That the experts who have fathomed our heart’s desires can continue to do so.
These experts all happen to be on the government payroll as well.
-
Read Page 11 for an example of technocratic rhetoric. It is very helpful I promise.
An example of the technocracy:
“To Liberate Sexuality would be to create a society in which technocratic discipline
would be impossible.”
But to thwart it totally would lead to the downfall of the technocracy as well.
So there is sexual frivolity galore in our society. OR SO WE ARE LED TO BELIEVE
It is all an image generated by jet-setting junior executives and their playboy bunny filled
yachts.
Thus:
We call it “education,” the “life of the mind,” the “pursuit of truth.”
- BUT it is a matter of machine-tooling the young to the needs of our various
bureaucracies
We call it free enterprise
- BUT it is a vastly restrictive system of oligoploistic market manipulation.
We call it democracy
- BUT it us a matter of public opinion polling in which a random sampling is taken.
- E.G. 80% think Vietnam is a mistake but 51% believe that the US would lose face
if it retreated.
Finally, it is called being “free,” being “happy,” being the Great Society.
- BUT the vices of contemporary America are easily explained. The evils stem
from the unrestricted pursuit of profit. Behind the manipulative deceptions there
are the capitalist desperados holding up the society for all the loot they can lay
their hands on.
THE PERCENTAGE OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE US IS GROWING
Roszak ends by saying that the young, “miserably educated as they are, bring with them
almost nothing but healthy instincts….For the young have become one of the very few
social levers dissent has to work with.”
Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture (1968) (continued)
Chapter IV: Journey to the East… and Points Beyond: Allen Ginsberg and Alan
Watts
This chapter is about the formation of the youth counter-culture ideology and
specifically talks about Zen. It begins with some background on Allen Ginsberg, the beat
poet. His style has religiosity, ecstatic radicalism and calls “not for a revolution, but for
an apocalypse.” There is no revision in his work, just accumulation, because he’s trying
to capture the real thing at any moment and indulge an impulse regardless of quality. His
writing is angry at the (perceived) anguished state of the world and he goes on to “reach
beyond literary expression to a total life style.” As it turns out, “the hair, the beard, the
costume, the mischievous grin, the total absence of formality, pretense, or defensive
posturing… they are enough to make him an exemplification of the counter cultural life.”
His poetry finds forgotten ecstasies in the everyday stages of human life – like going
down the stairs, a factory routine, etc.
Ginsberg discovers Zen around 1954. Alan Watts, “through his televised
lectures, books, and private classes, was to become America’s foremost popularizer of
Zen. He was critiqued both by “elitist Zen devotees” and “professional philosophers” for
his attempts to popularize and translate Zen into western terms. For it cannot be taught
through explanation, because Zen is “a personal illumination that one may have to be
tricked into experiencing while intellectually off guard.”
Many youth/counter-culture embraced Zen and various other novel religions.
Their use of it is critiqued for being all fashion and no understanding, taking up each as a
trend. But Roszak (the author) defends them explaining how “Zen, vulgarized, dovetails
remarkably with a number of adolescent traits” including silence (:“the moody
inarticulateness of youth”), paradox and randomness (:confusion of restless but still
unformed young minds), and its belief that moral laws are relative in meaning and
application as opposed to fixed or universal (:sanction for young need of freedom). Also
appealing was its eroticism (Kama sutra/ tantric). “Beat Zen” often served as a “pretext
for license… a simple rationalization” embracing “anything goes” at every level. Roszak
defends it, for “perhaps what the young took Zen to be has little relationship to that
venerable and elusive tradition; but what they readily adopted was a gentle and gay
rejection of the positivistic and the compulsively cerebral.” He argues that it doesn’t
matter if it’s Zen or Hindu or if it’s correct, but that they (and Ginsberg) are searching for
an alternative to the “dominant culture.” It is sad that it’s been so trivialized only because
their “mythical-religious interest holds such promise of enriching our culture,” if they
understood it well enough. Still, the point is that they have found a way to express
passion, caress and play communally, and all have equal access to these things without
manipulation. This spreads to their method of protest – peaceful and inclusive – a
“political style so authentically original that it borders on the bizarre.”
He complains about the dominant culture – based on expertise with the purpose
of mystifying “the popular mind by creating illusions of omnipotence and omniscience.”
Language is a tool. He lists hideous realities that have been cast as “operations” and
“referred to by cryptic initials and formulalike phrases” (ICBM) and niceties, so that
“turning a city into radioactive rubble is called ‘taking out’ a city.” Conventional
scholarship has narrowed the exploration of human experience –compiling knowledge,
but not salvaging its value. War has lost its authenticity and become both more removed
and more murderous. He points out that if the dominant culture – research, bombs, sober
rallies – could eliminate injustice and violence, “then we should long since have been
living in the New Jerusalem.” As it stands, the youth should be looking beyond
traditional radicalism because it hasn’t solved anything yet.
Chapter V: The Counterfeit Infinity: The Use and Abuse of Psychedelic Experience
This chapter is all about psychedelic drugs. It justifies them by showing their use
throughout history by scholars, citizens and authors and argues that they are only looked
down on now because of their association with the counter-culture. Roszak (the author)
also contests the current efforts to move from psychedelic as an illuminating tool to
psychedelic as a basis for an entire culture.
He says psychedelic participation is the youth’s rejection of the parental society.
It should be seen as “a limited chemical means to a greater psychic end, namely, the
reformation of the personality” which is the basis of our society.
Roszak notes (in his view) the correct uses of psychedelics to further
science/society. He cites William James’ and Havelock Ellis’s studies under
hallucinogens (nitrous oxide, peyote) at the turn of the century to legitimize its use as
illuminating. He moves on to Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts who “wanted to recapture
the value of neglected cultural traditions for which no disciplined method of study
existed.” Thus, “if the province of science is the disciplined examination of human
experience, then surely abnormal (or transnormal) states of consciousness must also
constitute a field of scientific study.” The drug would act like a microscope for exploring
consciousness. It can be used to clear our perception of its Western lens.
However, there are “minds too small and too young for psychic adventures,” and
this mass youth movement that idolizes psychedelics is what worries Roszak. They “at
the bohemian fringe, are in the process of trying strenuously to inflate the psychedelics to
the size of an entire culture.” He equates this to current popular commercialism – that a
new can opener means a new way of life. He dismisses underground publications that
glorify LSD [a popular hallucinogen created in a laboratory] and other drugs for their
“precious efforts to make the marginal part [the drugs] stand for the whole of culture” –
they are “decadent.” The illegal trade, too, is full of “hard-nosed entrepreneurial interests
that have” no “concern for expanding consciousness” – only for money. An example of a
(he suggests) bad use of LSD is the write up from a series of sessions that “Jane
Dunlop” volunteered to do, in which “she is finding what she feels she is supposed to
look for” rather than something new and personally relevant.
Then he brings up Timothy Leary, the ex-Harvard professor who had a few runins with the law over narcotics before he began preaching a sort of religion based around
LSD. He has probably “done the most to push psychedelic experience along the way
toward becoming a total and autonomous culture.” He also “managed to embed the
younger generation’s psychedelic fascination solidly in a religious context” – marketing
the scholarly link between psychedelics and visionary religion to masses of students. The
religious solemnity of Leary’s “meetings” was in contrast to Ken Kesey’s mass “trips”,
which were more about fun and games and entertainment (see: Electric Kool Aid Acid
Test). Drugs were both the way to connect with God and the entry to a new race (those
who “tripped”), moving toward an eventual social revolution in which the current empire
becomes so “hung up in material things” that it will be overthrown by new underground
movements preaching “turn-on, tune-in, drop out.” If they change the prevailing mode
of consciousness through using drugs, they will change the world through drugs.
“Unlimited free sexuality” was also a “basic aspect of Leary’s cult” that was attractive to
the youth. Questions of “can a person be human without LSD?” began to emerge.
Roszak notes the existing dependency of society on drugs – sleeping pills, pain
killers, etc. “If our society is already committed to solving its psychic and organic
problems with chemical agencies, then for how long can the line be drawn at the socalled ‘consciousness expanders’?” Pubic concern can be attributed to “an honest concern
for the health hazard involved when… used without some degree of knowledgeable
discipline.” However, he argues that marijuana objections are inconsistent alongside our
acceptance of alcohol. Thus, these drugs are not so distasteful because of health hazards
but because they have been “associated in the public mind with the aggressive
bohemianism of the young” and have become a scapegoat for any inter-generational
problems. There have been positive articles in Time and Life about mainstream, middleage psychedelic experiences but not when associated with bohemians. However,
narcotics “tame and stabilize” so should be able to be assimilated into the “technocracy.”
He again goes back into history and notes the prominence of opium, laudanum and
morphine in England and America, the users ranging from mothers to many famous
authors. Private kicks from psychedelics should not pose a threat to the established order
– Roszak cites many friends who indulge here and there for fun. He notes that if
legalized, marijuana trade would be taken over by cigarette companies and LSD by
pharmaceutical houses. He ends by stating that, “the gadget-happy American has always
been a figure of fun because of his facile assumption that there exists a technological
solution to every human problem. It only took the great psychedelic crusade to perfect the
absurdity by proclaiming that personal salvation and the social revolution can be packed
in a capsule.”
Chapter VIII: Eyes of Flesh, Eyes of Fire
Roszak defines the “primary project of our counter culture: to proclaim a new
heaven and a new earth so vast, so marvelous that the inordinate claims of technical
expertise must of necessity withdraw in the presence of such splendor to a subordinate
and marginal status in the lives of men” – a “willingness to open ourselves to the
visionary imagination on its own demanding terms.” Science appears to have explained
and exploited nature. The white man wins with his science “especially when it arrives in
the form of gunpowder, armed colonization, and massive material investment, the
standard vehicles of civilization.”
Then he launches into an exploration of the traditional shaman. He is a sort of
superhuman, the father of paleothic cave paintings, poetry, drama, dancer; also a healer,
moral counselor, diviner and cosmologer; and a magician/trickster – combining “high art
and religion with… profane diversions.” He treats nature/earth as if it has a consciousness
and is mindful of its feelings – unlike the scientific white man who plows, cuts,
dynamites. Anyone can do any job in a scientific society; a shaman is chosen by some
divine signal. He holds a “position of talented uniqueness,” not institutional authority. He
uses psychic adventures to understand the environment and see beyond what the “waking
eye sees.”
But we don’t trust the world, bur would rather create “a world-wide, lifelong
plastic womb” within it. We scrutinize the trees but ignore the forest – concentrating on
isolated puzzles instead of understanding the overall grandeur. Thus, “the scientific
consciousness depreciates our capacity for wonder by progressively estranging us from
the magic of the environment.” The scientific vision (bad) controls and manages “the
beauties of experience;” the magical vision (good) awes rather than informs – perhaps
leaving a sense of mystery rather than understanding. The scientist finds something,
solves it, and moves on. The artist (magical) dwells on a single thing [think of Monet’s
haystacks] and finds it an inexhaustible source. The expert creates something to be
judged purely objectively, separate from any “personal eccentricities, no matter how
delightful” (eg the physicist’s potting hobby is not important to his eligibility for the
Nobel prize). We go to University (“multiversity”) to try to become “well-versed” but
sometimes students are actually engaged and experience “an upheaval of the personality,”
sending them to the counter culture. For, “if we have felt them [magical powers of the
personality] move within us, then we shall have no choice in the matter but to liberate
them and live by the reality they illuminate” – no way to go between the two cultures.
As it is, “we live off the surface of our culture and pretend we know enough.”
“We believe that somewhere behind the pills and the economic graphs there are experts
who understand whatever else there is to understand.” But “good magic” (shaman, artist)
“seeks always to make available to all the full power of the magician’s experience” – “if
the artist’s work is successful, if the shaman’s ritual is effective, the community’s sense
of reality will become expansive.” But “bad magic” (science, experts, priests) “seeks
simply to mystify.” To them, anything mysterious is to be solved, “an intolerable barrier
to reason and justice.” The technocracy now requires us to consult an expert before we
“eat a peach or spank a baby,” in case we might “trespass against reason.”
The point – that the rebellion of the New Left often draws upon old traditions of
the primitive tribe. “Their instinctive fascination with magic and ritual, tribal lore, and
psychedelic experience attempts to resuscitate the defunct shamanism of the distant past.”
To change, “there will have to be experiments… which will seek not coexistence with the
technocracy… but which aim instead at subverting and seducing by the force of
innocence, generosity, and manifest happiness.” It must be not just resistance to the status
quo but a transformation of “the very sense men have of realty.”
Boston Against Busing
Ch. 4 “A Harvard Plan for the Working Class Man”
-Judge Wendell Arthur Garrity, Jr. decided Morgan v. Hennigan (the case involving thr
desegregation of Boston public schools)
-attended Harvard Law School, became a sergeant in the army and participated in
the Normandy invasion, worked on JFK’s presidential campaign
-known as a liberal judge concerned with fairness and orderly procedure, socially
liberal, judicially active, stiff sentences on moral issues
-June 21, 1974, the last day of school-Garrity handed down the sentence for
desegregation, allowing only summer break to implement a desegregation plan
-wanted his ruling to show “united judicial authority” and he wanted no delay
-Boston School Committee (BSC) admitted segregation existed in the schools but blamed
it on circumstances beyond their control
-Garrity showed evidence proving that the BSC had maintained and extended the
segregation by:
-adding trailer classrooms to white schools instead of sending white
students to less full black schools
-redistricting so as to increase segregation
-channeling black students from black elementary schools to black high
schools, and sending white students through white schools
-segregating teachers, as well, although not many black teachers were
hired at all
-according to Supreme Court decisions in the 20 years since Brown, Garrity would be
given a lot of latitude with his decision and the remedy could be applied everywhere
segregation was determined to exist
-the only plan Garrity could implement was the one Charles Glenn of the Board of
Education had created; years later even Glenn admitted it was a bad plan
-the problem was that the BSC would not create or enact a plan that would
legitimately do anything
-the plan required the busing of 18,000 students, and it paired Roxbury High
school (in the heart of the black ghetto) with South Boston High School (the white
Irish neighborhood most vehemently opposed to busing)
-Glenn “claimed” the pairing had no punitive intent, but it basically did
-reasonable people were offended by the absurdness of the plan, which left the stage to
the militants
-people throughout Boston viewed desegregation as “a Harvard plan for the
working class man”
-ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights) was founded as an umbrella organization that
would include all of the antibusing activists and sympathizers
-strongest membership from working class and lower middle class areas like
Southie and Hyde Park; weakest in middle class areas like West Roxbury
-their first act of defiance was a two-week boycott of the schools
-from the start, it was obvious it was going to be tough to implement the plan
-the plan couldn’t rally community leaders or those who were going to have to
implement
-Mayor White, though against the plan, prepared for the transportation issues that would
come
-Governor Sargent said he would comply with the plan, but didn’t endorse it
-the city was essentially split on the decision with religious leaders, the local government,
and business leaders all divided
-as the first day of school neared, politicians and athletes, like Bobby Orr, pleaded for the
safety of the kids on TV commercials
“The Battle of Boston, 1974-1977”
-people thought that after initial protests, thing would settled down, but they didn’t; riots,
fights, protests broke out all year, racial tensions increased, and violence between races
was worse then it had ever been
-ROAR staged periodic boycotts and disrupted classes such that out of a total possible
attendance of 80,000, only 40,000-60,000 kids attended school each day during the first
year
-attendance dropped after each violent encounter
-state troopers were on duty at South Boston High for three years
-the Monday before school started, 8-10,000 militants met at Boston Common to register
their protest with the judge and the two senators, Brooke and Kennedy
-Brooke refused to meet with them; Kennedy went to the rally and was insulted,
yelled at, and had things thrown at him
-Thursday, Sept. 12th, the first day of school, went fairly well everywhere except Southie,
where anti-black and pro-KKK graffiti covered the school and an angry crowd threw
rocks and bottles at the buses
-originally, the city had hoped to minimize the police presence, but on Friday the 13th,
they turned Southie and Hyde Park into essentially armed camps
-people were shocked at the violence, but Garrity believed in First Amendment rights to
assemble and speak freely, so he did nothing to stop the demonstrations that often ended
in violence
-blacks began fighting back, protecting their neighborhoods from the whites terrorizing
them
-Southie had frequent marches consisting of thousands of protestors
-the majority of the chapter consists of descriptions of the violent and nonviolent
reactions and demonstrations of Bostonians, so know that there was a lot of violent
and nonviolent opposition from blacks and whites throughout the year
-on October 9, Garrity refused federal participation; President Gerald Ford stated in a
press conference that Garrity’s decision was “not the best solution for quality education
in Boston,” that he “opposed forced busing to achieve racial balance,” and he disagreed
with Garrity’s order
-his statement legitimized the antibusing effort
-the first 26 days of school resulted in 140 arrests, 69 treatable injuries, lots of
harassment, and a lot work by the police to keep the peace
-a big problem was that once violence was quelled in one town, it erupted in another, so
there was never an end
-in November, in all schools but Southie, things calmed down
-Southie has a long history of football, and since there was no team that year and
no game, people reacted
-Southie became the symbol of resistance
-things continued like this through graduation
-the Southie principal had said in Sept. that he thought it would take three years to
establish a good learning environment again, but in June, he said it would take
much longer than that because there was no good will on the part of the adult
community
-in May 1975, 60% of white adults in Boston said they thought the year had resulted in an
almost complete breakdown of public school education
-the transportation logistics were mismanaged and busing companies cheated the city,
signing contracts when they had no buses and taking the wrong routes on purpose
-Garrity gave the BSC way too much leeway in devising desegregation plans, so that they
wouldn’t comply with his orders; he ordered them, under the leadership of Kerrigan (who
was always vehemently opposed to busing and to Garrity) to come up with a
desegregation plan for year 2 by Dec. 16, 1974, and they couldn’t and wouldn’t agree on
any plan that involved forced busing, even at the risk of going to jail on Garrity’s orders
-on Dec. 18th, Garrity lectured the BSC for two hours and gave them 5 days to
come up with a plan
-the next day three federal appeals court judges endorsed Garrity’s decision,
stating that the BSC had worked to foster and sustain segregation
-the BSC came back to Garrity without a plan, after having decided to appeal
Garrity’s decision to the Supreme Court
-[every time Garrity told the committee to approve a plan, he did so under the
penalty of fines and jail time, and every time, the committee called his bluff,
refusing to do so, and Garrity didn’t follow through on his threats]
-Garrity later said that he kept backing down because he didn’t want to make the
committee men martyrs, but in doing so, he made them heroes
-the antibusing debacle was filled with empty threats: people soon realized that as long as
the feds weren’t involved, getting arrested meant getting processed by a local court and
then released; the lack of seriousness of punishment caused people to think illegal actions
could be committed at no cost
Ch. 5 “The Antibusing Spectrum”
-the main point of the chapter is that there were a range of opinions on busing, that
antibusing wasn’t just about racism, and that a lot of people really tried to give busing a
chance, but once their kids became endangered, they had to do and believe whatever they
could to protect them
-most white residents, and especially parents of schoolchildren, were antibusing
-they fought the ruling through ROAR, they moved their kids to parochial
schools, some left the city, but the majority tried to give busing a chance
-Garrity ordered that a Racial-Ethnic Parent Council (REPC) be formed at every school,
as well as a Citywide Parents’ Advisory Council consisting only of parents, and a
Citywide Coordinating Council (CCC) to monitor overall compliance with desegregation
-all of these included many parents who didn’t want busing, but who were going
to try to make it work
-a lot of parents not involved in these groups also did everything they could to
help by volunteering as school aides or bus monitors
-but the parents’ councils didn’t begin to really work until 1976-77 when ROAR
began to fade, and those who did participate risked threats and violence (there are
examples in the book)
-the majority were moderates: a 1975 Globe poll showed that 57% of whites opposed
school boycotts, 63% opposed demonstrations outside schools, and 87% said they
opposed force to thwart the busing effort, but when over 10% of a population approves of
violence as a means of action, there will be trouble
-20 parents formed the Positive Action Task Force to support parents giving busing a
chance, but once the group was publicized, the members were met with violence
-the book gives a lot of examples of parents making the best of a bad situation by trying
to work with busing
-Example: Peggy Coughlin, who had sent kids to public school for 18 years and
still had six years left, sent her daughter to a parochial school
-she felt fine about black students coming into Southie, but she didn’t
want her daughter being sent out of the neighborhood
-she organized a group of parents to patrol the corridors at Southie High
-when one daughter was sent to a black school, she went to see the place
and was pleasantly surprised at the conditions; he daughter did really well
there, but she insisted on driving her to and from every day
-she wasn’t racist as much as fearful of violence against her own kids; she
realized that black mothers were just as scared as she was
-but the moderates in Southie couldn’t combat the militants because they made the cost of
dissenting too high; and outside Southie, people like Coughlin who tried to make things
work failed to find leadership, protection, or understanding
-another mother, Emily DeCesare, also didn’t have a problem with black students
coming to her school, but she didn’t want her kids getting bused out
-she was especially frustrated by the fact that people on the outside were
telling the parents what to do, for example, that the Globe was telling her
what to do
-she said that all of the people who work for the Globe live outside
of Boston, so they didn’t have to deal with their kids being in the
Boston public schools
-her kids didn’t end up having to be bused, but one of her kids came home
bruised and beaten up by the black kids who attended their schools; the
other child had no problems
-the point is that everyone had a slightly different experience—some kids did fine in their
new schools, and others got beaten up; some parents let their kids stay in school, and
others, who could afford it, moved their kids to parochial schools; in some schools,
violence wasn’t necessarily a problem, but there was so much general disruption that
teachers couldn’t teach
-most people said they weren’t racists or bigots, that they like black people, but they
couldn’t understand why their children had to be bused when they were already in
integrated schools, or they disagreed with forcing people to get along
-one mother of four adopted biracial children and one white child of her own
worried that her white child would be bused and would get a lesser education than
he previously would have been entitled to, but she also wanted her biracial
children to get as good an education as possible, and yet they were already behind
the white child because they had always been in worse schools
-in February 1975, Garrity appointed four masters, experts, led by Spiegel and also
including Keppel, Willie, and McCormack, who were to devise a Phase 2 of
desegregation
-McCormack, a veteran politician from Southie, would be key
-he got moderates behind a plan (called the masters’ plan) that reduced the
number of kids to be bused, but Garrity decided to reject it, and actually
increased the number of kids being bused
-Garrity ended up using a plan formed by two academic experts, Dentler and Scott
-Dentler later said that he didn’t think any plan would have rallied moderate
support and that Garrity had no choice but to accept their plan, in which an
additional 4-5,000 kids would be bused
-no one really knew how many kids would show up in Sept.
-the Mayor, the Governor, and others favored the masters’ plan, while the NAACP and
the Boston Teachers Union opposed it
-Garrity had Dentler and Scott work on the masters’ plan, and on May 10, Garrity
announced the new plan, with increased busing and new assignments, and the reaction
was almost completely negative
-Garrity later said that Dentler and Scott didn’t depart that much from the
masters’ plan and that they had access to information the master didn’t
-McCormack was especially disappointed, since he thought the masters’ plan had
been received so well, the masters had a better gauge of the actual enrollment
numbers, and there would have been less civil disobedience if the masters’ plan
had been approved unchanged
-the citizens were madder than ever, and didn’t want their children “socially
experimented” on any longer
-Glenn, the creator of the Phase 1 plan said that Garrity made the same mistake by
creating a whole new plan that moved more kids around who had already been moved in
Phase 1—they should have just added to Phase 1
-before May 1975, the Phase 2 plan had the potential to rally moderates, but it didn’t, and
the militant again gained control
-race relations in Boston reached a low point that summer
-the number of incidents escalated once again as the first day of school approached
-in the first week, 112 were arrested, 16 policemen were injured, and only 52,000
out of 76,000 expected students showed up
-in the 1975 elections, all candidates had to run on an antibusing platform in order to be
reelected or elected
-the BSC winners consisted of antibusers McDonough and Tierney, moderates
and Sullivan and Finnegan (both of whom opposed Phase 2), Palladino (an ally of
the militant Kerrigan)
-a black man, O’Bryant, did surprisingly well in the race, though his last
name may have confused some white voters; he would win two years later
-the election results indicate that the public still favored strong antibusing
candidates
IDs
Garrity: the judge who ruled and presided over the desegregation of Boston public
schools through busing
Kerrigan: the militant antibusing leader of the Boston School Committee
Boston School Committee: the committee that made decisions about Boston public
schools; opposed to busing; refused to cooperate with any of Garrity’s demands… ever
Glenn: the head of the Board of Education who devised the first desegregation plan of
Phase 1; admitted it was a bad plan
ROAR: (Restore Our Alienated Rights)-group of antibusing militants and sympathizers;
demonstrated, boycotted, marched, and rioted over busing
Masters’ plan: the Phase 2 plan created by four court appointed experts that involved
decreased busing and more neighborhood school autonomy
Dentler and Scott: the authors of the revised masters’ plan for Phase 2 that involved
increased busing (of 4-5,000 more kids) and the transfer of many kids who had already
been moved
Main Themes:
-people think of the South as being racist and segregated, and no one considers how
segregated the North was and had always been
-even in 1974, 20 years after Brown, racism and segregation were going on in the North,
so it shows how little had changed over the years
-indicates what a complicated process desegregation could be anywhere, even in the
North
-gives an idea of the social and racial climate of the early 1970s in Boston
Boston Against Busing, Chapters 6-8
Chp 6: Defended (and Other) Neighborhoods
Formisano coins the term “defended neighborhoods” (Southie, Charlestown, East
Boston, maybe Hyde Park). These neighborhoods shared a sense of separateness from the
city (ie physical barriers). What made these neighborhoods unique, Formisano writes,
was that “Each in itself contained many tribal domains of ethnicity, class, and turf,
identified often with squares, corners, or parishes, but all shared an impulse to stop time,
to resist change, and to hold fast to an ideal of society as it had been before the upheavals
of the 1960s.” (p.109) Formisano is quick to point out that anti-busing protest occurred in
other parts of Boston, not just these defended neighborhoods. In an area of Boston like
West Roxbury, a non defended neighborhood, there was a different type of protest—there
would be legal briefs and lobbying rather than rock hurling mobs. He then goes on to talk
about each defended neighborhood individually, beginning with South Boston, which
became the face of anti-busing. Because of the great amount of “Southie Pride” that
existed, people were willing to fight against busing even though polls showed that most
of them believed it was a lost cause. Formisano calls this “resistance for the sake of
resistance.” This was an old Irish tradition—fighting on even though you know you’re
doomed: “collective calculated violence.” In South Boston there was an emphasis on
unity and collective action. Militant antibusers demanded absolute conformity from their
neighbors. They made life very difficult for those who tried to conform with the
desegregation. South Boston High School became the focal point of protest and violence.
Formisano writes that “for at least three years an atmosphere of hatred and violence
prevailed in the school.” For the white people that had lived in Southie for a long time,
the high school was part of their “Southie Pride,” and a lot of that had to do with its
success in sports. While the education was not top notch and it did not lead to social
mobility, the high school and the neighborhood was obsessed with events like the annual
Thanksgiving Day Southie-Eastie football game. Militants decided that if the school was
no longer theirs, it could not be anyone else’s either. Formisano then addresses the
question of why there was so much resistance in Southie. While racism was a factor, it
was not the only factor. Many South Bostonians also had a real fear of black youths and
neighborhoods as a source of crime and violence. Irish Catholics also had a vision of the
black ghetto as being of place of unrestrained promiscuity—afraid that the black
men/boys would rape their white girls. There was also a fear of being labeled a “white
nigger,” which was to fall into the ranks of an underclass. In Charlestown, their branch of
ROAR was established by the fall of 1974 and was christened “Power Keg,” because the
people were said to have a short fuse. Anti-busing protest in Ctown was similar to that in
Southie, but there was less freely expressed explicit racism. Moderates were less harassed
in Charlestown than they were in Southie. Powder Keg spawned a splinter group called
the Defense Fund, which raised money for the legal defense of young Townies arrested at
the high school or in the streets. Along with racism and fear, there was also a powerful
class dynamic that existed in the antibusing protests—the poor, underprivileged people
felt powerless and trapped. Elvira “Pixie” Palladino led the antibusing protest during
the mid 1970s in East Boston. She founded the Eastie chapter of ROAR after Garrity’s
decision. Moderates also existed in the group East Bostonians for Quality Education
(EBQUE), but they were greatly harassed. Ultimately, East Boston was left out of both
Phase 1 and Phase 2 of busing, probably because of their volatile reputation and the fear
of what the Italians would do with their “Latin temper” (“over there they’ll use guns), and
also East Boston’s geography (the tunnels). The North End was very low key about
busing, maybe because more of the kids were in parochial schools and the Phase I
resulted in the busing in of 250 Chinese children, and they were seen as more acceptable
then the blacks. Formisano classifies Hyde Park as “semisuburbia;” for people to be able
to live there, “it meant having arrived.” He writes, “Hyde Park parents thus often reacted
to the court order with intense resentment born of the fear that it would take away from
them all that they had gained.” (p.129) People from Hyde Park also were resentful that
the suburbs that were so close to them were excluded from the busing order. Antibusing
organization was strong in Hyde Park, and violence erupted in the high school throughout
the school year. As more and more black families moved into Hyde Park, more and more
while families moved out. West Roxbury, which was as close to the suburbs “as a
Bostonian could get in the city”, was also very racist, but expressed its opposition to
desegregation in a very different way from Southie. Formisano describes West Roxbury’s
antibusing movement as “predominantly moderate, middle class, and individualistic.”
Most neighborhood leaders emphasized order and safety. Many white parents made the
decision to either move out of West Roxbury or to transfer their children into private
schools. K. Marie Clarke was elected president of the Boston HSA in late spring of
1975, and was a legalist who concentrated on court appeals. She believed that the busing
plan was punitive, but also resented charges of racism toward those who rejected the
court order. Formisano writes, “She had no objection to black students coming into West
Roxbury but did fear sending her children into black neighborhoods.” While Formisano
writes that many people in West Roxbury chose to distance themselves from Southie and
often engaged in “Southie bashing,” he is quick to point out the main difference between
the two, one that did not have to do with which part of the city was more racist: “West
Roxburyites possessed not only the inclination but the resources to escape from busing,
by moving out of the city or placing their children in private schools, or in nearby
suburban refuges. Too many in South Boston lacked resources and safe retreats, and
Southie also lacked the refuge a well-developed parochial school system could provide.”
(p.137)
Chp 7: The Antibusers: Children of the 1960s
The antiestablishment protests of the 1960s shaped and influenced the antibusing
movement. The immediate model was the black civil rights movement (how ironic!) The
alternative schools that the antibusers established were based on the freedom schools that
blacks established; antibusers also used the civil rights methods of sleep-ins and sit-ins.
They would also sing ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ROAR’s March on Washington was based
on the civil rights March on Washington. The deep frustration that the antibusers felt
about their situation, along with the feeling of being powerless and alienated from
mainstream America was much like the sentiments that were felt by the splinter groups of
the 1960s like the Weathermen. The complaints of police brutality that were voiced by
the antibusers were in fact ironic, because the police and the protesters were actually
from the same social stratum and had mostly shared cultural attitudes and values. There
was also a collision between the feminist movement and the antibusing movement—for
many women, the antibusing movement transformed their lives and forever changed
them: it got them “out of the kitchen.” The antibusers saw themselves portrayed by the
media as bigots and racists. Was there a relationship between media coverage and the
excitation of violence? (ie did people do violent things just to get the media coverage?)
There was also a claim of media conspiracy—that black violence was ignored. Some
contradictory complaints: they faulted the national media for emphasizing violence and
making the antibusers seem prejudiced and savage; but they also complained that the
local media were not presenting an accurate picture of how things were in the schools.
Formisano writes, “The antibusers’ anger with the media, liberals, and the establishment
connected also to a widespread distrust of politicians and alienation from politics.” As a
result, people eventually people disenchanted with ROAR, whose leaders were very
political. During the 1974 mayoral campaign, Louise Hicks and Mayor White began a
secretive patronage-support relationship, where Hicks secretly pledged to keep ROAR
neutral in electoral politics and also to support White in the council whenever possible. In
exchange, White would funnel patronage to her supporters. There then occurred a ROAR
rupture, between Pixie Palladino and Louise Hicks. Palladino emerged as spokeswoman
for the hard-core ROAR militants and anti-White elements. Palladino was ousted, and
established United ROAR. Formisano points out that “the sources of the split sprang not
from strategic, tactical, or stylistc differences but from patronage and political rivalries
based on personalities, neighborhood, kinship, and ethnicity.” The breakdown of
authority that occurred in the 1960s both preceded and paralleled that which occurred
during the antibusing movement. The mood of disillusionment and decline across the
board of belief in institutions was caused by things like: Nixon’s resignation and
subsequent pardon by Ford, ongoing disclosures of wrongdoing by government
intelligence agencies.
Chapter 8: Reactionary Populism
Formisano writes that the antibusing movement represents a case of a typical American
hybrid, a populist movement with reactionary tendencies. He writes, “Reactionary
populism describes the whole of a movement that included the organized and
unorganized, militants and moderates, terrorists as well as middle-class reformists
respectful of democratic norms of civility. But the mix of populism and reaction varied
greatly within the ranks of antibusing leaders, factions, neighborhoods, families, and
individuals.” (p.172) The populist character of Boston antibusing arose from the location
of antibusing in the lower and middle ranks of society. Militant antibusing did not
challenge established structures of political or economic power, but it did spring from the
bottom half of the population and exuded fierce class resentments and antielitism. At all
levels, antibusing drew upon a widespread sense of injustice, unfairness, and deprivation
of rights. Suburban exclusion from the busing plan also contributed to the sense of
economic injustice. In the fall of 1974, certain right-wing extremists such as the KKK
and the Nazis (!) came to Boston to capitalize on the turmoil, but they were quickly
driven out of town. Elvira “Pixie” Palladino embodied the fears, aspirations, and
resentments of the antibusing multitudes in as unfiltered a fashion as any other antibusing
leader. She was admired by antibusers for having guts and not being scared of anybody.
For these same reasons she was feared and disdained by her enemies. When she ran for
election to the school committee, Pixie portrayed herself as a champion of the “little
people.” She was the first East Bostonian and the second Italian-American elected to the
school committee. She had a pugnacious style. She had a ferocious anger towards upperclass types like Judge Garrity. Fear of black crime was also a large part of reactionary
populism. Boston journalist Dick Sinnott best articulated what the antibusing regions of
Boston supported. He “unflaggingly criticized busing, liberals, the miedia, and the
suburbs…” Sinnott was a perfect example of the previously democratic reactionary who
had turned conservative. The antibusers felt alienated and like they had no voice—this
what ROAR (Restore our Alienated Rights) set out to fix: by blaring their horns and
shouting, they were trying to crash through the walls that were raised against them. In the
1976 elections, George Wallace made a trip to Southie and appealed to the alienated
people there. The 1977 elections signified the end of a political era- no more Hicks,
Palladino, or Kerrigan. In 1983, Ray Flynn was elected mayor of Boston. He was a
former hardline antibuser who proceded to desegregate public housing.