Category: 1960s Page 2 of 3

By Matthew Ferry

John Ferry (Left) with his brother Paul Ferry, at Paul’s graduation from Girard in 1965.

John Ferry was ten-years old when he left his mother’s West Philadelphia home in 1961. That year, he began studying at Girard College–a boarding school endowed by the will of Stephen Girard, and established as an institution for “poor, white, male orphans.” [1]  The forty-three acre property surrounded by a ten-foot tall wall was established in North Philadelphia, a neighborhood that became predominately African-American during the 1940s and 1950s as whites left for the suburbs. [2]  H.W. Brands described the inner city as a place where “blacks lived in substandard housing, attended substandard schools, and worked at substandard wages.” [3]  For residents of North Philadelphia, Girard’s wall was a symbol of exclusion, inequality, and racism. Behind these walls Ferry spent eight years of his life until he graduated in the spring of 1969. Reflecting on his youth and the city’s struggles to integrate, Ferry vividly recalls how West Philadelphia changed from when he “was born–from all white, to all black,” and the gang violence and protests that were prevalent just beyond Girard’s wall. He also recalls when times were different. Ferry fondly remembers hot summer nights in West Philadelphia when “all the families [in the neighborhood] would sleep outside on their front porches.” [4]  Ferry’s recollection reveals how Philadelphia struggled to integrate and the implications that white’s resistance to reform had for race-relations.

The rise of mass suburbs in the 1950s proved a haven for white residents who sought  to escape the crowding, conditions, and cultural differences that were prevalent in the city. World War II left Philadelphia with a massive housing shortage. Over seventy-thousand houses in the city lacked a bath or were run-down, and roughly fifty percent of homes were built in the nineteenth century. [5]  The Philadelphia Housing Authority attempted to improve living conditions and spearhead integration by developing high-rise public housing projects in white communities. However, residents were resistant to the introduction of poor African-Americans in their neighborhoods. The Authority could not address the demand for affordable housing or accommodate the thousands of families displaced in the city. [6] Outside of Philadelphia, thirty-six new homes were being erected daily–fitted with two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. Known as the Levitt model, these homes sold for $7,990 and were an attractive option for former GIs or middle-class families eligible for low interest rate federal loans. [7]  Irish and Ukrainian residents of North Philadelphia moved to the suburbs as blacks moved in. Similar patterns emerged in Ferry’s West Philadelphia neighborhood. As whites left the city for suburbia, blacks came to occupy the homes that were the oldest and hardest to maintain, and their high rents and mortgages provided only the worst shelter. [8]

Police activity during the Columbia Avenue riots. Courtesy of Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives.

For African American communities across the city, the North Philadelphia, Columbia Avenue riots of August 1964 instilled a new spirit of militancy and determination to challenge the pace and goals of integration. During the 1960s, around half of Philadelphia’s five-hundred and thirty-thousand African Americans lived in North Philadelphia. Residents typically only completed eight years of school and the average income was thirty percent below the city. [9]   As civil rights leaders failed to address these inequalities tensions built across the city. Black’s frustration with their circumstances erupted on August 28, 1964, when a rumor circulated that police had killed a pregnant black woman on Columbia Avenue. [10]  Thousands of residents took to the streets, clashed with police, broke storefronts, and looted. Rioters dramatically outnumbered the police patrolling the area, and the city deployed fifteen hundred policemen to control the crowds. Philadelphia NAACP President Cecil B. Moore and other civil rights leaders pleaded to the crowd to stop but were dismissed. To Moore’s requests, one woman responded “this is the only time in my life I’ve got a chance to get these things,” signifying that the absence of progress and circumstances blacks faced provoked the riots. [11]  In the end the riots lasted three days and left two people dead, three-hundred and thirty-nine injured, and nearly three million dollars in property destroyed. [12]  The Columbia Avenue riots demonstrated the frustration of African Americans with the white establishment and their desire to establish for themselves the pace and aim of integration.

Seven months after the riots, Cecil B. Moore promised to “rededicate Philadelphia’s civil rights campaigns to improving the conditions of African-Americans.” [13]  Moore directed his attention to Girard College. The school’s entirely white study body and ten-foot high walls–located in the midst of North Philadelphia, were symbols of the city’s failure to address the needs of poor and working-class blacks. On May 1, 1965, the NAACP protest against Girard began with twenty demonstrators and eight-hundred police officers. The picketers demonstrated outside of Girard day and night for seven months, and the size and intensity of the crowd grew over time. Ferry recalls how teachers at Girard told him that protestors would scale the wall at night and kill him in his sleep. [14]  One of the most powerful moments of the demonstrations occurred on August 3, 1965, when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed a crowd of five-thousand protestors outside of Girard’s walls. Dr. King told the crowd that Girard and its walls were “symbolic of a cancer in the body politic that must be removed before there will be freedom and democracy in this country.” [15]  The Reverend reminded the demonstrators to neither fault nor wane in their efforts to reform an institution symbolic “of the rejection and deprivation inflicted on the Negro people.”  [16]

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. attends rally at Girard College. Courtesy of Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives.

Moore’s campaign to integrate Girard College forced Philadelphia to realize its own dark history of discrimination and segregation at the same time the nation celebrated the end of enforced segregation in the South. While Girard’s trustees refused to concede to protestors demands, trustees President John A. Diemand met with Governor William Scranton and May James James Tate in July of 1965 to discuss legal and judicial solutions to Girard’s racial ban. In December 1965, city and state officials filed suit in United States District Court, and Moore postponed the NAACP protest campaigns against Girard College. The case moved through the court system and in March of 1968, the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Third Circuit ruled that Girard had violated the constitutional rights of seven African American applicants by refusing them admission. Girard’s board of Trustees appealed this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear an appeal of the lower court ruling. [17] In the fall of 1968, four African American boys entered Girard. However, integration did not mean the school’s white students were welcoming of their new, non-white classmates. The first African American graduate of Girard, Charles Hicks, recalled how a classmate regularly threatened to kill him in his sleep. [18]

“In Memoriam – John Joseph Michael Daubaras”

As African American communities grew agitated with the pace of progress made through nonviolent demonstrations, black youths felt compelled to take their grievances to the streets. For North Philadelphia youths in particular, their aggression was directed to the well dressed and well groomed students behind Girard’s walls–the epitome of everything the white establishment prevented blacks from being. Whenever Ferry stepped outside of Girard’s main gate he ran the risk of being attacked by local boys affiliated with a gang called the Moroccos. When a Girard College student ventured beyond the wall, there was no assurance of their safety. Even at church one Sunday, Ferry and his classmates were involved in a physical altercation against black youths. Forty-one Philadelphians were killed in gang-related conflicts in 1969. [19]  That year Girard student John Daubaras was shot to death right outside of Girard’s walls in front of his two sisters and two friends. Daubaras’ death deeply shocked his classmates. Some Girard students left the school armed the day of his slaying, seeking revenge for their fallen friend. [20]  Integration did not resolve relations between Girard’s white student body and North Philadelphia’s black residents. The long drawn court battles had left both North Philadelphia residents and Girard’s students resistant to cohesion beyond that required of the law. The tragic killing of Daubaras signified that North Philadelphia’s disdain towards Girard College and its white community had reach its zenith.

In the Girard College yearbook for the 1968-1969 school year, a poem written by a member of the school community is dedicated to the life of John Daubaras. In its penultimate stanza, the author wrote “Dear God, allow us to strive to fulfill John’s dreams; Of knitting together our class, Girard College and the world, Free from revenge, or violence of any means.” [21]  John’s dream–his vision for the world–was exactly what civil rights leaders across the nation fought for; a world where individuals, regardless of skin color, could come together and coalesce as a single community. White communities across Philadelphia and the nation resisted  efforts to integrate their neighborhoods, schools, and the workplace. The social-mobility and opportunities found in white society were lawfully denied to African Americans, who were restricted to substandard conditions. The concessions blacks gained through the courts and legislation put an end to de jure segregation and other forms of institutional discrimination. However, Institutional racism while no longer lawful, has continued to exist in every facet of society. Through reflecting on the battles won and loss during the Civil Rights Movement, it is possible to see both how far we have come and where we need to go. In better understanding the progress that has yet to be made, we may one day make Daubaras’ dream for our world a reality.

[1] “Supreme Court upholds admission of Negros to Girard College,” Observer-Reporter, 21 May 1968.

[2] Russell F. Weigley, eds, Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982), 669.

[3] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 148.

[4] Interview with John Ferry, Philadelphia, PA, March, 14, 2015.

[5] Weigley, Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, 669.

[6] Jon C. Teaford, Review of “Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

Vol. 113, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), 97 [JSTOR].

[7] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945, 78.

[8] Weigley, Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, 669.

[9] Sara A. Borden, “Columbia Avenue,” Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia, accessed April 28, 2015, <http://northerncity.library.temple.edu/people-and-places/columbia-avenue?civil_rights_popup=true>

[10] Matthew J. Countryman, “Why Philadelphia,” Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia, accessed April 28, 2015, <http://northerncity.library.temple.edu/content/historical-perspective/why-philadelphia>

[11] Hillary S. Kativa, “The Columbia Avenue Riots (1964),” Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia, accessed April 28, 2015, <http://northerncity.library.temple.edu/content/collections/columbia-avenue-riots/what-interpretative-essay>

[12] Weigley, Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, 676.

[13] Kativa, “The Columbia Avenue Riots (1964).”

[14] Interview with John Ferry.

[15] Carl E. Sigmond, “Community members campaign for integration of Girard College in Philadelphia, PA, USA, 1965-68,” Global Nonviolent Action Database, accessed April 29, 2015, < http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/community-members-campaign-integration-girard-college-philadelphia-pa-usa-1965-68>

[16] John F. Morrison, “Cecil Moore vows to act united with King,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, August 2, 1965, George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Collection, Urban Archives, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA, accessed April 30, 2015, < http://northerncity.library.temple.edu/content/cecil-moore-vows-act-united-ki>

[17] Carl E. Sigmond, “Community members campaign for integration of Girard College in Philadelphia, PA, USA, 1965-68.”

[18] Juan Williams, “The Gradual Integration of Girard College,” National Public Radio, March, 5, 2005, accessed April 29, 2015,  <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4786582>

[19] Weigley, Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, 677.

[20] Interview with John Ferry.

[21] “In Memoriam John Joseph Michael Daubaras,” Corinthian (1969), 7.

By Kassidy Lesher

“Poverty in the 1960’s is invisible and it is new, and both these factors make it more tenacious,” Michael Harrington proclaimed in his groundbreaking study, The Other America (1962), “It is more isolated and politically powerless than ever before.” [1] To most individuals, the baby boom evokes an age full of growth and prosperity. Unfortunately though, that was not always the case. There were people born and raised in the baby boom who did not find a prosperous nation. Living conditions were horrible for the poor and little was being done to help change it. This was the case for Ann Marie Harpel, a child of the baby boom era who was born in 1948, along with her four other sisters. She recalls the difficulties of her life growing up in a time. Her story illustrates a darker side of the baby boom era. It shows that post-war American life also had extensive poverty.

Harpel’s father served in World War II, returned home and then began to start a family. Her parents always wanted to have a large family, and with her father coming back from service allowed for them to finally make it happen. With five daughters arriving almost one right after another, however, it was not easy on her parents to provide. Money was tight around the house with Harpel’s father being the only one with a job. Some families were doing well which is why historian H.W. Brands observes that  “rising postwar incomes enabled families to thrive with single breadwinners.” [2] Yet this was not the case for the Harpel family. Harpel remembers, “my life was very hard growing up. I did not have the advantages that other children had. I was always lacking the necessities.” [3]. She owned one dress and one jacket growing up. The jacket came from the Salvation Army, and she wore it for years. She felt like she was always at a disadvantage. Unlike many other children around the neighborhood, she did not have money to take the bus to school. She and her siblings walked.  Yet, the worst part about going to school was lunch. “I never had enough to buy a meal though” Harpel recalls, “When I could afford food, it was only two rolls because they were only a nickel at school. On the days I was able to eat rolls, were the days that I was happy.” [4]

Harpel’s father worked as hard as he could at a steel mill from the time he returned from service until the business was shut down. Yet even though it would have benefited the family for her mother to work, she never did. Harpel’s mother instead enjoyed her freedom and would do whatever she pleased, without worrying about her family. Brands states, “their wives could devote themselves to caring for the children.” [5]  Unfortunately though, that was not the case for Harpel.  She had to take care of herself and her siblings because her mother did not bother with them. “My life would have been one big happy memory if I did not have any worries” Harpel says, “Instead, I have sad memories of my childhood because I never got to do what I wanted and just be a child.” [6] As soon as she got home from school, she had to help her siblings with their homework and then do the chores. Cleaning and cooking were almost always her responsibility, for as long as she can remember. Her siblings contributed, but with her being the oldest a majority of the tasks fell on her.

Harpel was also forced to help out by getting a job. She started working around the age of twelve. Her mother found her a job as a babysitter for the local district attorney. She would babysit for them any night of the week when the family needed help.  She also had to clean the house when it was asked of her. Harpel said, “The job was not so bad because I already knew how to take care of children and how to clean a house, because they were both things I was doing for my own family.” [7] She normally received around $8 dollars a week and of that money she could only keep $2-$3 if she was lucky. Either all of the money, or most of it, went to things for the house. Her job was not for her own benefit or enjoyment, it was simply to help provide for the family. After babysitting and cleaning, Harpel would attempt to do her homework. Sadly, schoolwork was not always an option, because whatever she needed to do to for herself came last.

Harpel recalls the moment of receiving her diploma was “one of my proudest moments because I felt like I achieved something completely and solely for myself.” [8] Yet this moment turned sour because he mother told her that if she had not forced her to attend school every day, she would never have graduated. Harpel particularly remembers this moment because it was the first time when she fully realized that her mother was unable to show any love towards her. Harpel had been so proud of herself for achieving something special and her mother had stripped her of it. Parents are supposed to be happy for their children’s success,  but Harpel sadly did not receive that. Luckily for her and her siblings, however, there lived a kind elderly women down the street who would always help out the girls whenever their mother was not around and father was at work. She would open up her home for the girls, so they would have a place to bathe.

Harpel notes, “Also, there was no running water or a flushing toilet. We would have to use a bucket to flush the toilet. We had no tub either to bathe in.” [9] Her living conditions were a prime example of the poverty she was in. The house she grew up in only had two bedrooms, and she does not remember her parents ever sleeping in one. Each room to her memory had a double bed and the sisters shared those two beds. The living room was the only place with heat during the winter, and Harpel believes her parents used to sleep on the floor by the fire to stay warm. Every other place in the house though was without heat, because they could not afford a heating system. The house also lacked appliances such as a washer and dryer. If laundry needed to be done, Harpel would have to take it to the nearby laundry mat. The money she made from working would contribute to things as such. Her family was unable to afford a house as nice and simple as the Levitt model homes that were being produced around the nation. Not everyone could afford to enjoy the new American lifestyle .

As Harrington wrote, “The poor are not like everyone else. They are a different kind of people. They think and feel differently; they look upon a different America than the middle class looks upon.” [10] In the early 1960s, Harrington showed the growing divide that existed in America. Most people did not want to acknowledge the troubles of that time though. Instead the people wanted to only see the good in the nation that was happening, and not work on fixing the hardships that still existed. Poverty was a problem that needed to be dealt with, and unfortunately for many it was an issue that people forgot about. Irene Brown, a sociologist of Emory University, points out that, “The odds of being poor for the cohort born between 1959 and 1964 is 33 times that of the oldest cohort.” [11] In other words, poverty actually increased as the baby boom continued. “For every cohort of white household heads born since the beginning of the baby boom,” Brown observes, “each new generation has been facing a higher risk of impoverishment than the cohorts preceding it.” [12] The issue of poverty was not properly addressed and taken care of during the rise of the baby boom, and thus families such as Harpel’s had to suffer growing up. Yet too many historians have overlooked their struggles in their happy depictions of the post-war era.

[1] Michael Harrington, The Other America (New York: Penguin Books, 1962), 14.

[2] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 70.

[3] Email interview with Ann Marie Harpel, March 22, 2015.

[4] Email interview with Ann Marie Harpel, March 22, 2015.

[5] Brands, 70.

[6] Email interview with Ann Marie Harpel, March 23, 2015.

[7] Email interview with Ann Marie Harpel, March 23, 2015.

[8] Email interview with Ann Marie Harpel, March 23, 2015.

[9] Email interview with Ann Marie Harpel, March 23, 2015.

[10] Harrington, 146.

[11] Irene Browne, “The Baby Boom and Trends in Poverty” Social Forces Vol. 73 No. 3 (Mar. 1995): 1071-1095 [JSTOR].

[12] Browne, 1088.

By: Kendal Packo

It’s the end of the 1960s and it’s the hippies versus the Establishment. Living in the midst of the social whirlwind was Bill Packo, a high school student from Randallstown, Maryland. Packo’s vantage point of this time is unique; he was an avid athlete and a dependable student, who was also involved in the music scene. “I wasn’t a hippie by any means”, Packo claims, “but I had a group of friends that were hippies… I would go to parties and I would just drink, but there were drugs like LSD and Quaaludes, hash, pot… they were doin’ it all.”[1] And these were in fact two of the trademarks of the hippie generation: music and drugs. Historian H.W. Brands acknowledges the relationship between the two, stating, “Their music matched their taste in drugs. The Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, and other new bands sang of getting high and staying high… Marijuana was for socializing, methamphetamines and cocaine for partying, LSD for probing the mysteries of the psyche.”[2] The hippies used both the music and the drugs to detach from society and create a social movement that shook the United States. Packo offers multiple memories that complicate Brands’ understanding of what it meant to be, or not to be, a hippie, and how the music could exist without the drugs.

The sudden prevalence of drugs was alarming for society in the end of the 1960s. One article from the Boston Globe in August of 1967 sought to express some of the concerns that non-hippies had about LSD, one of the most commonly used drugs of the time. It claimed that this drug would “lead the user to feel that he has found the answers to life’s problems, a chemically centered religion, or values that transcend his society and culture.”[3] Their scientific logic may or may not have been valid, but it certainly demonstrates society’s concern for the effects this drug would have on society. Packo validates that the invention of LSD helped to ignite the hippie movement. He explains, “There’s a little neighborhood in San Francisco called Haight-Ashbury where the hippie movement really began. A guy named Timothy Leary invented LSD and all the hippies… flocked to San Francisco. That was like the hippie headquarters. All they did was do drugs and have sex and hang out and protest the war.”[4] Brands mentions Haight-Ashbury and Leary in his book, and even quotes one of Leary’s famous catchphrases, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”[5] The phrase was meant to encourage people to disengage from societal norms through the use of psychedelic drugs. One of the primary ways in which people did this was by protesting the war. Both Packo and Brands agree that peace was at the core of the hippie values. Packo himself disagreed with U.S. involvement in Vietnam, but unlike the extreme hippies, this did not lead him to completely rebel against the social order.

Promotion of peace and protestation of the war in Vietnam were largely asserted through music during the ‘60s and ‘70s.  As Packo’s interest in music developed, he became more in-tune with the anti-war efforts. He explains, “Music was really an important way for the hippies to be heard.”[6] Packo became directly involved in the music scene as a result of his friendship with a man named Doug Robinson. Packo elaborates, “He played guitar and piano and started a musical group called Crude Oil. It was five of us and we played different parties and small get togethers. I’m not sure if we ever got paid but it was a lot of fun… We would just listen to music all the time.”[7] And this is what defined many young people just like Packo. He used music as both an escape, and also a way to connect with his friends. In fact, his participation in his band led to some amazing experiences. One of the most memorable nights of his teenage years, he claims, was during the summer of 1969. He tells of him and his band mates, “We won tickets to a concert at the Baltimore Arena to hear a group called Blind Faith. Eric Clapton was the guitar player and after the concert we got to go back stage and we hung with him for a while. But during the concert, an MC from a radio station [in Baltimore] came out on the stage and said ‘Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, we have our first man on the moon.’ July 20, 1969—it was a great night.”[8] Knowing how monumental this night would be for America, Packo still couldn’t refuse the free tickets; “Most people were excited to stay home by their TVs,” he added, “but Eric Clapton was a god to us, and there was no chance that we were going to miss out on that concert.”[9] This story combines an epic night for a music fan with one of the greatest achievements for American modern technology, creating a lasting memory for Packo.

Another one of the most monumental events of the ‘60s was Woodstock, the three-day music festival in Bethel, New York during August of 1969, which featured some of the biggest names in music during that time. Some of the acts included Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Who, Creedence Clearwater, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Packo didn’t attend the festival, but in a way was still able to experience it first hand. After a visit to his grandparents’ house in Connecticut, he recalls an abnormally long ride home on the New York Freeway. The cause of the delay was a mass of people walking along the freeway. Packo remembers, “A five hour drive for us to get home took ten hours because of all the congestion. We didn’t know what it was from; we found out later it was Woodstock. All we saw were hitchhikers and hippies everywhere—it was crazy.”[10] This concert, it turns out, was not expected to be as momentous as it was, and news of it hadn’t even traveled far enough for Packo to hear about it beforehand.[11] Although Packo didn’t consider himself a hippie, this coincidental encounter with the hippies was yet another reason why they were an inspiration for his musical interests.

While the culture of the hippies was certainly unprecedented, Packo downplays the magnitude of the generation gap that many people claim existed between the hippie generation and their parents. He describes a solid relationship with his parents, claiming they rarely argued and they shared many common political views. His personal experience illustrates an article printed in The Washington Post in 1973, which featured a study showing that the hippie generation and their parents were in agreement on most political and social concerns, such as integration and war.[12] These two sources suggest that many people, including Brands, may exaggerate the generation gap. Slight difference in opinion and social habits between generations is common, and Packo is proof that many members of the counterculture resided in the middle of the spectrum between ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘free spirit drug-addict’. It is the memory of the protestors and the rioters that has branded the hippies as being completely defiant toward their parents and society at large. While older generations also opposed the Vietnam War, it was the members of the hippie generation who protested in striking ways. “[They would] burn the American flag, which is illegal, women would burn their bras and men would burn their draft cards,”[13] recalls Packo. While his parents disagreed with the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, they were shocked at the hippies’ utter defiance towards the country. He comments, “My parents and their friends felt the burning of the draft cards was un-American and unpatriotic. My parents grew up during World War II when it was the citizens’ duty to defend our country.”[14] Because of the varying opinions and reactions of the hippie generation and the generations that preceded it, it is difficult to make a claim that the hippies were completely isolated from the remainder of society. There were undoubtedly many critics of the hippies, given that their era was a pivotal one in American history. However, to say that they rebelled against everything that their parents stood for is a complicated and misleading assertion, according to Packo’s memory.

Packo doesn’t deny the impact that his generation had on society, and that it made revolutionary changes for young people. The hippie movement and the battle against the ‘Establishment’ ended in a victory for the youth of society because “it just changed the way people thought of young people,” Packo claims. He elaborates, “Young people had a say in things now, you know? They could give their opinions. Before, you were just a kid… [kids] were to be seen, not heard. The hippie movement let young people not only make noise, but to actually be heard and not just ignored.”[15] The credit for these changes may be due to the extreme hippies, but had an effect on all young people, including those like Packo who were caught in between. While interested in the music, he stayed in school, got along with his parents, and stayed away from drugs. Packo embodies a large population that over the years has been overshadowed by the stories of the most unrestrained of hippies. Maybe he wasn’t a hippie by popular definition, but a part of the counterculture nonetheless.

[1] Email interview with Bill Packo, March 24, 2015.

[2] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 146.

[3] Herbert Black, “LSD Makes Hippies Only Think They Love,” Boston Globe 1960-1983 (24 August 1967) [Proquest].

[4] Email interview with Bill Packo, March 24, 2015.

[5] Brands, 147.

[6] Email interview with Bill Packo, March 24, 2015.

[7] Phone interview with Bill Packo, March 25, 2015.

[8] Phone interview with Bill Packo, March 25, 2015.

[9] Phone interview with Bill Packo, April 29, 2015.

[10] Email interview with Bill Packo, March 24, 2015.

[11] Phone interview with Bill Packo, April 29, 2015.

[12] William Chapman, “Study Minimizes 1960s Generation Gap: Changes of ‘60s Not So Drastic,” The Washington Post, Times Herald (16 September 1973) [Proquest].

[13] Email interview with Bill Packo, March 24, 2015.

[14] Phone interview with Bill Packo, March 25, 2015.

[15] Phone interview with Bill Packo, March 25, 2015.

By Rachel Glick

In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama was at the center of the revolutionary Civil Rights movement. However, Melvin Glick’s testimony shows that this “revolution” was hard to actually see in daily life. Glick, as an observer and participant, saw first hand the effects of the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham. On the surface, the political successes and famous marches and protests seemed to change little. H. W. Brands’ book, The American Dream, does a good job of summarizing the key moments of the movement, noting the hardships and struggles on the way, but he only briefly mentions frustration that many people felt during this time. Glick’s testimony adds depth to Brands’ account, offering an illustration of the ways segregation and discrimination persisted despite the advances of the Civil Rights movement.

Glick grew up in rural Pennsylvania, where he knew no black people until high school. He recalls that despite being taught by his Mennonite parents that “all people were to be treated with respect, and that there was no difference between races,” he had little understanding of race and racial slurs.[1] Pigeon, Michigan, where Glick and his wife taught at a church school, was just as detached from the world of racial tension as Parkesburg, Pennsylvania had been. They moved to Birmingham in 1963 so Glick could work in the University of Alabama hospital laboratory and attend the Medical Technology School. “For me this was like moving to a different culture in another part of the world,” Glick remembers. “I immediately noticed that all the black people lived in one area of Birmingham, mostly in the Bessemer, Alabama area…Driving through Bessemer was an ordeal because it was so difficult to breath, and from the chocking smell of sulfur from the iron smelting going on continuously.”[2] He learned not to hold the door for a black woman, as she would simply wait for him to go through first and got used to the phrase “separate but equal.” A few months after they moved, four little girls died in the 16^th Street Baptist Church bombing. The victims rode segregated ambulances to the hospital.[3] The possibility of integrated neighborhoods had white families contemplating “to move over the mountain into the next ring of suburbs…”[4] This snapshot of life in the south is typical of the 1960s, but Birmingham was especially bad. The “particularly ugly form of racism” of police and officials launched the city into the spotlight, setting the stage for many of the historical moments of the Civil Rights movement to take place.[5]

Glick quickly noticed the “separate but equal” mentality that many people had. Everything was separate: separate doors, waiting rooms, water fountains, and schools. Even the courthouse was segregated. However, equal was another matter. Glick drove past a black school everyday on his way to work. The playground was gravel and children had to walk outside to get to different classes or the restroom.[6] The nearby white school was a “modern brick building” with “plenty of playground equipment plus baseball diamonds, basketball courts, and soccer fields.”[7] The famous Brown v. Board of Education case was in 1954. This was 1963. The ruling to desegregate public schools was flawed because of its demand that states do this “with all deliberate speed,” a rather ambiguous phrase.[8] Brands notes that this resulted in “foot-dragging” by the Jim Crow south.[9] As “momentous” as the decision was, it did little to help immediately.[10] Even when schools were officially desegregated, they were not necessarily integrated. Paul Mokrzycki makes the distinction between the desegregation of schools and integration: “Integration…entailed a complete and seamless incorporation of African Americans into every facet of academic life…”[11] This was still a problem in 1972, when Glick and his family moved to Indianapolis. He recalls seeing the beginning of integration of white neighborhoods and the subsequent “white flight.”[12] As blacks moved in, whites moved out.[13] Schools remained mostly desegregated, even if it was not legal desegregation.

Glick enrolled in the Medical Technology School at the University of Alabama in Birmingham in 1964. This was just a year after George Wallace famously (and literally) attempted to stand in the way of the desegregation of the university in Tuscaloosa.[14] Vivian Malone and James Hood were the first black students enrolled in any University of Alabama classes. Glick’s 1964 Medical Technology class had only ten people; one of them was Wilma Ann Barnes, the first black woman attending the university in Birmingham. “On the first day of school, all of us agreed to go as a group, with Wilma, into the white section of the University Hospital dining room,” Glick remembers.[15] Barnes was the second to last student in the line, followed by Glick. First, the other students sat down at a table together, followed by Barnes and then finally, Glick beside her. “The order was deliberate. We knew we were breaking a taboo in that room. The others could appear to have no choice in the matter, because Wilma chose to sit down at their table after they were already seated. However I could have chosen to sit elsewhere and it was obvious what was happening. I heard the hisses and mutterings as I sat down, and saw the glares of hatred from some of the people facing me.”[16] They continued this routine for several days and after awhile no one paid them any attention. There is hardly any information on Barnes available, even though she was technically the first black student to graduate from the University of Alabama. The Medical Technology program was only twelve months long, so she graduated alongside Vivian Malone in 1965. A short article was written about the event in the magazine Jet. It mentions Barnes by name but she was a “Mystery Girl” then and still is now.[17] The integration of the cafeteria was apparently a success. No one bothered them, as Glick said. But they still made sure Barnes was not alone at lunchtime, an indication that although the new status quo would not be challenged openly, it was not entirely accepted.

Brands’ summary of the Civil Rights movement and incidents like the integration of the hospital cafeteria seem to point to the success of the movement, yet Glick stated outright that he could see no improvement in the treatment of black people in Birmingham. Brands focuses on struggle to pass legislation, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which would end legal discrimination based on race. President Johnson’s “promise,” as Brands puts it, seemed “distant” and “irrelevant” to many black people.[18] Glick remembers witnessing a bowling alley employee refuse a black man trying to rent shoes. “The black man asked, ‘what about the court ruling?’ The bowling alley employee said, ‘we have no court ruling against us and we’re not going to rent to you. Now why don’t you just leave and not create any trouble?’”[19] This incident illustrates the frustration that Brands mentioned. Changing the laws did not erase people’s prejudices, so discrimination continued.

Glick did not attend any of the demonstrations or marches in Alabama, but he did have a sense of the danger in Birmingham. In one instance, his job at the university hospital required him to run medical tests on a black man “castrated and left lying along the road” by the KKK.[20] Bombings often occurred in places he had been recently. These were sobering reminders that the city was not entirely safe. But that violence was not restricted to the south. “I hadn’t realized that the heart of the KKK movement was in the small towns around central Indiana,” Glick remembers.[21] In a 1975 article for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Hirsley describes a Klan picnic in rural Indiana. He ends with a chilling quotation from a young boy contemplating a burning cross: “Looking at the cross, he said, ‘All we need are two niggers on the ends, you know it?’”[22] The corruption of many southern governments and the police force made the height of the civil rights movement no safer for blacks than they had been in the decades after the Civil War, when lynching was publicly accepted. “Black residents expected to be harassed by white police officers…” Brands notes.[23] Unfortunately that statement is still true in many areas of the United States today.

Glick’s recollections seem to contradict the popular interpretation that the Civil Rights movement radically, and quickly, changed in the daily lives of black Americans. “In discussions with neighbors there was just as much prejudice against blacks as there had been before, but there was a fear that changes were coming and that they would need to adjust to the changes.” Glick recalls.[24] The Civil Rights movement made huge leaps in the demolition of legal discrimination and segregation, but the system of oppression persisted for many years on its own. Laws were easier to change than the prejudices that had been instilled in the population for decades, a fact that is still relevant today.

Footnotes

[1] Email interview with Melvin Glick, March 20, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Bomb Victims Rode Segregated Ambulances to Hospital, Morgue.” Chicago Daily Defender, September 18, 1963. [ProQuest]

[4] Email interview with Melvin Glick, March 20, 2015.

[5] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 111.

[6] Email interview with Melvin Glick, March 20, 2015.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Brands, 86.

[9] Ibid, 86.

[10] Ibid, 86.

[11] Paul Mokrzycki, “After the Stand Comes the Fall: Racial Integration and White Student Reactions at the University of Alabama, 1963-1976,” The Alabama Review 65, no. 4 (2012): 290-313

[12] Email interview with Melvin Glick, March 20, 2015.

[13] Brands, 151.

[14] Ray Abrams, “Air of Nervous Peace Hangs Over U. of Ala. Campus.” Afro-American, June 22, 1963. [ProQuest]

[15] Email interview with Melvin Glick, March 20, 2015.

[16] Ibid.

[17] “Second Negro in Alabama Graduation A ‘Mystery’ Girl,” Jet 28, no. 2 (1965): 43 [Google Books].

[18] Brands, 148.

[19] Email interview with Melvin Glick, March 20, 2015.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Michael Hirsley, “Klan in Indiana Dishes Out Beans, Hate at Picnic,” Chicago Tribune, July 19, 1975. [ProQuest]

[23] Brands, 148.

[24] Email interview with Melvin Glick, March 20, 2015.