Dickinson College Cross Country Coach Don Nichter (Chris Knight)
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Dickinson College Cross Country Coach Don Nichter was attending a routine department meeting led by Bob Massa, the college’s vice president at the time.[1] Abruptly, the meeting was interrupted when Massa’s administrative assistant ran into the building and whispered news of the first crash to him, causing Massa to leave with no further explanation than “There’s been an emergency. I have to go.” Confused, Nichter and other coaches gathered around a television and watched as the tragedy of September 11 unfolded. He remembers the disbelief they all felt knowing that “nothing like this had ever happened in the U.S.” In the book American Dreams, H. W. Brands describes this intense shock that characterized the American reaction to September 11 and credits prominent leaders for helping the country overcome it.[2] While figures such as George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani were instrumental in the country’s recovery efforts, Brands’ portrayal fails to acknowledge the bravery and resilience of the American people who returned to their lives fearing the possibilities of further attacks. This unwillingness to be compromised by fear is what truly defeats terrorism, and in 2001 it was displayed by Nichter’s athletes as well as the broader Dickinson community.
Dickinson College students attend a candlelight vigil outside of the Holland Union Building (Pierce Bounds)
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, it is undeniable that grief dominated national sentiment. Brands writes that “The shock of the day evolved into mourning for the thousands killed in the attacks.”[3] This was especially evident on college campuses, where students came together to support each other as they processed the events of the day.[4] Although classes at Dickinson were canceled, Nichter and other coaches held practices that afternoon to check in on their athletes.[5] “We didn’t run that day, but we got everybody together,” he remembers. “And there were people in tears . . . . There was a lot of sadness.” That evening, the campus convened in a community gathering at Anita Tuvin Schlecter Auditorium.[6] Adding to the emotion of the event was the fact that many students were personally affected by the attacks. According to Nichter, two students lost parents, and many others had family and friends that worked and lived in New York City.[7] Arika Peck, a junior at the time, was also stricken by loss. At the gathering, she lamented, “I lost eight friends today. That is a big number of friends that I don’t have anymore.”[8] Later, a candlelight vigil would be held in honor of the victims.[9]
Dickinson students decorated their dorms to display patriotism after September 11 (Courtney Shackelford).
Although events such as those held at Dickinson were born out of feelings of sorrow, they created a sense of solidarity that helped communities recover. Nationwide, many sought to display their patriotism by playing a role in the country’s effort to rebuild, whether through joining volunteer organizations or the military.[10] Staff members at Dickinson established a crisis center to help students navigate the tumultuous period.[11] In a sense, the reemergence of the United States post-September 11 was not a story of any politician’s heroic individual efforts, but of Americans looking out for each other.
As the surprise wore off, life began to resemble what it had been like before the attacks, apart from a new sense of vulnerability. “We just kind of went on with a new reality that terrorism can happen in the U.S.,” Nichter says.[12] On campus, classes, events, and athletics resumed. Nichter’s teams were at the forefront of the return, competing in and winning both the men’s and women’s races at the Vassar College Invitational on September 15.[13] He remembers the meet as particularly emotional, noting that “people were crying during the national anthem, and they gave a moment of silence.”[14] For the team, competing alongside their friends offered the comfort and familiarity that the preceding days seemed to lack. It is likely the same could be said about the many Americans who returned to jobs and other responsibilities in the wake of September 11.
After two anthrax-laced letters were linked to a post office in West Trenton, N.J, a hazardous materials response team was deployed to the location (Tom Mihalek/AFP/Getty Images).
Even as some semblance of normalcy reappeared, a heightened vigilance of terrorism remained at the forefront of the national consciousness. On some occasions, it was justified. Beginning only a week after September 11, anthrax-laced mail was sent to members of Congress and the media, eventually killing five and infecting 17 others.[15] But for every legitimate concern of anthrax infection, there were many more hoaxes designed to take advantage of the hysteria surrounding the matter.[16] On October 30, this issue arrived on Dickinson’s campus after workers in the student mailroom found two envelopes containing white powder and the message “You now have anthrax; prepare to die.”[17] In response, the Carlisle Police closed the Holland Union Building until November 3, when the powder was confirmed harmless. During that time, students dined inside the Kline Center, which is typically reserved for athletics. This incident and the many others like it exemplify how Americans had to accommodate for the growing anxiety over terrorism. By neglecting to describe such stress, Brands misses an opportunity to illustrate the lasting effects of September 11 on the country. Furthermore, he discounts the courage it took for many to continue the push towards normalcy, adjusting to new threats instead of submitting to them.
Nichter’s runners demonstrated this principle as they maintained focus throughout the uncertainty of the semester, finishing the season successfully. The women’s team won the conference championship and qualified for the national meet.[18] The men were conference runners-up and sent two individuals to nationals.[19] Reflecting on the season, Nichter believes “coming together and having practice and performing on the weekends was, for those student athletes, probably a really positive [experience] for most of them—a way to sort of, not forget . . . . but at the same time, try to move on, too.”[20]
Brands’ portrayal of the United States recovery from September 11 focuses mainly on the leadership of elected officials like George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani.[21] This choice is understandable, as the guidance of these men was inspiring and highly visible. However, their efforts alone did not lift the country out of the despair caused by the attacks. Just as, if not more, important, was the response of the American people. Despite the ever-present concern over further terrorist action, communities came together in grief, emerged united, and carried on with the determination to make the world feel safe again. Such resilience is integral in any reaction to terrorism, which, by definition, aims to spread fear, chaos, and intimidation to further the attacker’s interest. Nichter’s teams, along with the broader Dickinson community, serve as examples of the countless instances in which Americans carefully but resolutely returned to their normal lives after September 11. Taken together, these many instances were the backbone of the nation’s ability to move forward stronger. “[It’s] complicated when you say we’ll never forget,” Nichter observes, “but, but, we also knew we got to move on.”[22]
[1] Interview with Don Nichter, Carlisle, PA, April 14, 2025
[2] H. W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2010), 351.
[13] Matt McFarland, “Men Strive to Recieve [sic] Bid for National Championship,” Dickinsonian, September 21, 2001; Alicia Fitzpatrick, “Dickinson Women are Leaders of the Pack,” Dickinsonian, September 21, 2001.
“The utterly unexpected events of 9/11 unfolded in real time on television in the homes and offices of the entire country. The shock of the day evolved into mourning for the thousands killed in the attacks” (351).
Interview Subject:
Don Nichter, 68 years old, has coached cross country and track and field at Dickinson College since 1983.
Transcript:
Q: Could you provide some context for where the team was heading into the season and what your expectations for the team were?
A: Obviously, at that point in the year, two weeks into the competitive season, middle of September, we had only had two meets—two smaller meets—and I would think that the team was just kind of starting to sort of gel as a team after competing together and racing with each other and supporting each other. You know, part of the evolution of a cross-country season is, I don’t need the training component, but getting a chance to race together as a team and be on a line together. So I think we were just at the very early stages of that, kind of developing that sort of culture, a racing culture.
Q: Could you tell me a little about how that day started, before the tragedy happened, for you?
A: So, it was just like a normal day. We had a meeting with our division. Vice President Bob Massa was the vice president then, so our department was there with him, and it was just a standard morning meeting that you have once every two or three weeks. Just like a regular, up-to-date meeting, talk about recruiting, whatever. So we got up and did that, and we were sitting in the meeting.
Q: What was it like when you when you heard the news in that meeting?
A: Well, we just knew that something was happening because, the administrative assistant for Bob, she came running into the building when he was literally standing before us and just whispered something to him. And he immediately just, his face just kind of turned blank, and he said, “There’s been an emergency. I have to go.” And so he literally left. We’d all just came in … all of our coaches were in this building, and somebody had a TV. And we just kind of all were gathered around the television, just in disbelief that this was actually happening. It was just sort of one of those moments where you go like—nothing like this had ever happened is the US, you know what I mean? Like we were not used to anything like that in terms of terrorism. Terrorism didn’t exist in the US. It existed everywhere else. So, I just remember just being in an office, just going like, “I can’t believe this is happening,” kind of thing.
Q: And what was the mood like on campus after that tragedy?
A: I think I just remember contacting the team. And [we] came in for practice. Obviously they canceled classes that day, but we talked about it. I can’t remember the circumstances for deciding what we were gonna do as a department, but I think I remember something along lines of, “We’re gonna have practice and then process it as a team.” We didn’t run that day, but we got everybody together because we were kind of encouraged to do that. And there were people in tears. There were people just, you know, their facial expression was just blank. There was a lot of sadness. We kind of just met and talked a little bit about it, but it was brief. It was kind of more just to make sure people were as okay as you can be under those circumstances, that there wasn’t anybody really having a really horrible meltdown. So then the next day is when we actually kind of started to talk through it a little bit. And it was more or less just like an open forum. I mean, we did go out and run that day because I talked to the captains and decided then that it was a good idea to just kind of get out and move a little bit and get away from it, so we did actually do a little baby run together.
Q: So do you think running, in a way, was able to help the team kind of return to a sense of normalcy?
A: Yeah, I do. I mean, that’s a good way to put it. These things, there’s never an easy—you know, everybody always says when there’s a death in your family, there’s never like a perfect way to handle it, right? So you just kind of go through and you try to—but there’s not like a script for “This is what you should do,” especially in this case. Like, should you practice, should you not? Should everybody just go to their room? But I think at that point, it was more, “Okay, let’s try to get back to some level of normalcy in terms of who we are as a team and use running partly as an outlet for getting back into a routine that they’re familiar with.”
Q: And once you returned to running, what was the general attitude toward continuing the season? Was that even a concern?
A: No, I don’t remember talking about shutting down the season. We had a delay for a week where we didn’t compete—a meet that was canceled—and then the following week, we went to a meet. People kind of took it more as something that, you know, we have to move on [from], and we can’t dwell on this. The first meet back was emotional because they had a national anthem beforehand. We were at Vassar, and I just remember people crying during the national anthem, and they gave a moment of silence. So I think that was the extent of it. But by two or three weeks after it, I think we were—I won’t say everything was normal. There was still some, you know—the news was being bombarded every day with information about trying to find survivors and all of that. But, I guess at some point, we just kind of went on with a new reality that terrorism can happen in the U.S. I think that was the recognition—that, we’re not safe and the world is a very complicated place.
Q: How did it feel being able to line up to race afterwards?
A: I think it was a positive experience for me and for the team to sort of be back, trying to find your place in a normal pattern of racing on the weekend and being together as a team, traveling together. I think that was really important. I think teams, personally, that that was a good thing and can be really positive thing, to be on the team. I think coming together and having practice and performing on the weekend was, for those student athletes, probably a really positive [experience] for most of them—a way to sort of, not forget. You’re never gonna forget, right? Always said that, but at the same time, try to move on, too. [It’s] complicated when you say we’ll never forget, but, but, we also knew we got to move on.
Q: Lastly, do you have anything else that you’d like to share about this topic?
A: I can’t remember a lot about what other coaches did. I don’t remember, like I said, anybody shutting down. The school didn’t send everybody home or anything. I think, you know, you got up the next day and it was on everybody’s mind. Campus-wide, there were a couple of kids that lost parents—I think there were two. So that was like a big thing, obviously, huge thing. [There] wasn’t anybody on my team, cross country, that had a close relative or anything like that. But Dickinson has a lot of students from New Jersey and Connecticut, and parents that work in New York City. There certainly were some people that had like really strong connections for whatever reason, so that was a different situation. There was like—the two students that—there was a ceremony on campus, not too long after it happened when they identified who passed away.
On September 10th, 2001, Colonel John V. Donovan was having lunch with a former military “buddy,” at the United States Pentagon. Unbeknownst to them, just 24 hours later, the place in which they were sitting would meet the nose of American Airlines Flight 77. This attack on U.S. soil marked a new chapter not only in American foreign policy but also in its domestic security infrastructure. Historian and author H.W. Brands writes that “[B]ush proclaimed a national emergency” which for that reason, he “later went before Congress to declare a ‘war on terror.’”[1] While Brands correctly highlights the sweeping foreign policy response, he overlooks a transformative domestic development: the creation of the TSA in November of 2001, and the urgent expansion of the Federal Air Marshal program and the controversial debates that reshaped the role of aviation security in the post-9/11 era.
On September 11, 2001, “19 terrorists from the Islamist extremist group al Qaeda hijacked four commercial aircrafts” and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.[2] The attacks claimed the
Federal Air Marshal Credentials – John Donovan (Personal)
lives of nearly 3,000 Americans, marking one of the deadliest acts of terrorism on American soil. Just five days after these devastating attacks shook the nation’s collective consciousness, Col. Donovan received a call from “a retired three-star general and close colleague” whom he had known from his days as an active duty member of the United States military.[3] His colleague, whose name will remain redacted, told him, “I need you right now,” and immediately began processing his security clearance.[4] Within hours, Donovan was informed he was now the 33rd Federal Air Marshal, tasked, under a direct presidential directive, with expanding the program from just 32 agents to several thousand within six months. But with thousands of daily flights, the scale of this commitment raised serious logistical questions. “It’s a very great goal, [but] it’s difficult to meet that,” Donovan admitted at the time in a Wall Street Journal article from 2001, reflecting the unprecedented scope and urgency of the mission.[5]
Federal Air Marshall Facility in Atlantic City, NJ (The Washington Post)
As outlined by the the Aviation Security Act (S. 1447), the urgent mission of the Federal air marshal program was to “provide for random deployment of Federal air marshals” on both domestic and international flights, conduct “appropriate background and fitness checks for candidates,” and ensure “appropriate training, supervision, and equipment” for all new marshals.[6] The morning after Donovan assumed his new position, he “flew alone on a Gulfstream provided by the Secretary of Transportation, from D.C. to Atlantic City,” then the program’s only operational hub.[7] As Donovan recalls, “it was the only plane moving at Reagan Airport, an eerie and unforgettable experience.”[8] Once in Atlantic City, he met with the existing leadership and divided responsibilities: “they would handle tactical operations and training” while he would lead plans and policies, acting as the bridge to “Congress, [and] to the White House.”[9]
From the perspective of Donovan, the TSA was unaware of the threat landscape at the time, and had “no clear sense of what could come next.”[10] To address this, he established a small intelligence cell, nicknamed the “chin scratchers,” tasked with thinking creatively from the perspective of “deviant minds,” and tactically about potential future threats. The mission of this group was to war-game possible attack scenarios, such as bombs being smuggled onto planes, aircraft being hijacked, or explosive devices planted on board. He also had to be strategic in deciding which flights received coverage, based on a specific algorithm, which focused on high-risk targets: long-haul, fully fueled, high-profile flights that were both domestic, and international.[11] Conversely, he had to deemphasize the need for Federal air marshal presence on short regional flights with limited potential for catastrophic impact.
Federal Air Marshal Training (LA Times)
Additionally, scaling the Federal Air Marshal program posed a significant challenge, especially without compromising its elite standards. After conducting extensive research and consulting with experts, Donovan concluded that the original growth targets were unrealistic without sacrificing the high standards they maintained, something the program refused to do. Federal Air marshals were required to meet the highest firearms qualification standards in the U.S. government, exceeding even those of the Secret Service, because, as Donovan emphasizes, “the margin for error on an aircraft is zero. There is no second shot in a pressurized cabin.”[12] As it appeared then to Donovan, the need for such high standards could be argued as the difference between a beat cop in an alley, who might exchange multiple rounds in a chaotic shootout, and an air marshal, who had to neutralize a threat with a single shot in the confined, high-stakes environment of an aircraft cabin. This uncompromising approach to training and firearms proficiency also shaped Donovan’s firm opposition to a controversial policy proposal gaining traction in Congress at the time: arming commercial airline pilots.
Armed Pilots Posing for Picture in the Cockpit (Reddit)
One of the most contentious post-9/11 aviation security debates centered on whether commercial airline pilots should be armed. As Donovan recalls, “there was a push from at least one lawmaker to arm airline pilots, a well-intentioned, but deeply flawed idea.”[13] “Pilots are trained to fly planes, not engage in firefights,” he explains, “they need to stay focused on aviation proficiency, not firearms training.”[14] His stance directly contradicted the logic put forth in a House of Representatives report, which claimed that “giving pilots a means to defend themselves in an emergency will allow them to concentrate on flying and ensure the safety of the flight.”[15] Donovan was of the belief that the opposite was true: arming pilots would only distract them from their core responsibilities and introduce unnecessary risk into the cockpit. To support his view, he conducted live demonstrations in Atlantic City simulating how a pilot, depending on their dominant hand and cockpit position, would have to react to a sudden threat, noting, “you can’t expect someone to turn 180 degrees and fire a precise shot in a confined space when they’re startled and untrained for that kind of scenario.”[16]
Article with John Magaw’s Stance (London Times)
The House of Representatives report attempted to address some of these practical concerns by requiring the TSA to consider “the placement of the firearm… to ensure both its security and its ease of retrieval in an emergency,” as well as to define “the division of responsibility between pilots” if only one or both were armed.[17] These measures, while well-intentioned, failed to fully account for the unpredictable realities of a live flight deck. Donovan remained unconvinced that these procedural requirements could compensate for the operational and psychological risks that were brought forth from arming pilots. His concerns were echoed at the time by then TSA Administrator John Magaw, who, according to The Times (London), “opposed arming pilots, arguing that their responsibility was to control the aircraft.”[18] Donovan’s warnings were tragically validated a few years later when a Federal Flight Deck Officer discharged his weapon negligently while parked at the gate in Charlotte.[19] “No one was hurt,” he notes, “but it was a wake-up call, and it confirmed what I’d said all along: this was a dangerous idea from the beginning.”[20]
Donovan was keen to understand such miscalculations from the decades he spent in the military, and these experiences were the foundation for his role in the Federal Air Marshal Service. His leadership within the TSA reflected a fundamental belief that rigid hierarchy and “we’ve always done it this way” thinking were dangerous in a world where threats constantly evolved, shedding light on his rare perspective on institutional innovation. He rejected command-and-control leadership in favor of collaboration, respect, and clear standards. “You don’t motivate professionals by barking orders,” he reflects, “I focused on setting the right tone, fostering collaboration, and leading in a way that motivated people.”[21] Donovan’s philosophy of leadership wasn’t about relinquishing discipline, it was about aligning structure with mission. His attention to detail stemmed not from a desire to micromanage, but from a conviction that the systems he built needed to last beyond any one person. It was this forward-thinking mindset, paired with a commitment to operational excellence, that helped shape an air marshal culture built not just for immediate post-9/11 threats, but for the long term.
Looking back, Donovan expresses quiet confidence in TSA’s trajectory, discussing how the “TSA has done a remarkable job staying true to its mission.”[22] Though acknowledging that no system is perfect, he argues that Americans are fundamentally safer in the air today than they were before 9/11. For him, the true danger lay not in bureaucracy or inconvenience, but in complacency. “Complacency is your worst enemy,” he warns, “the moment you assume you’re safe is the moment you’re most vulnerable.”[23] Donovan’s legacy within the TSA and Federal air marshal program is not measured in medals or headlines but in the culture he helped shape. He never sought recognition, but rather holding fast to the ethos of the “quiet professional”: do the job, do it right, and move on. In a security landscape defined by unpredictability, his story serves as a reminder that the most powerful defense is not fear or force, but foresight and nimble-thinking. In the wake of terror, Donovan didn’t just help build a new agency, he helped build a mindset. One that asks not if we are safe, but rather “what haven’t we thought of yet?”
[1] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 176.
[2] Naval History and Heritage Command, “Sept. 11 Attack,” Naval History and Heritage Command, [WEB].
[3] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[4] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[5] Stephen Power, “Push to Expand Air Marshals Force Will Send Law Officers Back to Camps,” Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2001, [WEB].
[6] U.S. Congress, Senate, Aviation Security Act, S. 1447, 107th Congress, 1st session, introduced in Senate September 21, 2001, placed on calendar September 24, 2001, [WEB].
[7] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[8] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[9] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[10] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[11] U.S. Congress, Senate, Aviation Security Act, S. 1447, 107th Congress, 1st session.
[12] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[13] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[14] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[15] U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act, H.R. Rep. No. 107-555, pt. 1 (2002), [WEB].
[16] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[17] U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act.
[18] Roland Watson, “Bush backs plans to give guns to pilots,” The Times Digital Archive, September 6, 2002, [WEB].
[20] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[21] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[22] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
[23] Video Interview with John V. Donovan, Carlisle, PA, and Chapel Hill, NC, April 14, 2025.
Appendix
“Bush proclaimed a national emergency, in light of what he described as ‘the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.’ He went before Congress to declare a ‘war on terror.'” (H.W. Brands, American Dreams, p. 176)
Interview Subject
I will be interviewing Col. John V. Donovan, a U.S. veteran who began his lengthy military history and service to the United States of America during the Vietnam war. Following the 9/11 attacks, Col. Donovan was appointed head of the Federal Air Marshal Service and later served on the committee responsible for establishing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Interviews
– Audio recording, Carlisle, PA, April 14, 2025
Selected Transcript
Q: In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, how were you brought into the leadership of the Federal Air Marshal Service, and what were your initial responsibilities?
A: “Just five days after the attacks, I received a call from a retired three-star general and close colleague from my active duty days. He was then Chief of Security at the FAA and had just come from a White House Situation Room meeting with the President. He told me, ‘I need you right now,’ and immediately began processing my security clearance. He informed me I was now the 33rd Federal Air Marshal—with the President’s directive to grow the program from 32 to thousands within six months.”
Q: What was your understanding of the threat landscape at that time, and how did it shape your approach to air travel security?
A: “In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we had no clear sense of what could come next. The threat environment was entirely uncertain, so we had to prepare for worst-case scenarios. I stood up a small intelligence cell—nicknamed the ‘chin scratchers’—who were tasked with thinking creatively and tactically about future threats. Their role was to war-game potential attack vectors, such as bombs being brought onto planes, aircraft being hijacked for non-piloting purposes, or explosive devices planted on board. We also had to be strategic in deciding which flights received coverage. Our focus was on high-risk targets—long-haul, fully fueled, high-profile flights—not short regional ones with limited potential for catastrophic impact.”
Q: H.W. Brands mentions the ‘war on terror’ and emergency declarations, but leaves out the formation of the TSA. In your view, how significant was the creation of the TSA in the broader U.S. response to 9/11?
A: “One of the most impactful aspects of TSA’s creation was how it brought together subject matter experts from across corporate America—18 different companies contributed top talent to help design a new aviation security system from scratch. These experts, many from sectors like logistics and crowd management, worked grueling hours in D.C. for over a year. For example, the layout of the TSA checkpoint queuing system was designed by a Senior Vice President from Disney, leveraging their expertise in managing high-volume crowds efficiently. Baltimore-Washington International Airport served as the testing ground for many of the concepts these experts developed—what eventually became the standardized screening process we know today.”
Q: As someone on the committee that created the TSA, what were the biggest challenges in the creation of a brand new federal agency essentially from scratch?
A: “A major hurdle came from Congress. There was a push from at least one lawmaker to arm airline pilots—a well-intentioned but deeply flawed idea. I was one of the first to oppose this publicly. My position was clear: pilots are trained to fly planes, not engage in firefights. They need to stay focused on aviation proficiency, not firearms training. To prove this, I conducted demonstrations in Atlantic City simulating how a pilot—depending on whether they were right or left-handed and seated in the left or right cockpit seat—would have to react to a threat at the cockpit door. The physical mechanics made it nearly impossible to respond quickly and accurately under stress. You can’t expect someone to turn 180 degrees and fire a precise shot in a confined space when they’re startled and untrained for that kind of scenario. My warnings were unfortunately validated a few years later when a Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) discharged a weapon negligently while parked at the gate in Charlotte. No one was injured, but it was a wake-up call that confirmed why arming pilots was a bad idea from the beginning.”
Q: Looking back now, do you feel the TSA has stayed true to its founding mission?
A: “Yes, I do. In fact, just yesterday I sat next to a commercial airline captain, and he expressed how much more comfortable and confident he feels flying today compared to before 9/11—thanks to the multiple layers of security now in place. The immediate deployment of Federal Air Marshals, the creation of the TSA, and the overall overhaul of aviation security have all played a part in that. Sure, there are inconveniences. You might have to stand in line, take off your shoes, or follow new protocols that seem frustrating. But these measures exist for a reason. We take our shoes off because one individual tried to ignite explosives in his sneakers. And it all started with just 19 people—not a country, not an army, just 19—who were able to carry out an attack that changed the world. That’s the scale of what we’re dealing with. Given that, I think the TSA has done a remarkable job staying true to its mission: keeping the flying public safe. Do I think it’s perfect? No system is. But I feel safer flying today, and I think most people do—even if they don’t always say it out loud.”
National economies were bound so tightly together, [Norman Angell] maintained in his book, The Great Illusion, that war, far from profiting anyone, would ruin everyone. —Margaret Macmillan, “Rhyme of History,” Brookings (2013)
Causes of World War I
Imperialism
“Between 1870 and 1900, Britain added more than four million square miles to its imperial holdings, France more than three and a half million, and Germany one million. The new rush for empire further destabilized an already unsettled world.” –George Herring, From Colony to Superpower (2010), 268
During this same period, the US added approximately 500,000 square miles of annexed territory (Guam, Hawaii, Philippines, Puerto Rico); including Alaska (1867) raises the figure above 1 million square miles
From L to R / top to bottom: Alfred Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay, Henry Cabot Lodge
The advocates for an American “large policy” in the 1890s were balance-of-power realists. What does that description from international studies mean in this context?
The New “Manifest Destiny”
Contemporaries celebrated American victories [in 1898] as the providential act of God. The influential Brooklyn minister Lyman Abbott, for instance, declared that Americans were “an elect people of God” and saw divine providence in Dewey’s victory at Manila. Some, such as Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana, took matters one step further, seeing in American victory an opportunity for imperialism. In Beveridge’s view, America had a “mission to perform” and a “duty to discharge” around the world. What Beveridge envisioned was nothing less than an American empire. —American Yawp, Chapter 19, Sec. III
Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points (January 1918)
Open diplomacy, neutrality, and free trade
Self-determination and de-colonization
League of Nations and rule of international law
Wilsonianism offered a rebuke to balance-of-power realists by offering (in the terminology of international studies) a more idealistic approach to the US role in the world.
Treaty of Versailles Debate (1919-20)
Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge
Wilsonians (Robinson)
Reservationists (Lodge)
Irreconciliables (Borah, Johnson, LaFollette)
Timeline of votes:
November 18, 1919: 8 to 55 for treaty with reservations
November 19, 1919: 38 to 53 for Wilson’s treaty
March 19, 1920: 49 to 35 for Wilson’s treaty // (56 required for 2/3 super-majority)
Discussion Questions
Lodge and Wilson were both internationalists. So why did they destroy the greatest accomplishment of American internationalism to that point in time?
Does this American treaty-making and treaty-ratifying system deserve any blame for this tragic outcome?
Consequences of World War I
We expect that the international community will deal with conflicts when they arise, and that they will be short-lived and easily containable. But this is not necessarily true. —Margaret Macmillan, “Rhyme of History,” Brookings (2013)
US Role in World Affairs
WWI and Wilsonianism –lessons of imperialism and “guns of August”
WWII and intervention –lessons of Munich and appeasement
Cold War and containment –lessons of Vietnam and hubris
“The blood of the two Kennedys and King, the blood on the streets of America’s cities, and the blood in Vietnam made that hope almost impossible to maintain,”[1] H.W. Brands writes of the turbulence of the 1960s and 70s that destroyed liberalism’s hope of peaceful problem-solving. In his book American Dreams: The United States Since 1945, Brands characterizes the late 60s and early 70s through its counterculture and conflict, demonstrating societal evolution on a widespread scale. Protests, war, and prominent political figures are emphasized while the typical American experience fails to be mentioned. Brands focuses heavily on typical middle-class American family life in his chapter on the 1950s but never follows up with how those experiences evolved. Brands’ avoidance of this highlights a trend among historians, as the 60s and 70s are more often than not portrayed through the lens of social and political movements. By focusing on the more memorable turmoil like the Vietnam War and counterculture of the 60s, Brands omits the stories of how typical life was unfolding while these events were taking place, thus omitting a fuller picture of the period he explores. The experiences of those directly involved in the conflict are valuable, but personal anecdotes from those who were not are also worthwhile in that they can more accurately reflect the experiences of most Americans of the time.
Frances O’Connell-Canfield’s childhood memories speak directly to the experience of daily life in the late 60s and early 70s, and particularly middle-class family life, which can act as a continuation of Brands’ exploration of middle-class families in the mid-50s and early 60s. Though Brands describes the “Golden Age of the Middle Class” as 1955-1960, he forgoes to explain whether or not the “Golden Age” continued or diminished. The 60s and 70s can be understood as a time of increasing leisure and entertainment for families, the peak of the middle class occurring in the early 70s.[2] Frances O’Connell-Canfield was born in December 1961 and grew up in Queens, New York in a middle-class neighborhood. When recalling her childhood, she describes a time of middle-class bliss, remembering that “we were lucky in that we never experienced any economic hardship. My father had a position where he made a good salary, and my mom stayed home. We were able to, in the 70s, buy a summer house in the north fork of Long Island.”[3] The disposable income that Frances expresses is characteristic of the “Golden Age” of the 50s that Brands writes about. However, what was shifting was the political landscape in which these families existed. The families of the 50s were experiencing the Cold War, while the 60s and 70s saw the Vietnam War through their television screens. Famously dubbed the Television War, attacks were viewed on the news in people’s living rooms. Because the war was prevalent in daily life, one could assume that family life during that time might not be as leisure-filled as the idyllic 1950s suburban life. However, Frances recalls a childhood full of road trips, amusement parks, playing outside, and television, despite the chaos occurring in the U.S. and abroad.
Promotional image of The Partridge Family, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
“We used to take road trips to upstate New York to see Niagara Falls,” Frances recalls, “we went to Cape Cod for the beaches. We loved to go to Golf City, it was a mini golf place. One of my most memorable trips was taking the ferry to Block Island from Long Island,”[4] These memories were not unique. The recreational road trip was an increasing trend in the 60s and 70s, with 68,901 visits to national recreational sites in 1959 skyrocketing to 111,386 in 1964 and jumping another 50,000 or so by 1969.[5] The use of automobiles had also exponentially increased since 1959, allowing more families to have vacations on the road. By the 70s, a culture of spending money on recreation was already embedded into American life as “Americans continued to spend increasing amounts on recreational pursuits, even in the face of higher gas prices and a sluggish economy during the 1970s,” as professor of Economics David George Surdam writes in his study on 20th century American leisure.[6] The “sluggish economy” can in part refer to the energy crisis of the 70s, a time in which Frances remembers “parents were laid off from jobs…And also a construction boom that kind of collapsed. There were three tall empty apartment buildings in Queens. One family moved to the West Coast because they couldn’t get another position.”[7] While the energy crisis laid people off and the Vietnam War was wearing on the economy, recreational spending did not decrease substantially. As Frances remembers, most families in her community were comfortable enough to rely primarily on the income of the fathers, with some of the mothers working by the time she reached high school age. Even so, Frances claimed that the mother’s jobs typically “[weren’t] providing for the household budget but adding to it so they could afford more luxuries like a second car or toward vacation homes or summer vacations, road trips. Vacations were very big in those days.”[8] Therefore, even with financial struggles for some in the 70s, leisure remained at the forefront of family life.
More so than the 1950s, however, family life in the 60s and 70s saw an increase in television watching. While televisions became a new household staple in the 50s[9], the late 60s and 70s solidified the pastime as something to stay. Despite the Vietnam War being televised, watching television was also recreational for the whole family. The amount of children’s entertainment in the 60s and 70s had elevated immensely. Reflecting on the TV shows she watched with her family, Frances remembers the different ways her family watched television: “We all watched the news. 60 Minutes and Face the Nation were popular news shows. Also Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. But for fun, my siblings and I would watch The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. They were like the number one shows.”[10] With shows like this, the whole family could enjoy the same program. Interestingly, as scholar Andrea Press writes, “Television families of the period tend[ed] to be white, middle-class, intact, and suburban, all appearing in much higher percentages than they did in actuality.”[11] This “ideal” family that was portrayed on television was likely the type of family to be least affected by any of the hardship of the time, meaning that watching these happy families on television could act as escapism from realities of the outside world.
New York Times article about the Atari from Christmas Day, 1975, courtesy of ProQuest
Another addition to family leisure was the rise of electronics and video games. Frances recalls when new electronics began to pop up in her neighborhood, recounting “I remember my dad bringing home from work one day an IBM electric typewriter, I remember when one of the other kids on the block got one of the first VHS tape machines, and I remember when my cousins got the new Atari.”[12] She also recalled watching slideshows of pictures from vacation on the Kodak Carousel Projector. The Atari is of interest, though, because it was the first company to popularize video game consoles.[13] “People want new ways to spend their leisure time,” reads a quote from a 1975 New York Times article on Atari’s popularity, “It’s part of a trend of looking for different ways to relax.”[14] The article claims electronic games to be the newest Christmas gift craze, one that provides an escape from “harsh realities.”[15]
Picture of Frances and her sisters opening presents on Christmas morning, circa mid-1970s.
Whether or not the “harsh reality” of the Vietnam War and other current events seeped into family life depended entirely on personal circumstances. While her family wasn’t directly affected, some families weren’t so lucky as to be so removed from wartime. Frances’ neighbors had a son who had been drafted and she remembers when “he came home and he was kind of…his behavior had changed. In those days people didn’t really understand PTSD or didn’t speak about it. People referred to him as being ‘odd’, saying ‘he got messed up by Vietnam.’”[16] His backyard was next to the O’Connell family, and Frances recalls that he would spend hours lying under a Cherry tree in his yard. As a kid, she wondered why he didn’t get up and do something.
When asked about her awareness of the war at that age, Frances said she was aware, as it was on the news every night, but was too young to have a clear understanding. Frances believes that her parents did their best to shelter their children from the harsh realities, remembering that her mother put away a magazine that had images of the war to not disturb her younger siblings. “I think children,” she says, “or at least middle-class kids, were more kept in a childhood lane in those days. Finances weren’t discussed, and problems of the world weren’t discussed as much except for when they were glaring. Things were hidden from children then.”[17] This protection of childhood innocence in the face of televised foreign violence and violence on the homefront can perhaps be understood as a driving force for the family-friendly entertainment of the era. As an exhibit in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting says, “The late 1960s and 1970s witnessed rising consumer activism in the television industry, as pressure grew on corporate broadcasters to address the commercialization and violence that children saw on television.”[18]
Therefore, while the social radicalism and political conflict of the late 1960s and 70s is the focus of Brands’ exploration, the seemingly mundane life of family leisure can help paint a fuller picture of American culture of the time and how family leisure persisted in the face of conflict. Brands’ claim of how peaceful hope was “almost impossible to maintain” did not apply to many Americans who were somewhat removed from those events and perhaps sheltered through their material consumption and pursuit of leisure.
[1] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 162.
[2] Willis, Derek. “The Rise of the Middle Class as An Ordinary American Term.” The New York Times, May 14, 2015. [URL]
[3] Video Interview with Frances O’Connell-Canfield Carlisle, PA, and Brewster, NY, November 27th, 2023
[4] Video Interview with Frances O’Connell-Canfield Carlisle, PA, and Brewster, NY, December 8th, 2023
[5] Surdam, David George. “The Rise of Expenditures on Leisure Goods and Services.” Century of the Leisured Masses, 2015, 64–85. [URL]
[6] Surdam, David George. “The Rise of Expenditures on Leisure Goods and Services.” Century of the Leisured Masses, 2015, 64–85. [URL]
[7] Video Interview with Frances O’Connell-Canfield Carlisle, PA, and Brewster, NY, November 27th, 2023
[8] Video Interview with Frances O’Connell-Canfield Carlisle, PA, and Brewster, NY, December 8th, 2023
[10] Video Interview with Frances O’Connell-Canfield Carlisle, PA, and Brewster, NY, December 8th, 2023
[11] Press, Andrea. “Gender and Family in Television’s Golden Age and Beyond.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 625 (2009): 139–50. [JSTOR]
[12]Video Interview with Frances O’Connell-Canfield Carlisle, PA, and Brewster, NY, November 27th, 2023
[13]“Atari 2600 Game System.” The Strong National Museum of Play, November 10, 2021. [URL]
[14] WILLIAM D. SMITH. “Electronic Games Bringing a Different Way to Relax: Electronic Games Bring New Way for Relaxation.” New York Times (1923-), Dec 25, 1975. [URL]
[15]WILLIAM D. SMITH. “Electronic Games Bringing a Different Way to Relax: Electronic Games Bring New Way for Relaxation.” New York Times (1923-), Dec 25, 1975. [URL]
[16] Video Interview with Frances O’Connell-Canfield Carlisle, PA, and Brewster, NY, December 8th, 2023
[17] Video Interview with Frances O’Connell-Canfield Carlisle, PA, and Brewster, NY, December 8th, 2023
[18] “Innovations in Children’s Public Television Programming.” American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Accessed December 11, 2023. [URL]
Appendix
“The blood of the two Kennedys and King, the blood on the streets of America’s cities, and the blood in Vietnam made that hope almost impossible to maintain” (H.W. Brands, American Dreams, p. 162).
Interview Subject
Frances Canfield, age 61, was born in 1961 (near the end of the baby boom) and experienced American family life during the late 60s and early 70s.
Interview
Zoom call recording, Carlisle, PA and Brewster, NY, November 27, 2023
Zoom call recording, Carlisle, PA and Brewster, NY, December 8th, 2023
Selected Transcript
Would you describe your family growing up as middle class and can you describe your memories of your neighborhood briefly and the socioeconomic status of your neighborhood overall?
Yes, I would describe my family as middle class. I grew up in Queens, New York in the 60s and 70s. My father and mother came to New York in 1956 from Ireland and we moved into a neighborhood that also had a lot of immigrant and first-generation families from Italy, Germany, Ireland, and Greece. Most of the dads worked and the moms stayed home and raised the children. Everyone came from pretty large families and had ties to a church. There were a lot of activities based out of those churches for families. Most of the kids I grew up with came from families of 4, 5, 6 kids. It was not unusual. In fact, every family on my block had four or more kids.
How did your financial situation contribute to experiences you had as a child? Did your family ever experience economic hardship?
We were lucky in that we never experienced any economic hardship. My father had a position where he made a good salary, and my mom stayed home. We were able to in the 70s buy a summer house in the north fork of Long Island. And like I said that we had roots in Ireland, we went there every other summer and we took the plane and my cousins also lived in Queens, my father had a sister that he emigrated with. The mothers would stay in Ireland for the summer while the fathers stayed two weeks and went back to work in the United States. You know my father often worked long hours so he could provide that for the family. We were fortunate. But you know I do remember in the 70s some kids in the neighborhood whose parents were laid off from jobs because there was an energy crisis. And also a construction boom that kind of collapsed. There were three tall empty apartment buildings in Queens. One moved to the West Coast because they couldn’t get another position.
Did you take many road trips growing up and was this the norm for people in your community? And then what was your most memorable road trip?
The houses were small and there were a lot of children so people took a lot of Sunday drives to places like sleigh riding, Bear Mountain Park. Also these big water parks were popular, they were just starting to come, like Palisades park in New Jersey used to have commercials and it was the first wave pool in that tri-state area. A lot of picnics. We used to take road trips to upstate New York to see Niagara Falls, we went to Cape Cod for the beaches. One of my most memorable trips was taking the ferry to Block Island from Long Island. I also remember taking a road trip to Florida and it was long and I remember stopping at South of the Border, the border between North and South Carolina. It had a lot of amusements for kids there. You could buy firecrackers whereas in New York firecrackers were not for sale, they were illegal. We went to Disney World and that was a big deal for us at the time. We didn’t really appreciate visiting our grandparents in Ireland, we preferred Disney World as kids.
Were there any television shows/movies you and your whole family would watch together?
Yes we would watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, it was a popular nature show. I would watch that with my mom, dad, and sisters. We all watched the news. 60 minutes and Face the Nation were popular news shows. But for fun, my siblings and I would watch the Brady Bunch and the Partridge Family. They were like the number one shows. As a family I remember going to Radio City Music Hall in NYC and seeing a movie called 1776. I don’t remember going to other movies except for drive-ins in the summer in the town of our summer house on Long Island. We mostly played outside with the other kids in the neighborhood until it was dinner time. We played board games, we had a lot of board games. And those we would play as a family.
In the book I’m reading for my class, American Dreams by Brands, his chapter on the time of your childhood focuses heavily on the political and social movements going on. I was wondering as a kid, did you even take notice of any of that? Because you were so young, do you remember anything about that?
Well, I did take notice of it because it was on the news and it was on the news every night, really. And our next door neighbor, the Hansens, their son had been in Vietnam and he came home and he was kind of, his behavior had changed. In those days people didn’t really understand PTSD or didn’t really speak about it. People referred to him as being “odd now” or “he got messed up by Vietnam.” Their backyard butted our backyard, and they had this Cherry tree. He used to spend hours just laying under that Cherry tree and I remember as a kid wondering why he didn’t get up and do something. And I think part of it was that he was decompressing but we weren’t really privy to that, or it wasn’t explained to us or discussed. And I did have a t-shirt that another older neighbor had given to me whose brother had also been in Vietnam, I actually have a photo of me wearing it. It said “Make Love Not War” and I remember she was a teenager and I was maybe 10 and she passed it onto me when it shrunk in the wash or she outgrew it. I remember her parents being very disturbed that their son was drafted, you know, but luckily he came back okay. Also, a magazine that was delivered to our house was “Life” magazine. It was practically just a photo journal, and I remember one time there was coverage about Vietnam about it and my mother putting it away because I had younger siblings and she didn’t want them to be disturbed by the images. But again, I was young so I didn’t really have a clear understanding of it. Like when I see kids now at protests on their parent’s shoulders or something. As a kid, children weren’t part of it. I think children, or at least middle-class kids were more kept in a childhood lane in those days. Finances weren’t discussed, problems of the world weren’t discussed as much, except for when they were really glaring. Things were hidden from children then.
Surdam, David George. “The Rise of Expenditures on Leisure Goods and Services.” Century of the Leisured Masses, 2015, 64–85. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190211561.003.0006.
Press, Andrea. “Gender and Family in Television’s Golden Age and Beyond.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 625 (2009): 139–50. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40375911.
“Atari 2600 Game System.” The Strong National Museum of Play, November 10, 2021. https://www.museumofplay.org/toys/atari-2600-game-system/#:~:text=Atari%20did%20not%20make%20the,electronic%20table%2Dtennis%20game%20Pong.
“Innovations in Children’s Public Television Programming.” American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Accessed December 11, 2023. https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/zoom/innovations-childrens-television.
“The communist conquest completed America’s Vietnam debacle,” wrote H.W. Brands in his, American Dreams, referencing the Fall of Saigon and the ultimate end of American involvement in the Vietnam War. [1] The conflict, during which direct American military action lasted from 1965-1973, was highly controversial and contentious, and claimed the lives of nearly 60,000 American servicemen. [2] Set against the backdrop of America’s Cold War policy of globally containing communism, the unsuccessful and domestically unpopular conflict saw the United States militarily intervene in support of South Vietnam in their war against neighboring communist North Vietnam. After eight years of harsh fighting, and little, if any, true military success, US forces withdrew from Vietnam completely in 1973, and in April of 1975, the North Vietnamese captured the South’s capital city of Saigon, effectively concluding the war. However, while the fighting itself may have ended in the South Vietnamese capital on 30 April 1975, “America’s Vietnam debacle,” was far from complete.
While America’s geopolitical aspect of the Vietnam War ended with the cessation of hostilities in 1975, a domestic development of the war would continue for decades, one that many, including H.W. Brands, neglect to include in their analysis of the conflict: the plight of Vietnam Veterans. Upon returning from the failed war, often brining with them physical disabilities and mental struggles, American servicemen faced persistent hardships, with many finding both inadequate assistance in dealing with those hardships, and a seemingly ungrateful nation. Robert Van Loon had a front row seat to the predicaments of these Veterans. In 1971, after serving in the Army Reserves during the early years of the war, Van Loon began a career at the Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.), first working as a Benefits Claims Examiner in Buffalo, NY, and then as a Benefits Counselor and Officer-in-Charge in Rochester, NY until retiring in 2001. [3] As a Benefits Counselor, Van Loon dealt personally with Veterans, and he recalls being “inundated” with those who served in Vietnam. [4] “I interviewed and filed claims for many thousands of Vietnam Veterans,” he remembered. [5] As witnessed by Van Loon, throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, the men who had served in what was at the time America’s longest conflict would face struggles of an intensity greater than those faced by any Veterans who had come before. While the war was over for the rest of America, their fight was just beginning.
Unlike in previous conflicts, improved medical capabilities of the American military in Vietnam allowed for the survival of hundreds of thousands of wounded servicemen. However, this increased survival rate of the wounded also meant a much higher percentage of soldiers with physical disabilities after the war. In all, nearly 800,000 disabled came out of Vietnam, with almost 400,000 having been moderately to severely impaired. [6] These disabilities often prevented Veterans from living normal lives, and a great deal found their ability to participate in society quite limited. Most turned to government agencies such as the V.A. for help, receiving benefits and medical care. Many received the much needed assistance from the V.A., as Van Loon remembers, “a lot of people (Veterans) did like the V.A., and they liked getting medical benefits.” [7] However, the US Federal Government and the V.A. did come up short on some important fronts.
Most returning disabled Veterans came to the Department of Veterans Affairs to receive badly needed medical care, often administered at V.A. Hospitals. With hundreds of thousands of wounded and disabled servicemen, the V.A. would have needed to provide highly efficient and effective care to meet the needs of these men. This was, however, sadly not the case. V.A. hospitals were often overcrowded, and often lacked the ability to provide adequate care to their patients. “They should have spent more money on the medical part of the V.A.,” recalls Van Loon, in one of his critiques of his employer. [8] “There always seemed to be a shortage of doctors, and perhaps a shortage of nurses too.” [9] These shortfalls of the medical services of the V.A. are vividly illustrated in wounded Lieutenant Bobby Muller’s account of a V.A. Hospital in the Bronx, NY. “It was overcrowded. It was smelly. It was filthy. It was disgusting,” he recalled, while also going on to recount how the understaffed nurses were often too busy to assist him, and that the hospital even ran out of wheelchairs. [10]
Apart from the physical injuries that plagued many Vietnam Veterans, mental afflictions also followed the returning soldiers back home. Of the many former servicemen he dealt with, Van Loon recalls, “A lot of them had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” [11] Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), an ailment seen in Veterans of most wars, is a mental illness resulting from memories of traumatic events such as combat, and was especially prevalent among Veterans of Vietnam, afflicting up to 15% of all the men who served in the war. [12] What’s more, as Van Loon remembers, it took years until these mental illnesses were identified, as PTSD itself only became a diagnosed mental disorder in 1980, leaving many Veterans to struggle with these afflictions on their own. [13] As a result, a good number of these Veterans were also increasingly unstable, highlighted by an encounter in which Van Loon was threatened by a Vietnam Veteran over a loan payment. “He saw it, he blamed me for it, and said he was going to shoot me with a shotgun,” he recalled, and while the man never went through with his threat, the encounter is a stark reminder of the mental difficulties faced by Veterans of Vietnam. [14]
In addition to their medical difficulties, many Vietnam Veterans also heavily struggled financially. Developments in the mid-late 1970s caused energy prices and inflation to rise drastically in America, leading to increasing unemployment and ultimately a recession. [15] While their mental and physical injuries would have already caused them difficulty in finding work, returning home to a broken economy made it especially hard for many Vietnam Vets to secure employment. Furthermore, many of those who fought in Vietnam were prevented from finishing their educations, wether it be college or high school. Because of this, a large portion of Veterans found themselves working in low paying, low-skill level, unfulfilling occupations. [16] So, even for those who would find employment, the opportunities were quite slim and grim.
In light of their economic hardships, many Vietnam Vets would again turn to organizations like the V.A., this time for badly needed financial assistance. While the benefits provided by the federal government did help a good number of Veterans, there also those who felt that, once again, the systems in place to aid them had let them down. Many Vietnam servicemen found that the G.I. benefits that had greatly assisted World War II Vets in establishing post-war lives just three decades earlier were quite lacking, and even “nonexistent,” in the words of Veteran Peter Langenus. [17] In addition to the perceived weakness of the benefits, a number of tricky tacky V.A. regulations prevented some Vietnam Veterans from even receiving necessary aid at all. Van Loon highlights one of these regulations, “The V.A. had a regulation where they (Veterans) had to have gotten a medical determination within one year of leaving service, showing a disability.” [18] Many Veterans were unaware of the bylaw he refers to, and were consequently unable to receive their badly needed disability benefits, “Many of these guys just left service. There was no particular medical examination that they got and they complained, and you know, rightly so.”[19] An instance of this predicament can further be seen in the testimony of Peter Langenus, as he recounts contracting a severe disease specifically connected to Vietnam, after having returned to the U.S.. [20] Langenus recalls that he was unable to receive V.A. benefits or health insurance simply because he was unable to connect the affliction to his war-time service without an in-service medical examination. [21] With many already disabled, impoverished, and out of job, Vietnam Vets now also found themselves unable to receive their promised assistance.
In addition to their medical and financial plights, perhaps worst of all was they way many Vietnam Veterans felt they were treated by American society after the war. Throughout its course, Vietnam was an increasingly unpopular conflict in the United States, with anti-war protests erupting in cities and on college campuses across the country. [22] Because of this, a lot of Vietnam Veterans returned home to a much different kind of reception than they expected. While in most American wars of the past, Veterans were treated to great jubilee and celebration, Veterans of Vietnam were given much the opposite. [23] Many felt unappreciated for their service in the unsuccessful war, with some receiving outright hostility. While being transferred to the hospital upon returning to the United States, wounded Veteran Steven Wowwk recalls passing civilians and throwing up to them the two-fingered peace sign. [24] Wowwk claims that “instead of getting return peace fingers, I got the middle finger.” [25] Because of this kind of perceived resentment, many Vets felt ostracized from society, with the Oklahoma Historical Society even describing their treatment as that of “traitors.” [26] This perception of mistreatment towards Vietnam Veterans was, however, not shared by all. Van Loon himself believes that many of these stories of Veteran debasement, such as the one told by Wowwk, were often “apocryphal”, and that the people of America treated them more or less quite well. [27] While American society’s conduct towards Vietnam Veterans after the war is indeed up for debate, it is clear that at least some Veterans felt unappreciated and disrespected by their fellow countrymen after coming home.
While the War in Vietnam may have ended with the Fall of Saigon in 1975, “America’s Vietnam debacle” as H.W. Brands puts it, was far from over. The returning Veterans of the war who had risked their lives for their country, often faced disability and poverty, as well as a sense of contempt and stigmatization from the American people. And while employees of America’s Veteran-assistance institutions, like Robert Van Loon, did their best to aid these former servicemen, there were many Veterans who felt let down by their government when they needed them most. When asked if many of the thousands of Vietnam Vets he dealt with were happy with their lives, Van Loon replied simply, “No.” [28] Thankfully, it was not doom and gloom for all Vietnam Veterans. There were a good number who did manage to complete their education after the war, and some eventually established steady lives during the period of relative economic prosperity in the country during the late 1980s and 1990s. One such Veteran, John McCain, even became the Republican Nominee for President of the United States in 2008. However, despite the eventual success of some of these servicemen, many of the veterans of this unwanted and seemingly unwinnable conflict faced persistent struggles, whether it was destitution, or mental illness, or physical disability, and the end of their plight will be the true end of “America’s Vietnam debacle.”
Citations
[1] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 175.
[2] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 175.
[3] Email Interview With Robert Van Loon, December 8, 2023
[4] Zoom Interview With Robert Van Loon, December 5, 2023
[5] Email Interview With Robert Van Loon, December 8, 2023
[27] Zoom Interview With Robert Van Loon, December 5, 2023
[28] Zoom Interview With Robert Van Loon, December 5, 2023
Interview Subject: Robert Van Loon, age 84, retired Officer-in-Charge, Department of Veterans Affairs, Rochester District. Former member of U.S. Army Reserves, 1962-1968.
Interview Transcript, December 5, 2023
Speaker 3 Hi, Sam.
Speaker 2 Hi. So I guess I’ll start off with. You were at one point in the Army yourself, right?
Speaker 3 I was in the Army Reserves for six years.
Speaker 2 And from what years were you in the Reserves?
Speaker 3Um. From 1962 to 1968. And nicer. Yeah, I served six, six months regular active duty for training down at Fort Dix, New Jersey. And then I went back to Rochester and then I just went to meetings every Sunday. And then every year we would go to a 2 week summer camp for six years. So that’s what I did. Yeah.
Speaker 2 And then after your service, you worked at the VA, right? The Veterans Affairs?
Speaker 3 No, I worked. I work with the DHS, the Defense Contract Administration services for work there, maybe about a year. I left and then I went into teaching there. So I taught for about a year at West High School, and then I taught for a year, well, it was later on at Monroe High School, which was my old high school. I had my own homeroom. Then I went to the V.A..
Speaker 2 So Which office did you work at? Was it the Rochester office for the V.A.?
Speaker 3No, I worked at the Chicago Chicago Regional Office of the VA in Chicago, Illinois. And I was there for almost two years.
Speaker 2Okay. And what was your job at the VA.
Speaker 3Um, I worked as a veterans benefit claims examiner. So I, you know, did a lot of paperwork for veterans educational benefits, disability benefits, either non service connected disabilities or service connected disabilities. And so that’s what I did at the Chicago VA. And I did that at Buffalo, too. And I finally ended up in Rochester, New York.
Speaker 2So while you were there, did you come across a lot of veterans of Vietnam?
Speaker 3Oh, yes. Yeah, quite a few. We were inundated, and I had a lot of claims that I looked over from Vietnam veterans. I had one guy, strangely enough, who got attacked by a tiger. Tiger jumped into his foxhole and dragged him out by the neck and his buddy shot the tiger and it turned up in The Army Times, they’re holding tiger. You know, they hung it up and so forth. The guy had gone out. He got a disability. So, yeah, but wasn’t hurt too badly.
Speaker 2So when you interacted with these veterans of Vietnam, did they seem happy with the VA and did they seem that they felt they were being treated properly by the federal government?
Speaker 3I’d say pretty much so. Pretty much so. I had. Mostly when I left Buffalo, I got a job as a veteran’s benefits counselor so that I dealt with veterans personally, either on the phone or in person filing claims for them to send them to our Buffalo Regional office, which that’s where the claim where I worked as a claims examiner also or had worked there before. But pretty much, you know, you do have complaints every now and then. But pretty much, you know, I think most people did like the VA, okay. And they liked getting benefits, you know, a lot of them were getting benefits. Or I should say medical benefits from the VA clinic, which was at the federal building and in Rochester for a long time before they moved out to a suburban location. And. And I moved out there with them. So yeah, I’d say most of them were pretty happy. You get occasional ones that complain about things. And you know, World War Two veterans sometimes complain. Most of the time it was complaints about hearing loss. And the VA had a, you know, had a regulation where they had to have gotten a medical determination, at least within one year of leaving service, showing a disability. And many of these guys, you know, they just left service. I mean, there was no particular medical examination that they got out or so forth and they complained and, you know, rightly so. But that was probably one of the major complaints that we used to get.
Speaker 2 Were there any specific interactions at the V.A. that came to mind? Or any people that you remember?
Speaker 3 Yeah, I’d say one time I was actually threatened. I heard this. I heard this from the nurses that from one of the veterans whom I had dealt with. He was getting a non service connected disability benefit which is based on income. That’s an income based benefit. And for some reason, he did not. He did not list that he owned property and that he was collecting rent from his property. And when he told me that, I had to put it down and I sent it in to Buffalo, to our regional office. And then they sent him a notice of a tremendous amount of overpayment. And he didn’t like that at all. And he blamed me for it. And he saw it and said he was going to shoot me with a shotgun. So. I actually had gone to the police there. And but they never they never did anything. They talked to me about it and, you know, so what. Oh. And nothing ever happened behind that. So.
Speaker 2 Do you think that there was anything that the V.A. or the federal government could have done differently to help veterans after the war?
Speaker 3They could have spent more money. I think on the medical part of the V.A., I think they could have. You know, there always seemed like a shortage of doctors and. Perhaps too a shortage of nurses. There are always nurses around, but doctors seem to come and go. And some stayed and many were very good. Some of the ones who left, they probably should have left because they weren’t very good. But they could have spent more money on getting more doctors. I think for the VA clinics. And the hospitals, for that matter.
Speaker 2 Now, outside of the VA, did you know personally any people who fought in Vietnam?
Speaker 3Who fought in Vietnam? Yes. Yes, I did. A friend of my brother’s had gotten drafted. And he was sent over to Vietnam and he was there. He was there for one day. And the enemy had mortared him and he ended up falling on his arm on a tent steak or something. So that was the end of the war for him. And he was all right after that. But he got a decent disability compensation. That’s not a large amount, but it’s, you know, minimal. That’s the only person that I really knew outside the VA who was in Vietnam.
Speaker 2 So did you. I know you say that all of these veterans were more or less happy with the VA. Did they seem happy with their lives?
Speaker 3 No. A lot of them had post-traumatic stress disorder. But this wasn’t really, this didn’t become a big thing until maybe years later when they really knew. And it was affecting a lot of these veterans. And there was, you know, and it’s just something that I think happens because of the fact that they’re engaged in such really awful, awful warfare. Yeah. I mean, they saw a lot of terrible things. And, you know, that’s just something that happens, I think, to anybody who’s probably caught in a traumatic or frightening event. And you can’t get more frightening than combat.
Speaker 2And apart from the VA and overall, how would you say that the American people treated people coming back from Vietnam?
Speaker 3 I think that they treated them well. I think a lot of the stories that you read are apocryphal stories like people spitting on veterans and so forth in the back or we didn’t nobody, nobody really felt that way. I mean, it’s possible there were a few people who did something like that. I can’t imagine it. But it’s something that just spread. And a lot of some veterans like to spread those things. Mm hmm. That makes them feel more important or whatever. So, yeah. But I don’t think that that happened very much. If at all, even.
Email Interview, December 8, 2023
Q. Do you remember the exact years you worked at the V.A.?
A. I started as a VA Claims Examiner at the Buffalo, NY Regional Office of the VA in September 1971. Worked in Rochester, NY as a VA Benefits Counselor, and then as VA Benefits Officer-in-Charge of the Rochester region until I retired in July, 2001.
Q. Do remember if most of the Vietnam Veterans you dealt with were doing well financially?
A. It depended on the benefit the veteran sought. I issues VA loan guarantee certificates for home purchases, applications for college, and trade schools. If the veteran had a low disability percentage, they were perhaps doing well. However, most of the veterans who applied for benefits were not doing well financially. As to numbers, I couldn’t brake it down. I interviewed many thousands of Vietnam veterans.
For modern Americans it is unthinkable to live in a society where racial segregation was the norm. However, for Alice Littlefield (nee Russ) segregation was her reality growing up in the Jim Crow South, “School was always separated, church was always separated” she explained, “But for the most part everybody sort of lived in peace. This was the way things were and [there were things] you didn’t do, like… didn’t even think about doing”.[1] Her reality changed in the fall of 1959 when she entered her freshman year at the newly integrated Women’s College of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The university had integrated in September 1956 following the 1954 Supreme Court Case—Brown vs. Board of Education and subsequent faculty resolution discussions at the college. Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional; following this decision the Faculty Council of the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina had internal conversations about the possibility of integration at the institution. In December of 1955, the council agreed to desegregate—thanks due in part to the advocacy of philosophy professor Dr. Warren Ashby.
News release on Faculty Council statement of desegregation
As the sociopolitical tides were turning in favor of racial equality, so too was the pushback. The transition from an all-white campus to a more diverse population proved to be tense. As H.W. Brands states in his book American Dreams: The United States Since 1945, “The most contentious issues in American life continued to center on race.”[2] At the heart of the issue, according to Littlefield was American culture. Specifically, that the pushback against integration was rooted in the misguided belief that preserving American culture partially depended on the systemic disenfranchisement of African Americans in the United States.
Foundationally, the United States as a settler-colonial state began with an economy which revolved around the exploitation of enslaved African labor through the mechanism of chattel slavery. Thus, the shifting societal position of descendants of these enslaved Africans challenged the backbone of America’s foundation and its monetary success. The anxieties associated with the possible sociopolitical ascension of Black Americans through legal means manifested themselves through different avenues at the Woman’s College. Particularly through the rhetoric of Littlefield’s professors and classmates as well as discriminatory housing policies. In her interview, Littlefield spoke about how professors implied or explicitly said that black people would not be able to succeed academically because of their race. “That was one of the history professors, he announced that no black person could pass his classes”; continuing she told me that her academic advisor, Dr. Anderson confided in her saying, “…they knew the…teachers were prejudiced. But they [the faculty] could not do anything about it.”[3] The numerous instances of discrimination on campus contributed to Alice Littlefield’s decision to become involved with the Civil Rights Movement.
Fortunately, the Woman’s College was located at a hotspot of civil rights advocacy. In the spring semester of Littlefield’s freshman year, the famous Woolworth’s sit-ins occurred. In February of 1960, four black students from North Carolina A&T sat down at the lunch counter at Woolworth’s. This protest was significant because it was a nonviolent protest that displayed the nonsensical segregation policy within the store, which allowed African Americans to be patrons but not sit down in the store. In the following weeks after the initial Woolworth’s sit-ins many more popped up in North Carolina, and more broadly in the South. Brands briefly mentions these sit-ins, writing that “…the movement accomplished its immediate purpose: to bring the spotlight of national publicity upon the Jim Crow system.”[4]
In Littlefield’s case, participating in the sit-ins was a matter of self-preservation. Although she had never personally faced any mortal danger in relation to her racial identity, the emotional toll of constant derision, social isolation, and the institutional complacency in her continued subjugation was detrimental. For example, Littlefield confided that she had developed a stutter during her college career due to the mistreatment she faced from her professors.[5] Further, she emphasized the importance of paving the way for future generations to feel comfortable participating more broadly in American life as Black Americans.
When Alice Littlefield was entering university, she remembers being told that her attendance was not wanted, but rather required because of the change in federal policy positions in favor of integration. According to a local newspaper article from 1956, the acting chancellor of the Woman’s College, “admitted black students were admitted solely due to a Supreme Court ruling”, and that “the students were deserving of fair treatment”.[6] Littlefield’s activism was focused on establishing equal protection under the law for all people. This legal change came a year after her graduation from the Woman’s College with the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This law prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin in public accommodations and federal programs.[7] When Littlefield looks back on her time as a young activist, she acknowledges how dangerous her advocacy was for that period, “Usually when they [opponents of civil rights] take retribution it’s against the whole group, the whole town. We were a threat to everybody.”[8]
The contributions of Alice Littlefield, and people like her are immeasurable. Her actions—participating in sit-ins, forfeiting a typical college experience, helping integrate her university—all had an impact on the subsequent experience of all Americans. As a protestor, Alice Littlefield laid the groundwork for future generations on how to advocate for the change you want to see. Her advocacy helped to change national attitudes surrounding the societal place of African Americans, not just as laborers, but as students, and as people. Alice Littlefield’s actions made it possible for students like me to attend a university like Dickinson College. For that I am forever grateful.
[1] Alice Littlefield, Interview, December 1, 2023.
[2] Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945, (New York: Penguin Press, 2010), 108-109.
Alice Littlefield, is a retired Child Protective Services (CPS) employee in Washington, D.C. She attended her undergraduate institution, The Woman’s College of North Carolina Greensboro, from 1959-1963 and participated in countless civil rights protests, including sit-ins during her attendance as a student.
Transcript:
Q: I have never done a professional interview before. Have you ever been professionally interviewed?
A: No, but you know I’m a social worker and interviewing is one of our tools of the trade.
[…]
My name is Amina West. I am currently a junior at Dickinson college—an American Studies major, possible Russian double major. I don’t know yet. I am interviewing my grandmother Alice Faye Russ Littlefield.
Q: So, Grandma, can you tell me a little bit about your childhood, what was it like growing up in the Jim Crow South?
A: It was… [laughs] it was okay. I wasn’t used to anything else really. I always lived in the South. When I was very young, we lived in a place called Newport News, Virginia. Which is the South. [I] don’t remember much of that. We moved to North Carolina when I was in about the fourth grade. There was no black ghetto or black neighborhood, you lived wherever you could find housing, for the most part. You couldn’t do things like–I’m trying to think about this… People didn’t bother you usually.
Q: So, would you say it was almost self-segregated or are you saying in the interactions black people had with white people…[mutters]; How would you describe it?
A: Well in some places you were separated. School was always separated, church was always separated. But if you had to do other things, like for example, my grandparents worked on a farm so sometimes black and white neighbors did work. Like tobacco…there were women’s and men’s jobs, and everybody would participate in them. The movies, when we went to the movies the black people sat in the balcony, uh the hospital. There was one floor, I don’t care what you had, all the black people were on one floor in the hospital. But stores, you could go into stores. Didn’t go to restaurants and food places where you ate in.
Q: Could you [get] takeout?
A: Well, you know nobody was really “taking out” [laughs].
Q: Oh y’all didn’t have take out yet?
A: [laughs] Eating out wasn’t a big thing then. Uh yeah.
Q: Would you say that you faced any racial terror? I remember when we visited great-grandma Glovenia’s house there was a KKK billboard. Did you ever feel afraid for your mortal safety?
A: No. We laughed at that sign, by the way. We did interact with white kids sometimes. And as I said, there was no one black neighborhood, they were sort of scattered around wherever you could live. And we lived in a neighborhood where we had to walk through white neighborhoods to get to the black school. And you know we’d fight and throw rocks, nothing serious. You know, it was sort of proforma, we gotta do this [laughs].
Oh, ok [laughs]
A: [continuing] Call names, I won’t repeat any of that stuff some of it was vulgar.
[laughs] STOP! [jokingly]
A: [laughs] It was true though. And parents didn’t approve of it, they would get you. But for the most part everybody sort of lived in peace. This was sort of the way things were and [there were] things you didn’t do, like you didn’t even think about doing…so…
Q: So it was like…because you hadn’t experienced anything else it wasn’t out of the ordinary. Sort of like me having the internet, I’ve never lived in a world without the internet.
A: Correct.
Q: Okay. Why did you choose Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina Greensboro?
A: I didn’t.
Q: Why did you want to go to college?
A: I’ve always been curious and done things and explored and I’ve read a lot. I knew that in order to get ahead and do things you needed to get a college education. Uh, I was real good in school, by the way…uh…I had all of the—we used to get awards—I’d get the award for everything in my class.
Q: The kids hated you? Were you the type of kid to say, “Teacher there was homework?”, was that you?
A: You know, all of us were… we didn’t have that many outlets. People were very proud of making good grades in school. And now you know you think you have a class full of dummies? We would have just one.
[laughs]
A: People were attentive and uh, you asked me about my childhood earlier?
Yeah.
A: Activities were centered around the school and around the church. So, you were really good—anybody that could be good was good.
Q: Why did you choose the Woman’s College?
A: I didn’t.
Q: What do you mean?
A: [laughs] I applied to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and they sent my letter to the Woman’s College of North Carolina, which was located in Greensboro. What I didn’t know was that…at that time the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill did not…was not admitting women. They started admitting women at the same time that I started at the Woman’s College. They didn’t allow women to live on campus, if you lived in Chapel Hill or you could be a day student you could go. If you weren’t you didn’t.
Q: Is it because they didn’t have coed dorms yet?
A: I don’t know why. You know it is one of the oldest state-funded universities in the United States?
No, I didn’t know that.
A: It was just a male school I suppose.
Q: Interesting. Why did you want to go to that kind of school? A state school instead of a historically black institution? What was your rationale?
A: You know, I really didn’t have one and nobody discouraged me at home because they didn’t think I would get in. And they got really upset that I did. The school tried to talk me out of it because they thought there would be repercussions from the white community. But the only repercussions\ was that the bank gave the valedictorian and salutatorian at each high school a four-year scholarship and they refused to give me mine [scholarship]. But my parents said it was fine don’t worry about that, worry about getting in.
Q: Why did you choose biology as a major? What were you hoping to do with that?
A: I thought I wanted to be a doctor, I also liked science. I told you I was very curious, and I was in to everything. So, I chose biology.
Q: What years did you attend Woman’s College?
A: All four years. I went from 1959-1963.
Q: You entered the Woman’s College during a time of transition, four years prior the first black students were admitted and then a year after you graduated the school became coed. Could you feel the societal changes at the time you were attending school?
A: Yes. It was sort of rocky. I was, I had gone to a different part of the state and customs and cultures were a little different. In the class I was in, we originally had five black students and one dropped out almost immediately; so, there were four. I didn’t know the town students but there were approximately 20 black students on campus. I was the only black person majoring in science, so I was rarely in class with another black person. That was interesting.
Q: Was that a culture shock? Going from an all-black school to then being in an all white environment?
A: It wasn’t necessarily a culture shock. But initially it was nobody to study with, nobody to ask for help. It was just different.
Q: Did you feel like people were standoffish?
A: I had sort of a double whammy. Not only was a going to a desegregated school and among the black students I was the only one from a rural area. There was the “You’re country”, [I] didn’t have the same culture as them…Well let me tell you how it worked. We were segregated in the dorm, all of us—each class was in a dorm. I was in the dorm with the four [black] freshman when I went but our dorms were divided up. There were 16 rooms in a block we, the four of us, got all 16 rooms nobody else was there. It was that way because it was divided by bathrooms. They [the administration] didn’t want us to use the same bathrooms [as the white students]. The funny thing is that people were used to having one or two people in a room, we only used two of the rooms.
Q: So they were all squished together like sardines?
A: Yes, there were three or four of them in a room and they were annoyed. They had to get their parents’ permission to move in. At first, we got two Jewish girls and then we got one “good God-fearing Presbyterian” girl—and I’m saying it like that because she kept reminding us that she was a God-fearing Presbyterian—and it’s like “So what?”, leave us alone [laughs]. We got friendly with her before the year was over. But things happened in the dorm, for example one time they were harassing us and decided we needed to stand up to sing Dixie. And we were like, “Okay we’ll stand up and sing Dixie if you stand and sing the Negro national anthem”. And since they weren’t going to stand up we didn’t have to sing Dixie or the Negro national anthem—which was good because I didn’t know it. But for the most part they just ignored us. But sometimes they would ask, “Are you the one that…” and it’s like “One who?”. Like, “Are you the one who’s in my Spanish class?” and somebody would say, “Well there’s a lot of people in your Spanish class”.
I was looking at your yearbook pictures and none of y’all [the black students] look alike.
A: I know.
At all. You’re just all black.
A: Nobody looked alike nobody talked alike and that was it. We got together. In class the teachers—the professors in science were [sighs] I don’t know how to put it… They were just racist in the science department.
Q: Did they evoke Darwinism or phrenology or something like that?
A: That was one of the history professors, he announced that no black person could pass any of his classes. In senior year we had to take a class called “coordinating” which drew all of your courses together, they exempted the black history majors from “coordinating” because he taught it. My advisor told me, my advisor was upset at me because I wasn’t making good grades. She was confused because I scored really high on the placement test and they [administration] were glad that you didn’t take French because you scored in advanced placement and that would get rid of what they thought about the black students not being able to do whatever. I also got into the higher science classes because my school had labs and many black high schools didn’t. That was another reason I was the only one in my classes. Dr. Anderson [her advisor] told me that they knew the science teachers, mostly the chemistry professors, were prejudiced. But they couldn’t do anything about it.
Q: Why? They were tenured?
A: Yes. They were bitter. My advisor told me “Women are discriminated against too”. They were all women, except for two in the biology department. One of them [the men] was Jewish, they didn’t like the Jews either. So she [Dr. Anderson] said not to include him in any of my issues and I didn’t [chuckles]. She said they should be working for Shell Oil or EXON—it was EXO then. Because that’s the kind of knowledge they had, they were really good. But those people do not hire women. That was it, so they were bitter. I’d get into trouble…I hate to say “get into trouble” … how do I want to put this? I knew that I was right sometimes but it was denied. Like the physiology teacher would say things like, “Hey everybody come over here, look at this mess Ms. Russ has made” in dissections. She was also the person, when she would call roll—I wouldn’t answer by the way—and someone else would answer for me because she would mark me absent and I didn’t care. I took a chemistry course called “Qualitative Analysis”, that’s where you had to separate the elements from different solutions. The instructor told me my work had ammonia in it, for example, and I knew it didn’t. She tested my solution and said “It’s ammonia. You should have known that”. I knew it wasn’t true, if it had ammonia in it because I heated my solution and when you heat a solution with ammonia it boils off.
Q: Did you feel like your professors purposefully tanked your assignments to reaffirm their own biases about black people?
A: They didn’t want anybody black to pass these classes. And you know, Woman’s College is in the same town with North Carolina A&T which is the historically black college there. I would tell my friends who were students there about my experiences and they wouldn’t believe me until one summer one of the biology teachers taught a class there and he was terrible to them. See, I’ve been telling to tell you.
Q: Were there no institutional ramifications that could have been done to these professors or was it just the administration that wouldn’t do anything?
A: You know I didn’t complain really because I didn’t know who to complain to. And even if I knew I wouldn’t have done it anyway, I cried a lot by the way. One time I remember I was sitting on the steps crying because I had pushed a glass tube through my hand—I still have the scar—and one of the lab assistants, believe it or not they ha black lab assistants from A&T came out and said to me, “Don’t get upset. All the black students that came through here before you that were biology majors who’ve transferred out of here”, and that was my senior year; and he continued saying, “You have stayed”. Outside of the science department I did anthropology and sociology and those were good.
Q: Did you do any extracurriculars?
A: Not really, oh you know what I did? I volunteered outside a lot with the American Friends Service Committee and that was good I made a lot of friends there.
Q: I know you mentioned A&T, did you meet any students from there or Bennet College? Did you go to their social events or functions?
A: You know really there weren’t any. We had curfews if you believe it or not. We would go over to A&T and sometimes we would go over to Bennet but we were in a bind because they didn’t necessarily like us because we were at a “white” school.
Q: Did they think you looked down on their institution? Why do you think there was that disconnect?
A: I don’t know. We’d go over anyway. We’d go over on weekends, [A&T] was across town. We didn’t go to Bennet much because we thought it was basically a prison. The girls had to go off campus in groups.
Q: Why? Was that for their own security because they were black and women or was it just school policy?
A: They had a gorgeous campus, and they couldn’t sit out on campus, they still had to wear white gloves, very traditional. They’d sneak out though. They were interesting that’s where we went when we wanted to do something. Once one of the other black girls who came into the room she was annoyed because they had been planning the dance and one of the white girls said, “Make sure to invite one of the boys from A&T so you have someone to dance with”, and that didn’t go over to well with Elizabeth. We thought that was a scream.
Q: How was the dining hall? Describe your experience at the cafeteria.
A: Believe it or not I worked at the cafeteria. It wasn’t very nice. The food was very good by the way, we had white tablecloths and everything. I heard the year before we came, they even had waiters. There were four dining halls and at the school there was something called the “Honor Policy” you were on your honor to eat at only one dining hall. The food was great.
Q: Were the bathrooms in the academic buildings open to everyone?
A: I don’t remember there being any bathrooms in the academic buildings. But in general, the bathrooms were horrible [laughs]. When I think of it now, I laugh because we didn’t have individual shower stalls.
That’s interesting, that’s what they do in prisons.
A: I know. But that was in the freshman dorms. When we were upperclassmen, we had suites. The suites were for the [house] presidents, they would be graduate students who were responsible for the dorms. Those suites had individual bathrooms. We got suites, that made the white girls angry too.
That is so funny. If you think about it, it is such backwards logic they literally made the conditions worse for the white students just so they didn’t have to interact with y’all. You got the better treatment than the white students in that sense.
A: Uh-huh. But then they sort of got wise and kicked us out of [the suits] and we lived in the rooms like everybody else. It was nice while it lasted, the rooms were bigger too. We thought it was a scream, let me tell you. We also had maids in the dorms.
Q: They were all black?
A: They didn’t like us either. They thought we were looking down on them. We took care of that though when we discovered one lady who was really nasty when we first started couldn’t read. We taught her how to read and she liked us. I also went to Chapel Hill to take courses and I always made A’s down there. The dorm I stayed in there actually had a dining hall in the dorm. They gave you a menu and you told them what you wanted for breakfast, and they made it and the waiter brought it to you. The first day I was down there I started downstairs, and the black staff was lined up along the stairs. I asked what was going on and one of them said, “The house mother said no n***** was going to eat in her dining hall”.
Q: Did anything happen to the waitstaff?
A: No, nothing happened. I thought that was real interesting. The whole thing was…interesting. I’ll put it that way. But I was never afraid there either.
Yeah, when I was reading up on internal documents amongst the faculty and staff, I found a document that said the Woman’s College was integrating because they had to legally. The chancellor went on to say that he would treat black students equally to their white counterparts in adherence to Brown v. Board of Education but that it ultimately wasn’t his choice to desegregate.
A: Guess what? He told us that. We had these meetings we had to go to—all campus meetings. When we were freshmen, he said to the student body, “Look, the negroes are here, and you have to be nice to them”.
[laughs] That’s so funny.
A: Well, you know if you’re one of those negroes sitting in the audience, it’s like “Oh my god”.
Q: So, the attitude of the school body was that they had to accept you all?
A: Well, I remember, one night we heard a car backfiring and all of a sudden, the housemother comes down all worried telling us that it was just a car backfiring.
Q: Was your house mother black? Did she think it was gunfire? That they were threatening the dorm?
A: No. I don’t know what she thought, she never told us what. She was a northerner. That was freshman year. All of the other years, same dorm. The housemother was horrible. She didn’t like us. She kept us with us. We didn’t get into trouble. She was suspicious of everybody, did room checks. She’d come and check to see if we were in our rooms. People would break curfew and they wouldn’t come back home. They would get us because people would leave the doors open so their friends could come back in.
Q: You would get in trouble for being “complicit”?
A: Yeah, because you had to sign out. But common sense says if you aren’t going to sign back in don’t sign out.
Q: Do you remember the names of the residence halls that you stayed in?
A: Yes, freshman year it was Toit Hall. I went back. I have been back. I’ve only been back twice. I went back once when Katie [my aunt] was looking for schools and it had been recommended as her safe school and I went back for my fifty year reunion. For upper class years it was North Spencer. They searched the dorms for everybody, because North Spencer and South Spencer were connected so they would search both sides of the building.
Q: Were the house mothers compensated monetarily?
A: The grown-ups got paid, I don’t know about the house presidents, they tended to be seniors.
Q: The family lore is that you were a part of the Civil Rights Movement. Were you ever arrested? Can you tell me about your experience as a young person fighting for civil rights in North Carolina and why you decided to do that.
A: [sighs] Why did I decide to do it? The answer to your first question is yes.
Q: Do you have a copy of your mugshot picture?
A: No, they didn’t get me a copy of any mugshot picture.
Q: Did they take your mugshot?
A: Yes, and fingerprints. That has caused me problems later by the way. Because I have an arrest record. The sit-ins occurred in Greensboro, but I wasn’t there when they occurred. 1963 is when things really got to a boil and I participated. I was arrested several times.
Q: What did they arrest you for?
A: [laughs] Anything. Loitering, blocking passages, we discovered that three people was a crowd. We discovered that in the dorms. We would joke around saying, “Look y’all one of us has got to leave because there are three people in here and we don’t want to get arrested”. [laughs]
Q: That is so funny. Were you a part of CORE or any other organized civil rights group?
A: I didn’t quite “join” CORE, nobody was joining but it was CORE there [in Greensboro]. I did a lot of things. Believe it or not I was in jail one time and the big beefy sheriff asked for the girl from Woman’s College, you got bailed out. I was wondering who bailed me out. I found out later that one of the anthropology professors paid my bail many times. I went to “jail” jail actually once, but there were so many of us they were just housing us in city facilities. Once I was incarcerated with a group of girls from Bennet College and A&T. And the Bennet girls were discriminating against the girls from A&T. They were upset because I was chummy with the girls from A&T, and it was like we’re all in here fighting for civil rights…
[interjects] and y’all are cliquey!
A: Yeah. Well you know Bennet, high class etcetera. And that time all of us got out at jail at night and they hauled me off to Bennet College. Their president was very nice, Dr. Player, she was a neat lady. [Dr. Player] says to me, “Look it’s going to cause trouble if you stay here overnight. I will call one of my friends from Woman’s College”. That is when I met Dr. Ashby because I spent the night at his house and went to class the next day just like anybody else that stayed out all night. I also got “campussed” because of the sit-ins and campus meant you could only go to class.
Q: Campussed was basically like being grounded?
A: Yes. You couldn’t leave campus, you couldn’t participate in any school activities. You weren’t supposed to have any visitors. [laughs] My friends, other sit-in people would come and bring in stuff. Talk to me out the window. I didn’t get to walk at graduation because I was involved [with civil rights activism].
Q: What do you mean?
A: I had to go to summer school.
Q: Why?
A: It was all screwed up.
Q: Was it an academic reason? Did you break the school’s code or something?
A: Believe it or not it was academic. I missed so much school because I kept getting arrested. But anyways, like I said that was interesting. By that time, the head of the biology department was a white man that I had sort of gotten used to. He asked if I still wanted to go to med school. I told him I didn’t. He told me that if I still wanted to go to medical school that he could get me in. But I didn’t want to go. I was traumatized. School was so bad. I had begun to stutter. Most of the times it was just me [in a class]. When I went back to my 50th reunion they asked me to do sort of what I’m doing now with you. How was your experience here? How did you feel? The works. When I talked about it some of the people told me that I was aloof and that they didn’t want to bother me.
Q: What is aloof? Standoffish?
A: Yes. I didn’t bother them [white students]. It was a different situation for everybody. At that reunion we were catching up and I asked some white girls who I had become friendly with what happened to a girl named Lilly who was in the class above me. Lilly apparently got put out of school because she introduced one of her white friends to a black boy.
Q: She got kicked out of school for that?
A: Mmhhm
Q: How did they find out about it?
A: You know teenagers don’t keep anything secret. Anyway, Lilly just disappeared and nobody knew where she was. But you know I did make some friends, Sally, Gwen, Dae, Donna. We [Class of 1963] have had many family reunions in Washington, DC. It’s been recent, until Covid we were meeting. The last one we did was in Bethesda, and it was funny because we were the integrated group. People would come up to us and say that they knew we were in some sort of group and ask “what is this”. We would explain it was just college friends catching up. The only reason I went back to that 50th reunion was because when we were still a Woman’s College, we had a tradition called the Daisy chain. When somebody dies your daisy gets dropped into the pond. It is sort of a little religious thing. This was in spring. People would pick daisies and weave them into a chain. Anyway, when you die your daisy gets dropped in the pond so I suppose you can float on off to wherever. I went to the reunion to drop Gwen’s daisy. Since Gwen was my roommate, I figured I would drop her daisy. You know traditions, you have to have some traditions.
Q: Were you a part of the Desegregate Tate St. movement?
A: That was the street that was down by the college, it was happening at the same time as the sit-ins. I was up at the sit-ins.
Q: It was simultaneous?
A: [Tate Street] It was just a little business thing on the corner, right at the edge of campus. People would protest there, it was a scream. The Klan would be down there picketing too. You get a fat old white man and his little boy, and it’s like hahaha who is he? Who is scared of them?
Q: Did they have guns?
A: No. They’d do things like at Chapel Hill they were hosing people. Those hoses were strong enough to rip the skin right off. They hosed people in Greensboro too. Yeah, because I got wet one time.
Q: What was the worst thing that happened while protesting?
A: Nothing really. It was sort of like now. People used to consider it a badge, how many times they’d been arrested. I will tell you, these three nice middle-class black ladies would come up to us and tell us to go home and if we didn’t they would say nasty things to you. But guess what? College students never have any money, so after the lunch counters were integrated, the students couldn’t afford to eat. Guess who was sitting at the lunch counters? The nice little ladies. Now that I’ve grown up, I realize why I was having problems with people back home when trying to go to a “white” college. I understand why we were a threat to the old ladies. Usually when they take retribution it’s against the whole group, the whole town. We were a threat to everybody. We were a threat to the other black classes at school by the way. My class was because we didn’t take any mess. I’ll never forget once we were meeting with the Chancellor because we demanded to meet with him. So we sat in front of him, all four of us [laughs], we were the senior class by then. We were the last of the originals. They were talking about how complacent they all were and the chancellor almost swallowed his pipe! [laughs] when they said that! We just smiled at him because we were a little more subtle on campus. We didn’t just raise hell when we had to take care of business, we took care of it.
Okay [laughs] grandma!
A: And that was it. We had repercussions we would just go out and raise hell if they don’t follow through. Which is why I think a lot of this marching now is over, we’ve passed the time of marching. We need to move on to something else?
Q: What do you think people should do now?
A: [Sigh] Well you can’t just march and go home. You have to follow through you have to follow up. Even then we couldn’t boycott because we didn’t own anything, but now people make excuses for not exerting pressure where they could. I’ll put it that way. They keep participating, and it’s like I’m not participating in my own destruction. Are you crazy? I can do without those shoes. Or I can do without eating at such and such a place, but we don’t do it.
A: To me being black you’re in a bind because there is that racism from the outside but you also have prejudice from the inside because we fight that color line and that “pulling the ladder up” too. So it’s not always comfortable and people aren’t as overtly racist as they used to be but it’s hard to get away from—when things are a part of your culture—you don’t realize some of those things are racist. Some black people think that all black people are poor and they have to “prove themselves”. Or that being black is speaking dialect or acting like hoodlums. All I can think is, “You all should have met my grandma”.
Yeah
A: Or met my mother. My family in general doesn’t go for that stuff.
Yeah. We’re strong willed.
A: People think if you don’t speak dialect you’re not “genuine”. In my house dialect could get you killed. It’s the culture. I think that the young black people now keep talking about black culture. There isn’t a black culture, there are many black cultures. If they just take time and look around them. It depends on where you’re from and except for the discrimination parts and the things you have to endure because of discrimination, your culture looks just like whatever group you’re present in. We have the same accents, we eat the same foods, we do the same things.
Q: Yeah. Black people are not a monolith. Okay, well thank you so much for the interview.
A: You’re welcome.
FURTHER RESEARCH:
Brands H. W. 2010. American Dreams: The United States Since 1945. New York: Penguin Press.
“Negro girls were ‘not sought’ for college, Dr. Pierson says”. September 11, 1956. University Archives Subject Files Civil Rights Greensboro. Greensboro: Greensboro Daily News. Accessed November 30, 2023. https://gateway.uncg.edu/islandora/object/ua%3A284659
“Resolution concerning the Negro students of the Woman’s College”. March 13, 1965. University Archives Subject Files Civil Rights Greensboro. Accessed November 29, 2023. https://gateway.uncg.edu/islandora/object/ua%3A284670
University of North Carolina Greensboro, Pine Needles. Greensboro, North Carolina: 1961. University of North Carolina Greensboro Archives. https://lib.digitalnc.org/record/27838?ln=en#?xywh=-305%2C-510%2C6079%2C5386&cv=254 . Accessed November 30, 2023.
University of North Carolina Greensboro, Pine Needles. Greensboro, North Carolina: 1963. University of North Carolina Greensboro Archives. https://gateway.uncg.edu/islandora/object/ua%3A283694 . Accessed November 30, 2023.
“Women’s College faculty votes for desegregation”. December 15, 1955. University Archives Subject Files Civil Rights Greensboro. Greensboro: Greensboro Daily News. Accessed November 30, 2023. https://gateway.uncg.edu/islandora/object/ua:284663
When John Sullivan joined the United States Naval Academy in the 1980s, the Cold War was at the forefront of American minds. A peaceful end to the war was hard to imagine, with the arms race in full effect. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had enough nuclear warheads to destroy one another multiple times over. “You feared nuclear annihilation… it did kind of consume your physic,” [1] said Sullivan, who began service as a chief medical officer in 1987. Upon his entrance to the Navy, Sullivan believed that the Cold War would “persist longer or even result in a nuclear war” [2] In 1992 he was sent on a 2-year set of orders, stationed in Gaeta, Italy aboard the USS Belknap. If someone had told Sullivan when he was joining the Navy that he would be peacefully sailing the USS Belknap into Novorrossik in 1994, the first United States ship into Russia since World War II, he would’ve said that’s simply impossible, especially for a medical officer. [3] This inconceivable dream did indeed come true for Sullivan. In American Dreams by H.W. Brands, the peaceful end to the Cold War is attributed to the Reagan Arms acceleration, the role of Mikhail Gorbachev in peace talks, and the diplomatic efforts of President Bush, but, although John Sullivan’s recollections from his time aboard the USS Belknap do add depth to Brands analysis, the peaceful end should also be attributed to the Malta Summit of 1989.
Sullivan served in the United States Naval Academy as a Medical officer for 32 years
The early 1980s saw the Reagan administration begin a buildup of arms in hopes of restoring American self-confidence in the Cold War against the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union. [4] Reagan’s actions at the beginning of his presidency annoyed then Premier Leonid Brezhnev, of the Soviet Union, “His frustration grew as Reagan approved a program calling for defense expenditures that totaled $1.5 trillion.” [5] The United States arms buildup coincided with the decline of the Soviet Union economy, which was going to struggle to keep up with the spending of the Reagan administration. Brezhnev passed away in 1982, and “most elite groups understood that the Soviet economy was in trouble.”[6] Mikhail Gorbachev, who came into power in the Soviet Union in 1985, understood the economic trouble that the Soviet Union was going through and sought to cut government spending. The Soviet Union was spending around 25 percent of its gross national product on its defense build-up. [7] This spending was not sustainable given the economic dilemma that the Soviet Union faced. The nail in the coffin was when the Reagan administration proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, at which point Gorbachev decided that the Soviet Union could not continue to attempt to “match the Americans at each step of the technological way” [8] As a result, Gorbachev knew that their Cold War policy had to change. Gorbachev’s intention to create change became immediately apparent, he intended to make it clear to not only the United States but to the world that the Soviet Union was not an international threat. Sullivan recalls having a “favorable impression of Gorbachev. I knew that his decisions were reducing our angst over the possibility of nuclear war. For that I was grateful.” [9]
Despite the introduction of a true peacemaker at the helm of the Soviet Union, the Cold War was still not over, although Reagan and Gorbachev had discussions of arms reductions and even of the elimination of nuclear weapons entirely in October of 1986 in Reykjavík, the two leaders could not come to an agreement. Reagan and Gorbachev were both facing pressure from their respective governments, and the history of mistrust between the nations hindered the possibility of a comprehensive end to the Cold War. Sullivan joined the Navy just a year later in 1987, and at the time he still feared the possibility of nuclear war due to the “proliferation of nuclear weapons and intransigence on each side.” [10] Although Reagan certainly played his part in the easing of Cold War tensions, particularly with his own ideological shift from building up American arms when entering office, to agreeing to destroy nuclear missiles through the 1987 INF treaty, it wasn’t until George H.W Bush entered office where peace truly became in sight.
When Bush entered office, he was aware that the Soviet Union was “imploding”, but he also knew he had to be wary of the fact that the Soviets still had the firepower to destroy the United States within minutes. [11] The Soviet Union was collapsing, much to the surprise of the world. Sullivan recalled, “I didn’t think that the Soviet Union would dissolve, and certainly not so precipitously.” [12]But this was the reality, Gorbachev’s reform effort was effectively “surrendering the superpower status,” of the Soviet Union. [13] Gorbachev intended to make this very clear to President Bush on December 2nd, 1989, off the coast of Malta. The soviet cruiser, Slava, was to moor alongside the USS Belknap, where Bush and Gorbachev were to engage in serious discussions regarding arms reductions. Although Sullivan himself was not on the ship at the time, one of his friends named Jeff Kaiser, who was the medical officer on board the USS Belknap at the time, described to Sullivan the remarkable story of the Malta Summit. Meeting planners hoped that Malta would be a picturesque site for the crucial get-together of Bush and Gorbachev. [14] However picturesque would be far from the word to describe the inclement weather that the ships encountered. Kaiser described the elements as “just horrible… there was so much wind that the ship was at risk of being pulled off its mooring.” [15] As a result of the weather, those who were not used to being aboard the ship were experiencing sickness, including Secretary of State James Baker, Chief of Staff John H. Sonunu, and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. Kaiser treated the gentlemen with scopolamine, and despite the weather, President Bush and Gorbachev went on to ensue discussion the following day. H.W. Brands does not mention the Malta Summit despite it being a huge turning point in the Cold War. At this meeting, Gorbachev made clear to Bush that “the Soviet Union will not under any circumstances initiate a war… Moreover, the USSR is prepared to cease considering the U.S. as an enemy and announce this openly.” [16] Although this meeting did not effectively end the Cold War, Gorbachev’s senior foreign policy aide, Anatoly Chernyaev, came out of the meeting with the understanding that “the threat of nuclear war was a thing of the past. As was the Cold War itself” [17] Given the magnitude of this change in understanding after the discussions in Malta, it was surprising that Brands did not cover the Malta Summit in any capacity.
The USS Belknap, the 6th fleet flagship, is the ship that was present at the Malta Conference. Sullivan sailed this ship into Novorossiysk, Russia in October of 1994.
The end of the Cold War was solidified during the Bush presidency, notably marked by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. While the formal end of the Cold War wasn’t a result of a single agreement during the Bush term, his approach to diplomacy and cooperation with Gorbachev played a pivotal role in managing the peaceful transition of the Soviet Union. Despite the Cold War being more or less done by the time Sullivan was called into service in 1992, the job was not finished. Very few envisioned the downfall of the Soviet Union, and those who did, expected the dismantling of the Empire to occur violently. [18] Bush had a large task on his hands of handling these countries that were in a transition phase from the Soviet Union. The president visualized a “New World Order” that would share a “respect for freedom, democracy, and free markets.” [19] Sullivan and his comrades aboard the USS Belknap were responsible for executing the vision of the President. The role of the USS Belknap was to “go around the Mediterranean, port to port, and conduct diplomacy.” [20] This included diplomatic visits to former Soviet states such as Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia. When visiting these countries, Sullivan described something of a victory tour, “It felt like we won the Cold War – we pulled into these places, set up American bands, and danced with their women.” (20, Zoom) The receptiveness to American presence was apparent even in the former Soviet states, which surprised Sullivan, who had “assumed that they were more loyal to the Kremlin.” (21, Email) In October 1994, the Belknap was set to arrive on a diplomatic visit to Novorossiysk, Russia. Sullivan, who had received the officer of the deck award the day prior for effectively communicating the presence of a Russian backfire bomber within striking range of the Belknap, received an incredible honor from Captain Moller: the first Naval officer to pull a ship into Russia since World War II. (22, Zoom Interview)
Left to right: US Navy hat, Russian doll of Gorbachev, USS Belknap hat, Russian sailor “Black Sea Fleet” hat
Sullivan pulling the USS Belknap into Novorrosik shows a remarkable change in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union since Sullivan’s upbringing in the 80’s and 90’s. Sullivan went from entering the Navy with true fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, to peacefully sailing the USS Belknap into Novorossiysk just 6 years later. This extraordinary achievement would not have been possible had it not been for Reagan and his arms buildup, Gorbachev’s intentions for peace and his role in the fall of the Soviet Union, and Bush’seffective diplomacy. While H.W. Brands does an excellent job of describing the roles Reagan, Gorbachev, and Bush had in the mellow end to the Cold War, through John Sullivan’s recollections it was made clear that Brands should have included the events in Malta in 1989. The illustration of Sullivan pulling the USS Belknap into Russia tremendously personifies the peaceful end to the Cold War, to which the world is astoundingly grateful.
[1] Zoom Interview with John Sullivan, November 17, 2023.
[2] Email Interview with John Sullivan, December 6th, 2023.
[3] Email Interview with John Sullivan, December 6th, 2023.
[4] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 219.
[5] Wilson, James Graham. “Did Reagan Make Gorbachev Possible?” Presidential Studies Quarterly 38, no. 3 (2008): 456–75. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41219690.
[8] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 260.
[9] Email Interview with John Sullivan, December 6th, 2023.
[10] Email Interview with John Sullivan, December 6th, 2023.
[11] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 272.
[12] Email Interview with John Sullivan, December 6th, 2023.
[13] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 276.
[14] Gorbachev and Bush: The Last Superpower Summits. Conversations that Ended the Cold War (Central European University Press, 2020), 7.
[15] Zoom Interview with John Sullivan, November 17, 2023.
[16] Gorbachev and Bush: The Last Superpower Summits. Conversations that Ended the Cold War (Central European University Press, 2020), 7.
[17] Gorbachev and Bush: The Last Superpower Summits. Conversations that Ended the Cold War (Central European University Press, 2020), 13.
[18] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 291.
[19] Eales, Stewart C. “Democracy Promotion in the Post-Cold War Era.” Edited by Larry D. Miller. The Army War College Review. Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep11940.4.
[20] Zoom Interview with John Sullivan, November 17, 2023.
[21] Zoom Interview with John Sullivan, November 17, 2023.
[22] Email Interview with John Sullivan, December 6th, 2023.
[23] Zoom Interview with John Sullivan, November 17, 2023.
Appendix
“The reunification of Germany might have marked the definitive end of the Cold War – which, after all, had started with the division of Germany – had another event, still more definitive in concluding the contest between the United States and the Soviet Union, not followed within several months.” (H.W. Brands, American Dreams p. 276)
Interview Subject
John Sullivan, age 58, currently Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at St. Clair Health in Pittsburgh, served as a Medical Officer in the Navy for 32 years. He was stationed in Gaeta, Italy from 1992 to 1994, where he was on board the USS Belknap.
Interview
Zoom recording with John Sullivan, Carlisle, PA, November 17, 2023.
Selected Transcript
Luke: Did you feel like the Cold War was over when the Wall fell?
John: It felt like we won. It felt like we won the Cold War – and then we pulled into these places and set up American bands and danced with their women. It felt like our American trophies. I literally was dancing in the squares of Odesa Ukraine with a beautiful Ukrainian women – it felt like it was over. It felt like they (Ukraine) were going to be moving towards democracy, it didn’t feel like it was moving to an autocratic state at all. The former Soviet Republics had broken off but I still perceived them as part of the Soviet Union, certainly Ukraine felt like Russia to me. Growing up in the 70s and 80s you feared nuclear annihilation. It did kind of consume your physic growing up. So this felt like the end point. Summer of ’91 it was like ok we won, we’re done. We outspent them. I joined the military in the ‘80s during the Reagan run up to just outspend the Soviets and you could argue that that worked. It was a little risky, there were skirmishes, the Russians were in Afghanistan at the time in ‘80s.
Luke: So when did you end up going overseas again?
John: I went over in August of ’92, on a 2 year set of orders that got extended another 6-8 months. THE war in Bosnia had just started, most of my time over there was spent intermittently cruising the Mediterranean and serving on the 6th fleet Flagship. I spent August ‘92 through the winter of ‘94. The ship I was on interestingly hosted a major nuclear arm agreement between Bush Sr and Gorbachev in December of ’89. The ships met off the coast of Malta. In a bay in Malta. It was the USS Belknap, the 6th fleet Flagship and a Soviet cruiseliner, it wasn’t a military vessel. They moored alongside each other. Bush and his cabinet advisors who included Scowcraft, secretary of state, Sonunu and Baker. They were on board the ship negotiating the last minute deals to this nuclear disarmament agreement. My friend, the medical officer on board told me this anecdote from it. He said that it ended up being this horrible storm. They were anchored in this protected harbor on the North side of Malta. Horrible winds and seas. So much wind that the ship was at risk of dragging anchor and being pulled off of its mooring. The ship was rocking even at anchorage, but for whatever reason a lot of the non-ship board company, essentially the secret service, were all sick. They were vomiting passageways, my friend Jeff Kaiser, who was the medical officer at the time, described handing out sea sickness medication. But late that evening, the night before Bush was to meet Gorbachev, he got called to the admirals cabinet where the president and his advisors were for sea sickness medicine. He said I went to my drawer and he said his armamentarium was the same as mine at the time, he had the antihistamine pill called meclizine, and a patch called scopolamine, the side effects of each of them he quickly considered before he went up there. The meclizine was not as effective and it tended to make you sleepy, and he said that seems disadvantageous for this group working on a nuclear disarmament agreement. The scopolamine patch is more effective and it has a lower side effect profile, but for some elderly people it creates psychosis. He says well that doesn’t sound good for a nuclear disarmament working group. He said well he figured the likelihood of that happening to all of them was nil. He said I went up to the admirals cabin, the president of the United States was behind the admirals desk, he was fine. He was an old navy man and he had fished off of Maine a lot, he had no problem. But Baker, Sonunu, and Scowcraft were sick. Baker was a 6 foot 5 Texan, and he stood up from behind a little booth in his office, where my friend was about 5 foot 6. He said this man was towering above him. He said the longest minute of his life was when Baker said, “give me the patch doc” He said he handed out the patch plenty of times over the last 2 years but never actually opened one. He was trying to peel open this package and then peel the patch off of its backing. Meanwhile the leader of the free world was watching him try to do this as he goes so slowly. He slapped the patch on James Baker, he said the next day they were planning to go over to negotiate with Gorbachov, and they were still decided whether it was safe or not to cross on small boats over to the Soviet ship. They were all on the bridge and wind was blowing, in really heavy winds you can put a man forward called the anchor watch, who is outside the very bow of the ship in heavy wind and rain, freezing in December as you could imagine, with his pea coat pulled up around his head. He just stands and watches the anchor and sees if it starts to drag and alerts the ship to get underway. Everyone is up on the bridge decided whether they should go or not. They decided that ultimately it was up to the President, and they looked around themselves and the President was missing. And they said well where is he? They were sending people in different directions looking for him and finally someone looked out and saw that the President was out on the bow of the ship with the kid on the anchor watch. And he had his arm around this guy in his pea coat. The kid later said I’m out there freezing my tail off, thinking I only got like 15 more minutes on this watch and President Bush shows up and asks me “where are you from?” Ultimately the President decided to go over to the Soviet ship, they conducted the negotiation, it was over the START II nuclear disarmament agreement. The purpose of it was to reduce total number of nuclear weapons. I remember at that time we were just building, we were each at 40 or 50 thousand nuclear warheads. It was an arms race, it was getting to the point where each of us had hundreds if that thousands more weapons than you needed to destroy the other one. So why don’t we just both cap what we’re doing, save money and improve world safety.
But yea this was on my ship, the USS Belknap, based out of Italy. Which you can imagine was a glorious duty station. I was 25 years old and I got assigned that. I was pretty convinced I got the best duty station in the Navy. A ship between Rome and Naples on the coast for several years, and all we did was go around the Medittereanean, port to port and conduct diplomacy. At first I had this moment within my first couple of months thinking whether this was good use of taxpayer dollars. And then I realized it was actually fairly cost effective diplomacy, when the French were balking participating in a no fly zone over Bosnia, we got sent up there and put on a party and conducted a negotiation settlement and they were in. And I thought to myself well it probably cost 10,000 gallons of Marine diesel fuel, 20 cases of champagne, and a frozen shrimp tree. We used to have parties on the night we would get there, we would all get in our dress uniforms, get on the fan tail, they would open up the alcohol cabinets. We were one of the few Navy ships that had alcohol on board because we were always entertaining the Europeans. Your Aunt Aleca would hop in the car and drive up to like Southern France and we usually said, whether it was Barcelona, St. Tropez, Toulouse, wherever we pulled in. I said “well what day are you gonna get up there?” And whatever we said we would agree to meet at the shrimp tree at the reception. She would like pull in, throw a dress on, come up to the party. But it was interesting, we would have the reception, the next day we’d go into the ward room, and the negotiators would hammer out the negotiations. Sometimes, for whatever reason they didn’t like empty seats on the table, like I had no role in negotiating diplomatic issues. They, if there were 2 empty seats at the end of the table, they wanted it filled with junior naval officers just to make it look good. We stayed there a couple of days in Odesa, we pulled around the Cremian peninsula, and I remember thinking to myself as we steamed along the coast there. I look out, I see Sevastipole, the lights of Sevastipole and just thinking like “that was the enemy fleet right there”, we were pulling along the coast and at this very moment I was looking on the chart, there was a gap along the coastline, the valley of Balaclava, where the British light brigade made their failed charge in the Cremian war. I remember in that very moment just thinking about the history of that when I got the following call, I had the deck on the ship. Even though I was a medical officer, I started taking officer of the deck watch, like a line officer just because I liked to, I just thought it was cool. I got a call from combat, sir we’ve got an inbound aircraft, hostile profile, 80 miles out. I was like ok, track it, follow up with report, and like 30 seconds later I got another call saying “sir confirmed inbound Russian backfire bomber, on hostile profile, now 70 miles out, what do you want to do?” I remember just thinking, we’re pulling into Russia tomorrow, but youre also thinking like your at the range where if he puts a missile down, missile hit to a ship is usually 50-100 people dead, including potentially you. You have to make some decision but it didn’t make any sense, we were an invited guest. Why would they be coming for us? But hostile profile means it was coming right down at you. So I called the captain and just described “Sir I’ve got a Russian backfire bomber 70 miles out hostile profile, I’m gonna continue to track with air search radar, I’m not gonna light him up with fire control radar” and he said “Roger that John I don’t want to see myself on the cover of Newsweek here” To light him up with fire control radar would mean my missile is on him, which is technically an act of war. But that’s kind of your next step, I’ve tracked him, should I shoot him before he shoots me.
We pulled in the next day, I got the honor of getting the officer of the deck award. So the captain gave me the honor: the first Naval officer to pull a ship into Russia since World War II was me. In the Black Sea, it was amazing, into Novorossiyk. We were pulling in, it was a beautiful October day in ’94, it was warm almost 80 degrees. It was unusually warm, we were wearing black wool uniforms because that was typically what you wear at that time of year. The uniform was set by Moscow. The Russians came out in a small boat as I was maneuvering the guided missile cruiser in. A couple of their admirals came up to the bridge, and on the bridge the only voice that’s above kind of a whisper is mine. “Right full rutter, right full rutter” I hear my three star admiral saying to them through the translators, “please tell them that that is our medical officer driving the ship.” And I hear the Russians say back through the translators “Uh Admiral, in the Russian Navy medical officers don’t drive ships”. And he said “Please tell them that in our Navy they do.” I remember thinking to myself that was one of my glorious moments. Pulled the ship, moored to a cravat class cruiser called the Marshall Usitinav. We toured the Russians through our ship and they toured us through their ship. I remember thinking when we were on their ship that everything onboard their ship was analog, I was just stunned. We had computer screens and everything was digital while these guys were like dialing 096, and I remember thinking like how were these guys a serious threat. One of my intelligence officers, said looking out “I’ve spent a 20 year career in the Navy spying on the Russians. I’ve looked at pictures of this ship through grainy photographs taken at the risk of someone’s life. And now im moored to the ship right next to it.” He couldn’t believe it. And they had their spies, CGB guys on our ship and one of them I remember being pretty clear that he was CGB by this conversation. I said to him about the uniforms, which I was like sweating in my uniform, and I said “It’s warmer here than we expected” and he said “Yes um I think you Americans would call this Indian summer” and I’m thinking wow that’s real command of the language, he’s intel for sure if he knows that much. But whatever they were spying on us we were spying on them. But it was extraordinary to be there, my sailors didn’t want to leave. They were all taking girls out to dinner, buying them things. I remember them telling me they didn’t want to leave and I was like “what do you mean you don’t want to leave Russia?” and he goes “I just took this girl out to dinner I paid her 20 bucks and I slept at her place all night. Not only that but I signed autographs all the way back to the ship the next morning.” And I’m like yea that’s pretty cool. Nontheless this is Russia. It was weird to be there. The city squares theres like Lenin, we walked into department stores where the shelves were empty and the lights were off. It was just weird. We went to a museum called the heroes of the Soviet Union. It just felt like we were just thrown out of time, like all this stuff the Russians were the enemy and we were in this museum called Hereos of the Soviet Union.
Second Interview
Email Interview on December 7, 2023.
Transcript
Luke: One quote from the textbook that I found might directly relate to you and your ships involvement was – “Those few who had foreseen the demise of the Soviet empire had generally expected the breakup to occur violently… but the dismantling of the empire had occurred peacefully for the most part. That it did so owed a great deal to the diplomacy of George Bush. American officials might have pushed too hard too fast.” My question for you after seeing this quote is – Do you feel that Bush deserves credit for the peaceful end to the Cold War?
John: Well many credit the demise of the Soviet Union to the aggressive military buildup under Reagan that preceded Bush. They ulitmately couldn’t keep up economically against a capitalist society. Not sure how true that turned out to be. Gorbachov deserves most of the credit I think for being forward-thinking and progressive probably when he was surrounded by many old-school, hardliners who knew of nothing but communism. The personalities of Gorbachov and Bush toghether likely fostered a smoother transition. I was surprised to see how enthusiatistic many of the former Soviet states were to peel away from Moscow. I had assumed that they were more loyal to the Kremlin. Ukraine being the most noteworthy of those that I observed personally.
Luke: Or does the credit really belong to the Gorbachev and his willingness to surrender the Soviet’s superpower status?
John: Yes, Gorbachov was likely very pragmatic in realizing the current confrontational course was unsustainable. And perhaps the rise of Putin reflected a underlying bitterness among Russians to have lost their preeminant status on the world stage in this transition.
Luke: What did you envision as the outcome of the Cold War when you joined the Navy? Did you think there was any way the war would end peacefully?
John: I think many of us thought it would persist longer and even result in a nuclear war. We really feared that liklihood given the proliferation of nuclear weapons on both sides and the intransigence of both sides. I didn’t think that the soviet union would dissolve, and certainly not so precipitously.
Luke: Could you ever have imagined sailing the first ship into Russia when you joined the Navy?
John: Of course not. It’s hard to even think of it now particularly for a medical officer. I assumed I was just going to perform medical duties when deployed. It was remarkable to be given the chance to qualify as an officer of the deck on a warship. I’m not sure why Captain Moller gave me the honor. It’s possible that it was intentional, or that it was just the natural rotation of the watch. He did like that I was ambitous about obtaining line officer qualifications. He sometimes used that to motivate his regular officers, “For God’s sake gentleman, the doctor is doing this better than you.” Being in Russia in uniform was simply surreal only 6 years after attending officer school and listening to a lecture about the psychology of Russians at the Newport Naval War College. What stands out is seeing statues of Lenin, going to the Hero of the Soviet Union museum in Novorosisk (it felt llike going to a Nazi history museum), buying soviet trinkets on the streets, and seeing bare shelves in department stores. I also remember thinkking that we had substantially overestimated their military capabilities when we toured their ship, the Marshall Ustinov, with its pitiful analog technology.
Luke: What was your opinion on Gorbachev? What was your overall awareness of his policies during the 1980s?
John: I had a very favorable impression of Gorby although I didn’t know much about the specific details of his policies in the 1980s. He was easing the policy of detente. I knew that his decisions were reducing our angst over the risk of nuclear war. For that I was grateful. I recall how extraordianry it was that he and Reagan met in Reykjavik, Iceland and then he visited Washington DC. And for that enlisted man on USS Belknap’s honor guard to have been standing on the portico when Gorbachov pulled up and met Reagan and overheard their conversations at that historic moment was memorable. Reagan pointed to this sailor and said, “This is my Navy.” The sailor whose name I forgot was so proud of that.
Further Research
Bialer, S., & Jervis, R. (1991). Soviet-American relations after the Cold War. Duke University Press.
Simmons, Dean, Phillip Gould, Verena Vomastic, and Philip Walsh. “Air Operations over Bosnia.” Proceedings 123, no. 5 (May 1997): 131.
Steinmetz, Greg, and ROBERT S GREENBERGER Staff Reporters of THE WALL,STREET JOURNAL. “U.S. Embassies Give American Companies More Help Overseas: End of the Cold War, Surge in Competition Change the Game for Diplomats an Envoy Eats a Hamburger.” Wall Street Journal (1923-), Jan 21, 1997, pp. 2. ProQuest, https://dickinson.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/u-s-embassies-give-american-companies-more-help/docview/1619943839/se-2.
Gorbachev and Bush: The Last Superpower Summits. Conversations that Ended the Cold War, Central European University Press, 2020.
Ekedahl, Carolyn Mcgiffert, and Melvin A. Goodman. “Eduard Shevardnadze: Leading the Soviet Union out of the Cold War.” International Journal 52, no. 2 (1997): 219–42.
Eales, Stewart C. “Democracy Promotion in the Post-Cold War Era.” Edited by Larry D. Miller. The Army War College Review. Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep11940.4.
Newspaper article detailing the boycott of the New York AC track meet in the Philadelphia Inquirer, 1968, courtesy of ProQuest
Craig Nation was twenty-one years old when he and his teammates at Villanova University decided to boycott the New York Athletic Club’s indoor track and field meet in 1968. The meet was supposed to mark the 100th anniversary of the first indoor track meet in U.S. history and was expected to be the highlight of the indoor season [1]. Not to mention Villanova was the reigning NCAA champion. While it was a prestigious event, the NYAC prohibited black and Jewish membership, continuing segregationist policies that were supposed to have been abolished four years prior [2]. Nation remembers making the decision to boycott the meet with his team and how a year later, the NYAC was no longer a segregated organization. He describes the event as a “great, great thing which we accomplished as a team, or made a contribution to as a team. All of this put together in the context of the time made it a special sort of thing. I can say it’s still a big point of pride” [3]. In his book American Dreams, historian H.W. Brands details the rise of spectator sports in the 1950s and the subsequent use of athletics as a means of protest [4]. Craig Nation’s experience as a college athlete in the 1960s reflects Brands’ description of the slow dismantlement of the Jim Crow System and the power of protest in sports as a mechanism for change.
The NYAC boycott was part of a greater movement led by Dr. Harry Edwards and the Olympic Project for Human Rights, who sought to boycott the 1968 Olympics in protest of human rights injustices within sports [5]. While the boycott did not fully materialize, Olympic medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in protest of inequality in what Brands detailed as “the action that garnered the greatest attention for the black power movement” [6]. Nation recalls that the day after Tommie Smith and John Carlos podiumed in the 200 meters, his teammate and friend Larry James won gold in the 4 x 400-meter relay, and silver in the open 400 meter. He remembers that “Larry and his teammates were under terrible pressure to do something [like Carlos and Smith had” [7]. But Carlos and Smith were thrown off the Olympic team and sent home, putting Larry in a difficult place. Larry and his teammates “went for a slightly more modest form of protest by wearing black berets on the podium” [8]. Nation explained that people competing at such a high level of competition “had choices to make about how to comport themselves. They could use the stage or abuse it. It was a difficult, personal choice. Yet sometimes it was an opportunity” [9]. While H.W. Brands addresses the impact that protests in sport had on the Civil Rights movement, Craig Nation’s first-hand account and connection to the NYAC and Olympic protests provide humanity and complexity to the issue.
Craig Nation expressing his excitement after Villanova won the 1968 NCAA championship, The Villanovan, Courtesy of Craig Nation
Across the nation and on the international stage, black athletes faced persistent discrimination on and off the field, but Craig Nation did not recall having any problems at Villanova University. He remembers feeling like he was in a “fully integrated harmonious environment” [10]. Nation and Larry James were teammates at Villanova. In fact, he was James’ mentor when he joined the team in 1967. Nation described James as a “great, great American track and field runner. An Olympic gold and silver medalist and world record holder… Just great. I was his mentor. Black, white, no issue. No question” [11]. Nation was always impressed that on his team they had “a very positive atmosphere in a day and age when it was really difficult, when there was a lot of tension” [12]. Of course, this was not the case at every university. For example, the Southeastern Conference did not begin to integrate until 1966, and the University of Mississippi was not fully integrated until 1971 [13]. A common phenomenon in the south was that black athletes were hated throughout the day but celebrated under the lights. This caused many black athletes to become nonpolitical to avoid confrontation and violence from their white counterparts, which ultimately emboldened universities to continue to uphold racist practices that would allow the edifice of the Jim Crow System to survive, even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1965.
On April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. That weekend, the Villanova team was scheduled to travel to Knoxville to compete at a meet hosted by the University of Tennessee. Back in Philadelphia, Nation’s team gathered for a team meeting to decide whether they would compete in the meet. Nation remembers that on his drive to the meeting, “there were a lot of African American people on the street. They were very upset, and for a good reason. A group of people for around my car and started to pound on it. I tried to show solidarity and continued to move throughout the crowd. Nobody did anything. They were just expressing their anger” [14]. After making it to the meeting, his team voted to go to the meet. Nation remembers that their flight to Tennessee flew over Washington, and “through the air it looked like the whole city was on fire” [15]. He explained that “it was a very striking thing to see. I was twenty-one years old trying to put it all together” [16]. Nation’s experiences as a student-athlete at Villanova in the late 1960s illustrate how the Civil Rights Movement impacted the everyday lives of American citizens, like Brands alludes to throughout his novel.
The Philadelphia Pioneers after winning 4 x 400 at the AAU national championship, courtesy of Craig Nation
Upon his graduation from Villanova University in 1968, Nation began a new running career with a local track club, the Philadelphia Pioneer Club. The Philadelphia Pioneer Club was a historically black segregated organization, but in the era of desegregation, Craig Nation became the first white person to join the team. He remembers how interesting and eye opening it was to cross the color line and immerse himself in a culture that he was unfamiliar with, “to see the world the way the other side sees it” [17]. While Villanova’s head coach, Jim Elliot, was in full support of integration, not all of Nation’s coaches were in support of him joining the Philadelphia Pioneers. Nation remembers some of his coaches saying, “well what are you doing that for? Why are you running for that club?” [18]. While he was fortunate that his experiences at Villanova were mostly positive in regard to race relations, Nation acknowledges that “not everybody was on board for change,” yet that “segregated track and field, segregated sporting culture seemed so ironic” [19].
In his chronicle of American history since 1945, H.W. Brands illustrated the complexity of history by detailing the American pursuit of democratization and development abroad contrasted with the ongoing battle over race relations at home. While he briefly mentions the impact that sports had on the Civil Rights Movement, Craig Nation’s experience as a student-athlete in the late 1960s gives humanity and perplexity to the issues being faced by everyday people. His account proves that “nobody was immune, and certainly not collegiate athletics. You had to deal with the issue in some way. Either by self-consciously ignoring it or by engaging with it. Either way, you had to do something” [20].
[1] “Boycott may End NYAC Track Meet,” Chicago Daily Defender (Big Weekend Edition) (1966-1973), Feb 03, 1968. [ProQuest]
[2] Dexter L. Blackman, “’RUN, JUMP, OR SHUFFLE ARE ALL THE SAME WHEN YOU DO IT FOR THE MAN!’: The OPHR, Black Power, and the Boycott of the 1968 NYAC Meet,” Souls 21 no. 1, (2019), 52-76. [Taylor and Francis Online]
H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945, (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 127.
[3] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[4] Brands, American Dreams, 74-76.
[5] Nikole Tower, “Olympic Project for Human Rights lit fire for 1968 protests,” Global Sport Matters, (2018). [Web]
[6] Brands, American Dreams, 152.
[7] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[8] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[9] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[10] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[11] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[12] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[13] Matthew Wills, “The Uneasy History of Integrated Sports in America.” JSTOR Daily, (2017). [JSTOR Daily]
[14] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[15] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[16] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[17] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[18] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[19] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
[20] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
Appendix
“The second shortcoming of the Brown decision was that it applied only to schools […] Segregated public schools were an important pillar of the Jim Crow system, yet the edifice could survive without them. The much larger realm of segregation remained untouched.” (H.W. Brands, American Dreams, p. 86)
Interview Subject
Robert C. Nation, age 77, Dickinson College professor who ran track and field for Villanova University in the late 1960s and witnessed the slow desegregation of sports.
Interview
Interview with Professor Craig Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.
Selected Transcript
Q: Can you tell me a little about the culture of your team at Villanova as it pertained to race relations?
A: “I have always been impressed with Villanova as a model for what a collegiate athletic program can be. Our coach, Jim Elliot, left no doubt about priorities. Your first priority is to be a student. To learn, to grow, to educate, to mature. And then comes track […] I think we probably managed to have a successful team at the highest level of competition without sacrificing any principles or priorities. That was that was good.”
“Race relations were very interesting. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can say what I remembered. We didn’t have a problem at Villanova with race relations. In this era. I was at Villanova from 64 to 68, so this is the height of the civil rights movement. Intense engagement.”
“I never perceived it as an issue in my environment I felt like I was in a fully integrated harmonious environment, that’s the way I perceived it.”
“I think my junior year the way we did it was a team member was assigned to a first year as a mentor. I was assigned to Larry James. He was a great, great American track and field runner, Olympic gold medal, Olympic silver medal, world record holder, just great. From White Plains, NY. I was his mentor. Black, white- No issue. No, no question. It always impressed me that on our team we had a very positive atmosphere in a day and age when it was really difficult, when there’s a lot of tension.”
“My senior year, my black teammates raised the issue that track was in many ways still a segregated sport. And one of the biggest track and field organizations was the New York Athletic Club which hosted a big indoor track meet every year. But the NYAC was a white only organization, not just the meet, but the organization. So, as national champions, we said we wanted to boycott this meet. And we had a big discussion about it as a team. We decided unanimously to boycott and not low and behold it the next year the NYAC was no longer a segregated organization. It was a great, great thing. Which we sort of accomplished as a team or made a contribution to as a team. All of this put together in the context of the time made it a special sort of thing. It meant a lot to me that we could do that. I can say it’s just still quite a big point of pride. It’s like 50 or 60 years ago or something like that.”
Q: Was your coach supportive of your team boycotting the meet?
A: “Absolutely. Although I had more than one coach, and not all of them had… like when I went to run for the Philadelphia Pioneers some of them said “well what are you doing that for? Why are you running for that club?” This was part of that time; those perceptions were out there. Not everybody was on board. It was a battle in some ways, but in sporting culture it seems so ironic. Segregated track and field…” (15:15)
“My senior year in 1968 was the assassination of MLK. That weekend we had a track meet at the university of Tennessee- where MLK was assassinated. We had to have a team meeting to decide whether we would go. There were a lot of African American people on the street, they were upset for a good reason- they got around my car and started to pound on it. I tried to show solidarity and keep moving. Nobody did anything, they were just expressing their anger. I got through and made it to the meeting, and we voted to go. We flew down to Tennessee. I remember our flight flew over Washington; through the air it looked like the whole city was on fire. It was a very striking thing to see. I was 21 years old trying to put it all together. Those are all my experiences as an athlete at Villanova.”
Q: Today it feels easy for college students to disengage from current events and remain protected in a “bubble.” Was everyone engaged? Were the opportunities to remain passive in this time?
A: “Nobody was immune, and certainly not collegiate athletics.”
“You couldn’t dodge the issue. You had to deal with it in some way. Either by self-consciously ignoring it or hunkering down or engaging with the issues but you had to do something like that.”
“I don’t think the majority was all that engaged back then either- when you look closely maybe it’s not as different as you think (the generations)”
“There was then too a lot of disengagement.”
Q: Were you and your teammates moved by the demonstrations of the 1968 Olympics?
A: “Larry James was also involved in [the 1968 Olympics] because John Carlos and Tommie Smith had their dramatic demonstration, fist raised all that, and then the next day, Larry and his teammates won the gold medal in the 4×400, so they were under terrible pressure to do something like that. Remember, Carlos and [who] got thrown off the team, it was awful, they were sent home with gold medals around their neck because they took a knee basically. They didn’t hit anybody in the head. So then Larry and company, he talked to me about this in great detail, they didn’t know what to do. Larry was one of the leaders of this movement and demonstrations at the Olympic games, and he was the best athlete too, so he had a lot of prestige, everybody admired and respected him. And I was supposed to be his mentor [laughs] So they went for a slightly more modest form of protest. They wore berets black berets it was a a more temperate version of Carlos and Smith. The people that engaged in those activities had choices to make they were making risks. […] All of these people had to make decisions about how to comport themselves. They can use the stage or abuse it. How to represent the causes they believe in. It is a difficult, personal choice. Sometimes it can be seen as an opportunity.”
Further Research
Fraser, Gerald C. “Black Athletes Are Cautioned Not to Cross Lines.” The New York Times Company. (1968). Olympic History (nytimes.com)
Reese, Renford. “The Socio-Political Context of the Integration of Sport in America.” Journal of African American Men 3, no. 4 (1998): 5–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41819345.
In November of 1960, Thomas Randall was 15 years old and living on Long Island, New York when then-U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy was campaigning for President of the United States and visited Long Island that month. Randall remembers going to a campaign event and remembers seeing him in person. It was a weekend in Commack, and Kennedy arrived in an open convertible, and Kennedy was sitting in the back of it. Randall explains how he “broke through the police barrier and ran up to Kennedy’s car and touched him on the shoulder.” Randall was able to get back to safety without being arrested by the police or anything. Randall’s memory of bursting through the police barrier to touch Kennedy gives a sense of the extreme excitement that many people felt during the last days before the election, due to Kennedy’s powerful charm, but this charm was not empty or meaningless. Kennedy’s magical, Pied Piper charm was the charisma of a great leader, who was likely, had he lived, to have become a great President.
John F. Kennedy campaigning in Commack, New York on November 6th, 1960.
Randall was not the only bystander who did something like this. In “The Making of the President, 1960” by Theodore H. White, he wrote “One remembers the grabbers, bursting through police lines, trying to touch and reach him, and the squeezers who grasped his hand and, to prove their affection, squeezed extra hard until, one day in Pennsylvania, even the candidate’s calloused hand burst with blood.”[1] Kennedy reportedly loved riding with the top down. During a parade in Dublin, which Kennedy attended, Irish President saw him standing up and waving to crowds. His immediate thought was “what an easy target he would have been.”[2] according to Larry J. Sabato in “The Kennedy Half-Century.” He was quoted as saying “The whole point is for me to be accessible to the people.”[3] The date was November 6th, 1960. This was one of Kennedy’s last campaign stops before the election took place on November 8th. At this event, Kennedy said that “with a new Democratic administration…we can demonstrate that we are a strong and vital and progressive society.”[4]
John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon shaking hands just before a debate.
Kennedy was very charming, and H.W. Brands says that his “style charmed the Democratic convention, and it charmed the country after he landed the nomination.”[5] Vice President Richard Nixon, Kennedy’s opponent in the presidential race, was critical of Kennedy’s charm. On November 3, 1960, in a speech in Houston, Texas, Nixon said, referring to Kennedy, that “when the people go to the polls they should know where the roads lead. They must not follow a Pied Piper from Boston down the road to disaster.”[6] Kennedy responded to Nixon’s criticism at a campaign event in The Bronx on November 5. “Nixon, in a high-level or high-road campaign which emphasizes the issues, in the last 6 days has called me an economic ignoramus, a Pied Piper, and all the rest. I just confine myself to calling him a Republican. But he says that is really getting low.”[7] It wasn’t just Kennedy’s charm that landed him the nomination, it was also his background. He came from a very rich family. His father, Joseph Kennedy, “made a fortune on wall street”[8] and managed to “hold on to his fortune”[9] when the Great Depression happened. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Joseph Kennedy as director of the Securities and Exchange Commission. John F. Kennedy was able to work his way up through the ranks due to his privileged background. After he returned from WWII a hero, he won election to the House of Representatives in 1946, and was elected to the Senate 6 years later in 1952. After Dwight D. Eisenhower won the 1952 and 1956 elections in back to back landslides. Kennedy ran for President in 1960, winning the Democratic nomination in the summer of that year. Kennedy wasn’t done just yet, as he had to face incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon in the presidential election of that year. Randall remembers very much about the 1960 debates between Kennedy and Nixon. H.W. Brands says that Nixon “knew far more about government and policies than Kennedy.”[10] but this was the first televised presidential debate in U.S. history, and Kennedy used that to his advantage, along with his charm. He appeared “tanned, fit, and rested, while Nixon looked harried and worn.”[11] Randall remembers watching the debates and remembers the public opinion on the debates. Randall recalls, “Because of the visual nature of television, Kennedy was a much more handsome guy than Nixon, who always looked like he had a 5 o’clock shadow, which means dark, dark cheeks, that hadn’t been shaved, which probably wasn’t true. He probably did shave, but he didn’t look like he had. Whereas Kennedy was handsome and outgoing and so on, so it was significant for that because it showed the power of television.” Randall and his family supported Kennedy in the 1960 election. “We were loyal Democrats.” says Randall. When asked what he thinks of Kennedy as a president, looking back on his presidency all these years later, he says “I think he is a President in the making. They botched a lot of stuff, especially in regard to foreign policy, like the Bay of Pigs, for instance. He was very charismatic, and came from a very wealthy family.” Kennedy did a number of good things during his presidency, such as avoiding nuclear war with Cuba and the Soviets, supported Civil Rights and was a staunch opponent of communism. He challenged Americans to take action to make the country better, and he set a goal of going to the moon by the end of the decade. He inspired people, not just with charm, but with great new goals for the nation. If John F. Kennedy’s presidency did not come to an abrupt end as a result of his assassination, he may have gone down as one of the best Presidents. He was a young man, and it is possible he could have succeeded in reaching many of his ambitious goals for the country.
John F. Kennedy riding in his motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22nd, 1963, just seconds before he was killed. Next to him is his wife, Jackie and sitting in front of them is John Connally, the Governor of Texas, and his wife, Nellie.
On November 22nd, 1963, Kennedy was campaigning for re-election in Dallas, Texas, when he was killed by an assassin’s bullets. On this day, Randall was in ROTC. As Randall says, “We were all dressed up for Friday afternoon. Every Friday afternoon the troops had to be—we were the troops—had to be reviewed, they had to pass muster.” While he was lined up with the other troops, one of the leaders on the campus was talking to someone else on a walkie-talkie, and came over and told Randall and the other troops that the President had been shot. Randall recalls, “I don’t think anybody at that point used the word, “killed.” But that he was shot. And there was complete silence and nobody could believe it. It was a total shock to everybody, and I say that including Republicans as well. It was such a significant event that politics took a back seat for quite a while.” Randall doesn’t remember much about JFK’s funeral, but his wife, Judi does. She recalls, “I remember especially his son, John John, was about three or four years old, and I remember him saluting when the coffin went by. It was very moving. He was this little boy who had just lost his father and didn’t really understand anything that was going on.” She also recalls that the funeral was “endlessly televised” on all television channels.
Kennedy definitely had great plans for the nation, and possibly would’ve gone down as one of the best Presidents in the history of the United States if he was never assassinated. In considering the legacy of his presidency, “it must be acknowledged that the Kennedy thousand days spoke to the country’s better angels, inspired visions of a less divisive nation and world, and demonstrated that America was still the last best hope of mankind.”[12]
[1] White, Theodore H. The Making of the President, 1960. Cape, 1962, 331.
[2] Green, Robert. “Kennedy’s love for convertibles made him an easy target.” The Globe and Mail, November 21, 2013, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/kennedys-love-for-convertibles-made-him-an-easy-target/article15543696/
[3] Green, “Kennedy’s love for convertibles made him an easy target.”
[4] Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 914a, “Long Island Arena, Commack, New York, 6 November 1960.” (https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/commack-ny-19601106) John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
[5] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 102.
[6] “Remarks of the Vice President at Herman Park, Miller Memorial Theater, Houston, TX.” The American Presidency Project, November 3, 1960. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-vice-president-herman-park-miller-memorial-theater-houston-tx
[7] “Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy, Concourse Plaza Hotel, Bronx, New York, November 5, 1960.” JFK Library. Accessed May 6, 2023. https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/bronx-ny-19601105
[8] Brands, 100.
[9] Brands, 100.
[10] Brands, 102.
[11] Brands, 103.
[12] Dallek, Robert. An unfinished life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. New York: Back Bay Books/Little Brown and Company, 2013, 942.
In his book, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945, H.W. Brands offers insight into race relations up until the Civil Rights Act. Although detailed depictions of race relations trail off post-1964, Brands writes “Americans challenged poverty, inequality, and prejudice and mitigated these historic scourges substantially.”[1] His recognition of mitigation connotes that racial integration continued as American society addressed equality issues in daily life. The real-life accounts of people who came of age after 1964 reveal practical lessons and challenges of true desegregation, not based on legal precedent or legislative mandate but upon personal connections among people.
Brown v. Board II (1955) prohibited segregation in schools, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation in all other aspects of life, ending the longstanding “separate but equal” doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Although history notes that the effects of Brown and the Civil Rights Act were not felt immediately, history often fails to articulate the everyday process of integration. Real integration happened beyond the headlines and court cases. Judicial rulings cannot educate ordinary citizens about how to enact change, especially when upending multigenerational norms. Such change takes time.
Blackwell (right) with his twin brother and mother, 1969, from Andrew K. Blackwell
Andrew Kevin Blackwell, born in 1964, lived through the aftermath in the small town of Monticello in southern Mississippi’s Lawrence County. Blackwell recounts growing up in the newly integrated South. He began first grade in 1969, the same year Monticello’s school system was desegregated. He says, “My class was the first to actually go all the way through school in an integrated system.”[2] It was not until the following summer, in 1970, that all public schools in Mississippi were fully integrated.[3]
Blackwell describes being unaware of racial issues. He says, “I was six years old and more interested in baseball and frogs … than I was in race relations at that time.”[4] He said, “All of my neighbors for miles in any direction were white.”[5] Once he went to school, he met many black children, but “society there was [still] segregated.”[6] For example, school buses were one of the numerous aspects of life that remained segregated. Blackwell described how the buses lined up outside of school every day with a clear distinction between those ridden by the white student versus black students:
One day in the fifth grade, [I see] a different bus located where [my bus] is supposed to be…this bus was dilapidated, it was old…the seats were torn…And all of my black friends who were going to get on their bus were laughing at us basically saying, “you get to ride the n-word bus today.”[7]
Blackwell noted the delineations among white students as well: the town kids and the farm kids. The town kids’ “parents were on the school board,” and those students had the newest buses.[8] The farm kids, like Blackwell, rode the average buses; they were not shiny and new like the children in town, but they were not run down like the buses for the black students. While Brown v. Board of Education dictated school integration, communities leveraged the decision’s lack of implementation details to funnel resources away from black students.
In 1976, the bicentennial brought joyous celebrations and filled classrooms with discussions of the nation’s founding. A school field trip took his sixth-grade class to the local theater to watch the movie 1776. He recalls, “I was thinking on the way over there, you know, I’ve never seen any black kids at the movie theater. That’s a white kid thing.”[9] Upon arrival, Blackwell entered through an unfamiliar side door. It was dark and led to a steep, narrow stairwell that he did not know existed. At the top of the stairs was a balcony. When he sat down, his chair
The old Monticello (Mono) Movie Theatre with segregated entrances, 2018, from Scott Boyd
broke. His friend in the next chair, Bessie, “looks at it and says, well get used to it. That’s what we deal with all the time.”[10] Bessie was a black girl. The reason Blackwell had never seen the black kids at the theater was that they sat in the rundown balcony, despite no rule forcing them to do so. For the black students, “it was just understood that’s the way it had always been.”[11] Black and white students attending a movie together to celebrate the bicentennial marked significant progress, but racial separation remained omnipresent two centuries after the country’s founders grappled with the issue of slavery. As 1776 illustrates and Brands writes, “Americans have been dreaming since our national birth,” but full racial reconciliation remained unfulfilled.[12]
Blackwell relayed a subsequent story from high school. A white friend who lived in town, Shellie, came to him for help. Her mother and other mothers were hosting a pool party, so Shellie was talking to friends, both white and black, about attending. When other mothers learned that black friends were being invited, “as politely as southern ladies can be polite, not necessarily nice, [the mothers] basically told Shellie, go back to school and tell ’em all they can’t come.”[13] Shellie wondered what to do. Blackwell proceeded to tell their black and white friends about the situation, effectively beginning a boycott of the party. Embarrassed by the situation, the hosting mothers retracted their previous statements, and Blackwell told everyone to go. He said, “We all got along and here intrusive mothers are driving wedges between us based upon rules that we didn’t have anything to do with creating, nor certainly any interest in propagating.”[14] This event illustrates the progress of breaking generational attitudes. Shellie had no hesitation about inviting her black friends, but other parents were making unfair rules. So, Shellie and other students responded. The host parents’ swift retraction demonstrates that the new generation was intolerant of rules against their black peers and supports Brands’ belief that “the moral foundation of America’s dreams had always been the right to dream, and Americans weren’t about to surrender that.”[15]
Segregated Homecoming Court, Monticello High School Yearbook, 1982, from Andrew K. Blackwell
Buses and the local movie theater were two examples of segregation’s remnants that followed Blackwell as he moved into high school in the fall of 1979. Perhaps coincidentally, some policies put in place in order to combat segregation created further divides. For example, in order to create the opportunity for black students to be homecoming king and queen, even with a student body that was 55% white and 45%black, the school board implemented a policy to have both a black homecoming couple and a white homecoming couple. This well-intentioned policy further projected a divide among students that Blackwell said had largely diminished by the time he began high school. Students began to reject “these old archaic rules and stupidity that was created many, many years ahead.”[16] The homecoming dance itself was another issue. The attitude of the school’s administration was, “Now you got white kids and black kids dancing together…No way!”[17] The solution was not to have a dance between 1970 and 1980 The students eventually took a stand against the administration, leading to the first integrated homecoming dance in 1980.
In 1969, the Supreme Court ordered the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals to enforce the desegregation of schools in Mississippi, which led to integration in 1970. However, de facto segregation in Mississippi remained prevalent after this order, and private schools emerged as an alternative to public education. Lawrence County Academy opened in 1970 in Monticello, Mississippi, Blackwell’s hometown. The all-white school began as a so-called “segregation academy,” even selecting The Rebels, a nod to the Confederacy, as its mascot.[18]
Further, in 1984, a group of black families filed formal complaints about continued segregation in Lawrence County. In United States v. Lawrence County School District, the Circuit Court ruled that the county’s tri-district school system reinforced racial segregation in the small, mostly white Topeka and New Hebron districts.[19] As buses remained segregated in integrated districts, in 1984, the U.S. demanded that the 1969 order be enforced, and the judge presiding over the case found that Lawrence County had not implemented the 1969 ruling. In response, the Lawrence County school board voted to combine the tri-district into a single one. Blackwell noted that the community largely supported this approach because it created a larger district that could better utilize resources.[20] To eliminate the vestiges of past rivalries, the newly-formed Lawrence County School District created new mascots and school colors.
Blackwell (middle) with brother and friends, Monticello High School Yearbook, 1980, from Andrew K. Blackwell.
The path to true integration was a long one. Beyond the court cases and headlines, “the dreaming persisted,” and residents of small towns like Monticello, Mississippi, desegregated schools and communities.[21] The integration process extended far beyond the 1960s. Residents did not have a clear roadmap, and as children, people like Mr. Blackwell formed friendships across racial lines and challenged long-standing social norms. True integration occurred through daily activities, sports, and hallway conversations, far away from courthouses and news cameras.
[1] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), x.
[2] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.
[3] Charles C. Bolton, “The Last Stand of Massive Resistance: Mississippi Public School Integration, 1970” (Mississippi Historical Society, February 2009), https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/the-last-stand-of-massive-resistance-1970.
[4] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.
[5] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.
[6] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.
[7] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.
[8] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.
[9] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.
[10] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.
[11]Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.
[16] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.
[17] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.
[18] Ashton Pittman, “Hyde-Smith Attended All-White ‘SEG Academy’ to Avoid Integration” (Jackson Free Press, Inc., November 23, 2018), https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2018/nov/23/hyde-smith-attended-all-white-seg-academy-avoid-in/.
[19]Alvin B. Rubin, “United States v. Lawrence County School Dist” (Casetext Inc., September 15, 1986), https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-lawrence-county-school-dist/.
[20] Phone Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, May 6, 2023.
“The promise of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the rest of Johnson’s Great Society seemed distant and often irrelevant to the trials of everyday life on the streets.” (H.W. Brands, American Dreams, p. 148)
Interview subject
Andrew Kevin Blackwell, age 58, grew up in a small town in newly integrated South Mississippi in the 1960s and 70s.
Interviews
– Video recording with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.
Q. So Brands doesn’t really discuss race relations post-Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. He does acknowledge that these acts didn’t eradicate racism from America, the South in particular, but doesn’t continue the race discussion afterward. What was your experience like growing up in the newly integrated South?
A. So, just to put myself in the proper timeframe here, I’m 58 and a half years old, and so schools were integrated in Mississippi in about 1969, just as I was entering the first grade. And back then in Mississippi, we didn’t have kindergarten, so all students started school in the first grade. So I was the first in my county, a rural county in Mississippi called Lawrence County. I was the first class, my class was the first class to actually go all the way through school in an integrated school system. I never went to school with whites. Only there were blacks in my school system. That said, uh, there was a lot to, um, deal with, not so much me because I never knew any better. And I was six years old and more interested in baseball and frogs and whatever else than I was in race relations at that time. But definitely, society there was segregated. And so the first time, other than a black family, a man and a woman older who lived on the property where I lived, close by and on a family property, rented a house there and served as our, my part-time babysitter, I never met or dealt with any black people whatsoever until I went to first grade. Uh, I have an older brother who’s two years older and he went to first two years of school in an integrated school system, only white kids. Sometime during his second grade, they started integrating the schools. So that was kind of my perspective. It was limited. My parents would give you a very different, um, perception of what was going on there, I would assume because they actually had an understanding of the politics, the Civil Rights movement, the Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King. I wouldn’t have heard of him in the first grade. I wouldn’t have known who he was. So I think it does, um, I, I’ve always consider it a unique perspective to have gone to the first grade or, you know, from first grade through 12th, uh, integrated with black students. I had the same, you know, there wasn’t a lot of in and outgoing students in rural Mississippi. So pretty much most of the kids that I started first grade with, I graduated with in high school after 12 years. So a couple of, um, interesting points. And incidentally, I actually write short stories about these experiences. I called a grouping of the short stories remnants, that’s the name of, uh, list of short stories. Most of these stories I just tell as I will do today, but I have a few of ’em that I’ve started writing down. And one day when I finally retire, I’ll, I’ll finish ’em. But they’re just stories of experiences of a young kid anywhere from first grade to about, well, really senior in high school, just different things that happened to me or that I was involved in or aware of that sort of gave a unique perspective on what it was like to integrate with a bunch of black kids that you didn’t have anything to do with outta school. These are actual true experiences, true stories of things that happened.
Q. So I think, of course, the Civil Rights Act was really monumental legislation, but it sounds very much like society was still very much segregated, despite the fact that legally, that was not the case.
A. That’s correct. I’ll give you a real story. This one I called number 29. That’s the name of the story. When I started school in the first grade, my brother had been going to school for two years. He was going into the third grade and every day the school bus, we lived in a rural community about eight miles from town. And the town is where the school was. So we had to ride the school bus to town every day. All of my neighbors for miles in any direction were all white. And the black kids, the black families lived in other parts of the county, some in the town part in the center of the county, some of ’em in more rural areas. But we didn’t encounter them on any given day. I’d never had black friends that I went fishing with or anything like that when I was really young. So my brother always, I watched him get on the school bus every day and go to school and the school bus was number 29. All the school buses were numbered. And I couldn’t wait to start school and get on old number 29 and go to school with my brother and all of my friends because all of my friends were on that same bus. We lived in the same area, same general area, big farms and all. All my friends were on number 29. So I went on number 29 all the way through first and fifth grade. Uh, and in the fifth grade I went to the middle school. Now it’s interesting how the schools went before integration in my county, there were three schools for the white kids. They had two schools. One, the Monticello Elementary School, which went first through sixth grade if I recall correctly. And then the high school, which went eight or seventh through 12th grade. That’s what the white kids did. And that was called Monticello Elementary and Monticello High. The black kids went to another school, it was called McCullough High School at the time, or McCullough School I think. It included all 12 grades and only black kids and black teachers went there. When integration came, the solution to actual buildings was to keep the elementary school, but take the fifth and sixth grade out of it. So all the kids went to Monticello Elementary School, first through fourth, middle schoolers, fifth through ninth grade went to McCullough, which they renamed McCullough junior high. And then for high school, 10th through 12th, we all went to the integrated high school, which was the white kids high school originally. So in the fifth grade I was at McCullough Junior High, which had been the black school. Interestingly McCullough was the name of a guy. He was the superintendent of education some years before. And they named that black school after him. And he was a white guy, superintendent of education. He was a white guy. So in the fifth grade, I leave one day after school, right bell rains. We all go to the school buses and the school buses are lined up down this street. Two in two different columns, basically Two buses, two buses, two buses on the on back. And I never paid much attention. My bus was always at a particular location, old number 29. And I went and jumped on it and all my friends were there. And the bus would go from the elementary school to the junior high pick up students, then to the high school, pick up more students, and then start going out into my community and dropping ’em off. So I get there one day in the fifth grade after school and there’s a different bus located where old number 29 is supposed to be. And I was confused. So I looked and in fact my bus driver was on there and all my friends were on there. But this bus was dilapidated, it was old, it had, the seats were torn, it had duct tape all over the seats, keeping them together. And I thought, what the heck? Why are we riding in this? And all of my black friends who were going to get on their bus were laughing at us basically saying, you get to ride the n-word bus today. And that was one of the buses that they rode every day. And I had never paid attention. But if you actually look at the buses, the way they were lined up, there were three statuses of buses. The first four were brand-new shiny buses. And they took all of the kids from town whose parents were teachers or doctors or you know. And all of the black buses that were, I don’t know, maybe three or four, maybe five were at the back of the line. And those buses, none of them were new. The, the one they had given us our bus that day had broken down, had a problem, whatever. And the school system kept one or two extra buses in case they had a problem with the bus. And because old 29 was broken down, they gave us this old broken down bus that wasn’t even good enough for the black kids. Right. It wasn’t, they didn’t even rate that on a day to day. Uh, you know, they, they, they had a little bit better buses than that, but not much. So it taught me something that, while there was definitely a black-white divide in rural Mississippi at that time, there were other divides as well. There were the town kids whose parents were on the school board. There were the farmers’ kids who were in the middle tier and were sent with average buses. And then the black kids. And I always thought about those drivers. All the black buses had black drivers, all the white buses had white drivers. And I was never aware of a black kid being on a white bus or vice versa. So the school, the bus system was still very segregated, very segregated many years after the school systems actually integrated. And I don’t think most people know that. But it also taught me, you know, there’s, there’s a little bit of a divide here, even, but among the white kids, and maybe there were some I didn’t understand among the black kids, I’m not sure. But, um, anyway, that’s my story of old 29.
Q. Would you say that the, um, black families and as there still a noticeable difference in sort of the jobs that black people tended to have or like those kinds of things?
A. Yes, there were differences. I’m not sure that they would be as stark as some of the ones with the white kids. Just cause, you know, some of the white kids’ parents were better educated and made more money. In some cases, some cases not. I mean, some of those farmers in rural Mississippi were loaded, right? Some of them made a lot of money, but their kids were different. They didn’t live in town. They didn’t swim in swimming pools. We swim in rivers and lakes. We went hunting and fishing. We did play baseball, but we didn’t play a lot of other sports. The town kids had a diving team. We never dreamed of having a diving team among the rural kids, you know. So, um, I can tell you another story if you want.
Q: Go for it.
A: Okay. So in the sixth grade was 1976. And what was 1976?
Q: The bicentennial.
A: The bicentennial. Now of course you weren’t born yet, but that was a big deal, the 200 anniversary of our founding of our nation. And they printed, they had all kinds of, you know, all kinds of activities in, in America to celebrate the bicentennial all year long, but especially around July 4th. But really all year long, lots of things educational-wise. They printed new coins, whatever, all celebrating the bicentennial. So one day at school, I’m in the sixth grade, and they load us all up in these buses, all of the fifth and sixth graders as I recall. And they took us across town to the local movie theater. Now, the bigger town, which you’ve been to Brookhaven even back then, had a more modern movie theater. Not quite as slick as they have ’em today, but you would recognize it and whatever, it wouldn’t be that different than what you’re used to. But in our local little town, there was an old theater that we used to go to and watch horror movies in. They never had like real release movies or whatever. It was just a bunch of kids being silly. And they would have old movies or whatever on Friday night we’d go watch a movie. So, I had never been on a field trip to the movie theater. That was weird. So they loaded us up on these buses ‘for a field trip, and they took us across town, which is only about three miles to the theater, this local theater. And the movie they were playing was 1776, which is the old, uh, you know, celebration. We have the Decoration of Independence written, there’s a Broadway play, whatever. And I know you’ve, you’ve seen that. Um, and so, you know, it was just teaching us about the history and all. So we get on the bus and I’m thinking, oh, this will be cool. It’s better than sitting in math class or whatever else. And they put us on each bus, not segregated. My bus, whatever bus I was on, wasn’t old 29 was my class. Whatever class I was in, which was fully integrated, probably about 40% black, 60% white, thereabouts, fairly even. And so we go to this place the, to the movie theater. And I was thinking on the way over there, you know, I’ve never seen any black kids at the movie theater. That’s a white kid thing. I’ve never seen any of ’em there. That’s, so I wonder if any of these kids have ever been there. So when we get to the movie theater, I’m expecting to go in the front door and sit. They have these old wooden chairs that are in rows, you know, the old-timey kind of chairs by today’s standards, not a lot of padding or whatever else. And the place isn’t real fancy, but the chairs were sturdy and, you know, everything was, was, um, simple but fine. But when, when I get there, they redirect us through this side door to the movie theater that I had never been, and didn’t even notice was there. So we go in and I’m thinking, why are we going in? There’s a lot of kids there. They got, you know, two class loads, probably 250 kids there. And, um, I’m thinking, where are they taking us? I’ve never been in this door. Don’t know. And as I go in, I start going up this narrow stairway, it’s really narrow. And so we go stomping up there and I’m just following the leader. And when I get up there, I realize there’s a balcony to the movie theater that I never knew was there. And I’ve sat in the bottom before, never looked up, never knew there was a balcony there. And so I go on up and sit down. There’s probably enough, maybe for my class, so maybe 25, 30 students, something like that. Maybe. I’m not exactly sure. It’s been a while. But anyway, I start to sit down and my chair is broken and it kind of folds back. I’m thinking, geez, I can’t sit here. And I tell the teacher who’s with us, my chair’s broken, and she’s a black teacher and she says, just sit there, you’ll manage, you’ll manage. And all the other kids sit there too. And next to me is a girl, a black girl who I’m still friends with. Bessie Williams is her name. And I look at Bessie and I say, my chair is broken. I don’t know if I can sit here through the whole movie. And she looks at it and says, well get used to it. That’s what we deal with all the time. So I didn’t know it, but the whole time that me and all of the other white kids in town are sitting in the bottom of the theater, the black kids are in the balcony with the broken chairs remaining fairly quiet if they can afford to see a movie at all. But there was no sign that said blacks up, white’s down. It was nothing like that. It was just understood that’s the way it had always been. And so, you know, I sat through the movie and it’s interesting, the movie is, has a big part of the movie when they’re trying to do the declaration and they’re debating slavery as to whether they should outlaw slavery and the Declaration of Independence. And they’re singing songs about it and drowning on and on, and finally putting the issue of slavery aside so that they can have, you know, um, unanimity among all of the founding fathers, all white fathers, of course. Um, and they put slavery aside. And here I am in the balcony of a rural movie theater, 200 years later. And to some extent, we’ve still put the issue aside.
Q: So there was also sort of complacency among everybody because that’s just kind of the way that it had always been?
A: That’s Correct. And it, it took time. There were, you know, I would say that blacks and whites had kind of come to a conclusion about how things worked, whether they should work that way or not work that way or whatever else. But I think the interesting thing about my generation and particularly my school year, I think it gave us the chance to, uh, reset expectations on how things were going to work. And it took a while. It did, because of course we were young and there were other people in charge of things.
Q: So, both of those stories were kind of about you going, like in your younger years of school, like, um, elementary and middle school, how did sort of race relations evolve as you got into high school in the late seventies, early eighties?
A: So I think when, by the time I got into high school and my class, and even my brother’s class who’s two years older than me, we started resetting some of those, uh, historical precedents, I would say, or trends or characteristics or whatever. As an example, when the schools integrated, it’s easy enough to say we’re gonna put ’em all in the same class. They did things to help bridge to transition. Like for instance, when I went to the first grade, the year before, if any student was given a first-grade teacher, they would’ve been all white, of course. And, um, you had that teacher all day long, they taught it’s first grade, so they teach math and teach math and reading and everything all at once. But now you’ve got black kids and white kids in the same class. So they changed it so that I had two first-grade teachers and I would, they were right across the hall from one another. So I would spend the first half of the day with Mrs. Baggott, who happened to be black. And Mrs. Fortenberry was white across the hall. And I would go into her class for half the class too. So we each had black and white students, uh, all through high school. Well, not, some of this was still in place as I graduated high school, although the students actually killed some of it. For instance, you have the homecoming queen. It’s a big football game, right? Well, is the homecoming queen going to be black or are they gonna be white? Well, in 1971 when the county was about 65, 60 to, well, 60 to 65% white and the other percent black, that would’ve been reflected in the student body of any given class as well. There was never going to be a black homecoming queen in those years. It wouldn’t have happened. So they changed the rules and they had a black homecoming queen and a white homecoming queen. And we voted for both. I got to vote for both queens, black and white, but all the ones running for black were black. All the ones running for white were white. We didn’t have to worry about Jewish people and Muslims and all the other, we didn’t have those people in rural Mississippi at the time. You were black or you were white or you were Tim Smith, whose mother happened to be from Spain, and he was Catholic, he was unique. That’s the only Catholic student in my high school. Um, but we treated him as though we, he was part of the white group, right? He happened to be Catholic. So any case, by the time I got into high school, there were still several of those things. One of them, how do you deal with the homecoming dance. Now you got white kids and black kids dancing together in 1979? No way that was gonna happen. So the solution was easy till the homecoming dance. And there was not a homecoming dance between 1970 and 1980. During all of those years, there was never a school dance whatsoever until I got to be in the 10th grade and my brother was a senior. And we started calling BS on that and said, why is it we can’t have a, um, you know, a homecoming dance because of these old archaic rules and stupidity that was created many, many years ahead. Now, the school buses were still black and white, even all the way through high school. They had never changed. We had the first integrated homecoming dance in 1980. Now, interestingly, we actually had to have two because all the white kids wanted to dance to rock and roll, and all the black kids wanted to dance to soul music or R&B. So we had two, but all of the kids went back and forth between ’em. They weren’t very far apart. So they just kind of went back and forth depending on what kind of music you wanted to dance to. By the time I got to be a senior, even that was done. It was just one, and it played all kinds of music or whatever. And so, um, even that had had kind of died off at that point.
Q: So, it sounds like the fact that there were two homecoming queens, it was, it was sort of like the answer to the inequality and division was sort of more division because there was the black couple, the black homecoming king and queen, and then the white homecoming king and queen.
A: So it was kind of, that seems a little bit. Yeah, it was, uh, I don’t know what of a better solution for that time would’ve been. I mean, we can easily look back now and say, how stupid was that? But at that time, given emotions given everything else that was going on, I did think it mattered that the white kids voted for the black homecoming queen and the black kids voted for the white homecoming queen and student. There was one student body president who turned out black or white, and actually kind of flip-flopped back and forth. It never seemed to be a problem. And so it, when I got into my senior year, I had a friend, her name is Shelly, still a friend today. She’s white, happens to be. But I had a lot of black friends too, and her and a few of the other girls, the town girls, right? Not my rural farming community, but the town girls, their mothers got together and decided we’re gonna have a party for our girls or about five of ’em as I recall, roughly five. And we’ll invite all of their friends and we’ll have a pool party. And one of ’em had a swimming pool. And so they came to us, Shelly came to me and said, my mom and the other moms were having this party and want you to come. And I said, absolutely, you know, be there. And she also went to James Hill and Bessie Williams and Angela Middlebrook and Sonya Lewis and said, Hey, we’re having this party. We’d love to see you. You know, it’s on this day. You’ll get a formal invitation, whatever else. Well, those kids happen to be black. And then the moms found out that Shelly had talked to all of these black kids and said, well, we’re having a pool party. You know, however, they said it as politely as southern ladies can be polite, not necessarily nice, basically told Shelly, go back to school and tell ’em all they can’t come. And so Shelly came to me first and said, I, I just don’t know what to do. I, there’s no way I can tell Sonya and Bessie and these others, they can’t come to my party. There’s no way I’m gonna do that. I’m just going to tell ’em I’m not gonna be part of the party. And I said, you don’t do that. Let me do that. And so I’ll go to all the white kids, I’ll tell the black kids what’s going on. I didn’t hide it from ’em, but I told all of the other white kids we’re not going to their party. And it’s nothing to do with the daughters, it’s all to do with the mothers. And so we sent the message back, no we will not be there until finally they changed their rules. I think they were a little embarrassed about the whole effort, um, and changed the rules and said, no, everybody that Shelly and the others want to come will be there. And they were there. We’ve then sent the word out. No, they’ve, they’re contrite and they’ve apologized and so we’re all gonna be there. They changed that and uh, we were there. It was a great party. And I would guess, um, Lawrence County’s never had that problem again, ’cause I think the message got out-don’t be stupid about such things. It causes problems for people. We all got along and here intrusive mothers are driving wedges between us based upon rules that we didn’t have anything to do with creating, nor certainly any interest in propagating.
Q: Well, I mean, you’ve talked a lot about how you were on the football team and a bunch of your teammates were black and it just didn’t, like, it was just not a thought.
A: Generally not now on a serious level. Now on a joking level, that was constant teasing and whatever. My last name is Blackwell. So the black kids gave me a nickname and it’s “n-word”-well. And that was my nickname to the black kids. They called me that pretty much on the football field all the time as a joke, a friendly joke. The white kids picked up on it. Even a couple of teachers picked up on it. And they started calling me that too. I don’t think that would go today. But at the time it was kind of funny. And, um, I don’t know, we just all, I can’t say we always got along, uh, based upon, you know, racial issues. But there was a lot of joking around about it. There was a lot of things like we would tease them about their music and they would tease us about ours and, they would all, you know, accuse us of being rich cause we were white when it wasn’t really true. But more than likely, we were a lot richer than most of them, things like that. They had their own football teams. There are the black, traditionally black, colleges in Mississippi and the South, Alcorn and Jackson State and so forth. And the black kids, they all kind of followed those football teams. Whereas, you know, the white kids never followed those that closely, they do today actually. But, never followed them that closely, but followed Ole Miss, Mississippi State, those types of schools which have a lot of black kids, but are predominantly white schools. So anyway, there were differences between us all, but we just kind of found ways to work. I always thought this way as I got older, southern people generally preach a lot about religion, about friendliness, about hospitality. And they do that at home while they ignore these other historical divisions that have happened over the years. But when you do that at home and you tell a kid, you be respectful to your elders, you be nice to people, you be honest, you be friendly and hospitable, and then they go to school. Um, many of the things that come from others that create division pale in comparison to what was taught at home. And they, small kids won’t distinguish between black and white or any other kind of divisions that a society has to deal with. So to me, that is the key to everybody in the world kind of getting along, is teaching those basic principles at home. Unfortunately, sometimes parents are racist or bigoted, or otherwise biased, and it translates to their kids. If they inadvertently teach the principles that will overcome those biases in future generations, they will be much better off.
Q: So, how much did you learn about black history in school? Like, um, how much did you know about people like Martin Luther King, people like that?
A: We, every year first through 12th grade, we always had some form of a social studies or a history class, one or the other, sometimes maybe both, I’m not sure. Not once in first through 12th grade did we ever study Martin Luther King. Not once, never learned anything about him in school. I don’t know, for one thing, the school system was so bad that you’d get a book for American history that would start in, you know 1492. And the teacher or the school system was so bad you never got to the 1960s most of the time. You just never covered that far. You’re lucky to get to World War II, but then there’s probably some element of avoidance too. Just avoid the topic that has caused friction. Um, and, and, and there was friction, I didn’t necessarily see it, but many of the students in my grade, in the first grade, their parents took them out of the school system rather than send them to first grade with an integrated school system. And they created their own school systems in South Mississippi. Many of them are still there, but they were whites only and they were private. You had to pay to go there. And they over with a few notable exceptions, they were really bad school systems. They were underfunded and just full of people who had really no interest in education. They were all just about bigotry and segregation. So there was all of that friction over time. Most of those died and integrated back into the regular school system. A few of them that were very well known still exist today, but they’re integrated. One of them is Park Lane Academy. It’s where Britney Spears went to school, close by my house. But when she went there, it was segregated. It was all white. And today, it’s not. And I don’t think there’s a segregated school system in Mississippi by design. There might be some accounting that’s just like overwhelmingly black or overwhelmingly white. But, um, they would accept a black kid or a white kid in any school in Mississippi today, without a doubt. Those segregated school systems just died of their own stupidity over time. I can tell you one more story.
A: Go for it.
Q: So in high school, in the 10th grade or 11th grade, I think it was summer before the 11th grade, I got a, a job, summer job and a little, um, it’s a kind of like a general store, but it did sell a lot of auto parts and other kinds of stuff like that. It’s called Western Auto. It doesn’t exist anymore as far as I know. But it was a small country store in town and I, you know, worked at the counter and I would put together bicycles that we were gonna sell and change cars, tires and whatever else. So just kind of a general dude there. One day this grandmother, black grandmother comes into the store and with her grandson, who was, I would say probably about seven or eight. And it became clear as she talked to me that he had worked, it was a late part of summer. He had worked all summer long, saving money from cutting grass. So he run a lawn mower, get five bucks back then, and saved all this money. And he was coming in to buy a bicycle. And so as I was showing him the bicycles, he finally picked out one that he wanted. And then over on the side there were these racks of accessories for bicycles. There were reflectors and horns and flags and all this junk that you could attach to your bicycle. He picks out his bike and then he starts picking out all of the accessories that he was gonna put on this bicycle. And he had all of the flags and reflectors and everything, horns and I don’t know what all little signs and whatever. And so he piles them up on the counter and I start ringing it up. And as I suspected when he did, he didn’t have enough money to buy the bicycle and all of the accessories. So I started talking to him. He was like seven or eight years old, something like that. So I started telling him, well, you can’t get all of these accessories, but if you get the bike, you can get that flag and this reflector and this horn or whatever, and it’ll work. You’ll be able to buy it. And he started crying and he said, I just, I can’t do that. All the kids in my neighborhood have all kinds of reflectors and everything on their bicycles, so I need those first. So the kid bought all of the accessories and left the bicycle. Now I tell that story because I looked at it and I said, the likelihood of his grandmother, who in 1980 was probably 75 years old, the likelihood she had a real education to be able to kind of work and educate this kid on her own, was probably pretty low. And also the connotation among the black community at that time was that, as I put it, seeming to be rich or successful or wealthy, as in this kid’s mind reflected in reflectors and flags and horns and bells, uh, outpaced the actual bicycle itself, the ability to ride and go. And so it made an impression on me that what was the likelihood a white kid would come in and do the same thing. It was very low, but it wasn’t inherent to his race. It was inherent to the situation that he had to grow up in, in rural, poor Mississippi. I felt sorry for him, I actually started to give him the money, which I didn’t have a lot of money myself, but I thought, no, I would have probably insulted his grandmother if I did. But if, if I’d given him another $15, he probably could have gotten the bike.
Further Research
ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge: and Circuit Judge [70] PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM. “United States v. Lawrence County School Dist.” Legal research tools from Casetext, September 15, 1986. https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-lawrence-county-school-dist.
Bolton, Charles. “The Last Stand of Massive Resistance: Mississippi Public School Integration, 1970.” The Last Stand of Massive Resistance: Mississippi Public School Integration, 1970 – 2009-02, 2009. https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/the-last-stand-of-massive-resistance-1970.
Domonoske, Camila. “After 50-Year Legal Struggle, Mississippi School District Ordered to Desegregate.” NPR. NPR, May 17, 2016. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/17/478389720/after-50-year-legal-struggle-mississippi-school-district-ordered-to-desegregate.
Pittman, Ashton. “Hyde-Smith Attended All-White ‘SEG Academy’ to Avoid Integration.” Hyde-Smith Attended All-White ‘Seg Academy’ to Avoid Integration | Jackson Free Press | Jackson, MS, 2018. https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2018/nov/23/hyde-smith-attended-all-white-seg-academy-avoid-in/.
