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Esther Popel (1896-1958 was a teacher, poet, editor, activist and the first female African American graduate of Dickinson College (Class of 1919).  She married a chemist named William Shaw in 1925.  The couple had one daughter.  Popel used her married name, but typically wrote and published under her maiden name.  She identified with the Harlem Renaissance literary movement and is probably best known for her searing poem, “The Flag Salute” (1934), about a lynching that had occurred the previous year in Maryland.  However, Popel also wrote a short, fascinating memoir entitled, “Personal Adventures in Race Relations” (1948) that is available online through the Dickinson College Archives and which probably conveys her smart, witty but subtly combative personality as well as any source.  For a full biographical entry on Esther Popel Shaw with a useful bibliography of her works, see Malinda Triller Doran’s post at the Dickinson Archives.

To learn more about how students at Dickinson are engaging with the legacy of Esther Popel in their own lives, visit the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity.

 

By Roberto Valentini

“Did you feel like an attack by the Russians was imminent?”

23 year-old US Army corporal Tony Bucci gazed intently out the window of the C-130 Hercules transportation plane bound for Libya. His eyes were fixed on one of the four propeller engines, which was engulfed in flames, illuminating the blackness of the night sky over the Atlantic Ocean “I was sitting in a seat on a bench next to the engine,” recalls Bucci, “I saw the fire glowing on the engine.”[1] As the plane roared forward, the blaze brought light on the many faces inside the aircraft, pensive and uncertain. It was mid-May of 1953, these men were being deployed to different theatres of the Cold War. Many of them would be sent to the intense combat zones of Korea. Bucci was not one of them, “I got lucky when they chose my number,” he tells me, “they sent me to Turkey, to a Radar station.” [2] Bucci’s recollections of the Cold War elucidate the significance of the seemingly forgotten Turkish front. This matter is only briefly hinted at by historian H.W. Brands, who describes US-Turkey Cold War relations as “a major [US] advantage over the Soviets in possessing allies not far from Soviet borders.”[3] Although the Turkish front was overshadowed in popularity by the action in Korea, Turkey was noted by US Military analysts as “the most important military factor in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.”[4]

Shortly after the onset of the Cold War in 1947, the Korean War broke out, in 1950, and garnered most of the popular attention until its conclusion in the summer of 1953. In the shadow of the Korean conflict, a far less popular, yet significant Cold War front persisted, the Turkish front. American interest in Turkey was apparent long before the outbreak of Korea. In the spring of 1946, the US battleship Missouri arrived in Istanbul, Turkey, allegedly to return the body of deceased Turkish Ambassador, Mehmet Münir Ertegün, who had passed away in the US in November of the previous year. However, historians believe that “[i]n fact, the US sent the battleship to show that it would not allow the Soviet Union to expand into the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean, and that it would support Turkey as a barrier against Soviet expansion.”[5] In addition to the presence of the symbolic WWII battleship, United States foreign policy legislation substantially assisted Turkey. Former Foreign Service officer Joseph Satterthwaite recalls President Truman declaring “that the U.S. must take immediate and resolute action to support Greece and Turkey.”[6] This ‘support’, which was approved by Congress in May of 1947 would later be known as the Truman Doctrine. More economic assistance, $13 billion to a bevy of countries in Europe, in the form of the Marshall Plan would follow one month later in June[7]. The United States was dedicated to aiding and protecting Turkey in the post 1945 era predominantly, if not entirely because of its geostrategic position. Not only did Turkey serve as a barrier to the containment of Soviet expansion to the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, but it prevented the USSR from overtaking regions containing an abundance of oil, a crucial resource [8].

The significance of Turkey in terms of the American Cold War strategy was not widely recognized, especially not while Americans were dying in the defense of South Korea. When Tony Bucci was drafted during the Korean War in September of 1952, he anticipated that he would be traveling to Korea, “we all thought we were going to end up in Korea.”[9] Little did he know, at the time, that he would be stationed just 150 miles from the borders of the Soviet Union. 

“It was a small town on the Black Sea coast called Samsun,”[10] explains the 87 year-old veteran. The radar station in which he worked with 20 other US Army Signal Corps troops lay atop one of the many peaks of the Pontic Mountains in northern Turkey, with the town of Samsun just beneath. “There was very limited housing and stuff like that… It was primitive, there were mud shacks,”[11] he says of the town. The Samsun radar station at that time, was not even an official US Military Base. “It wasn’t a barracks, we lived in apartments,” Bucci recalls [12]. It wasn’t until the Military Facilities Agreement of 1954, that the US formalized the establishment of US military bases in Turkey, and “with a Status of Forces Agreement, US military personnel, whose numbers were growing rapidly, were removed from the purview of the Turkish judicial system.” [13] Having lived in Turkey before the Status of Forces Agreement, Tony tells me that, “we weren’t allowed to approach Turkish women, it was taboo.”[14] He explained how it went against their muslim religion and also illustrated some other interesting details regarding the natives, “the natives were all living off the land… in the summertime we swam in the Black Sea. The locals didn’t swim, they didn’t even have bathing suits.” [15]

As informal as it may have seemed, the work of US military personnel in Turkey was important in not only protecting Turkey itself, but also gathering reconnaissance on Soviet movement. From his arrival on June 1st in 1953, until his departure exactly one year later in 1954, Bucci and the other men stationed there spent their days monitoring Soviet activity and tracking American U2 spy plane missions. In particular, they monitored the movement of the Soviet Naval fleet in the Black Sea. He tells me, “our radar used to pick them up and we would signal the information to the Pentagon in Washington, ‘pick up the fleet, tell us where they are’, and that was our duty every day and every night so that the generals in Washington would know what the next move was going to be.”[16] He also mentioned that the U2 spy planes could not communicate through radio in order to stay invisible to Russian radar. He explained that “the Pentagon would notify us that a plane was taking off at a certain time, and that it should be over Turkey and Russia at another time, so our station was ready to monitor that plane and make sure that the mission was completed, as far as we were concerned.”[17]

United States Cold War relations with Turkey ran relatively quietly under the radar of common American public knowledge during the Korean War years. However, the Turkish front was of vital importance in the Cold War effort. In terms of protecting Turkey from Soviet forces, the United States developed “installations (over 30, with 5,000 US personnel) [that] collectively engaged in defense missions that ranged from basic logistics and supply operations to highly sophisticated communications and intelligence-collecting activities.”[18] Bucci’s radar station in Samsun is just one example of the many intelligence collecting operations. Over time, US relations with Turkey advanced, and Turkey played an even more productive role in the Cold War when their “foreign and defence ministers indicated their willingness to commit significant ground forces to help in the defence of South Korea.”[19] The US alliance with Turkey continued to contribute to the United States’ Cold War strategy even after the conclusion of the Korean War. During the arms race with the USSR, there came a point where the means of delivery of the weapons was the most significant aspect of the race. According to H.W. Brands, “Turkey offered airfields from which American bombers might not be launched against Soviet targets.”[20] This was logistical and psychological advantage. The Soviets did not occupy an airspace anywhere near as close as 150 miles from the US. Bases like Incirlik Air Force Base in Russia’s backyard were much more threatening than anything the USSR had to offer. 

The symbiotic relationship between Turkey and the United States during the Cold War was greatly beneficial to both sides. The United States protected Turkey and gave them economic relief, while Turkey served as a barrier against communism and the oil fields of the middle east, an extra combat force in the Korean War, a neighboring air-space, and according to Joseph Satterthwaite, “the U.S. probably received more per dollar advanced [from Turkey] than in any other country,” from 1947 until 1955 [21]. Turkey’s cooperation during these years can be credited to the US’s generosity in the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine, and also to a threat received from the Soviet Union in 1945. In March of 1945, the Soviets decided not to renew the 1925 Treaty of Friendship and Nonaggression, that was written in 1925. This decision “met with outrage within Turkey.”[22] The combination of Soviet aggression and US generosity led to a strong US-Turkey relationship during the Cold War.

Tony Bucci’s service in Samsun was one small piece of an important, yet forgotten alliance of the Cold War. For a Korean War veteran who never fought in Korea, his role was fundamentally significant to the US efforts of the Korean War, and the Cold War overall. Although he described his time in Turkey as “dull and sometimes boring,” he acknowledges that it is “necessary for the military to know what’s going on in the world so that in the event of an attack, we know what to do.”[23] While acknowledging that Brands most likely did not have the time to include many details regarding the US-Turkey Cold War alliance, Brands’ short assertion of the importance of America’s alliance with Turkey is underwhelming. During the early Cold War period, Turkey was one of the United States’ most important allies.   

 

Timeline

Link to Full US-Turkey Timeline

Footnotes

[1] Interview with Tony Bucci, Carlisle, Pa, December 3, 2017.

[2] Interview with Tony Bucci, Carlisle, Pa, November 7, 2017.

[3]H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 66.

[4] Richard. C. Campany, Turkey and the United States (New York: Praeger, 1986), p.80.

[5] Ao Atmaca, “The Geopolitical Origins of Turkish-American Relations: Revisiting the Cold War Years”, All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy & Peace 3, No.1 (Jan 2014): 21.

[6] Joseph C. Satterthwaite, “The Truman Doctrine: Turkey.” American Academy of Political and Social Science 401, (May 1972): 74.

[7]H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 39.

[8] AYLI ̇N GÜNEY, “An Anatomy of the Transformation of the US–Turkish Alliance: From “Cold War” to “War on Iraq.” Turkish Studies 6, no.3 (September 2005): 341-342.

[9] Interview with Tony Bucci, Carlisle, Pa, November 7, 2017.

[10] Interview with Tony Bucci, Carlisle, Pa, November 7, 2017.

[11] Interview with Tony Bucci, Carlisle, Pa, November 7, 2017.

[12] Interview with Tony Bucci, Carlisle, Pa, December 3, 2017.

[13] AYLI ̇N GÜNEY, “An Anatomy of the Transformation of the US–Turkish Alliance: From “Cold War” to “War on Iraq.” Turkish Studies 6, no.3 (September 2005): 342.

[14] Interview with Tony Bucci, Carlisle, Pa, December 3, 2017.

[15] Interview with Tony Bucci, Carlisle, Pa, November 7, 2017.

[16] Interview with Tony Bucci, Carlisle, Pa, November 7, 2017.

[17] Interview with Tony Bucci, Carlisle, Pa, December 3, 2017.

[18] Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division, U.S. Military Installations in NATO’s Southern Region (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1986), p.1.

[19] Telegram from US Ambassador to Turkey to Secretary of State, dated 24 June 1950 (11 am) in FRUS, (1950),Vol.5 , p. 1281.

[20] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 67.

[21] Joseph C. Satterthwaite, “The Truman Doctrine: Turkey.” American Academy of Political and Social Science 401, (May 1972): 74.

[22] John M. Vander Lippe, “ Forgotten Brigade of the Forgotten War: Turkey’s Participation in the Korean War.” Middle Eastern Studies 36, no.1 (January 2000): 95.

[23] Interview with Tony Bucci, Carlisle, Pa, December 3, 2017.

Selections from Interview Transcripts 

-Telephone Audio Recording, Carlisle, Pa, November 7, 2017

-Telephone Audio Recording, Carlisle, Pa, December 3, 2017

Selected Transcript 

From audio Nov.7:

Q. What influenced you to join the military, and when did you join?

A. “I didn’t join the military, I was drafted in September of 1952. In September I left home to go to basic training in Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and then I was transferred to [a base in] Augusta, Georgia, I was down there for six months. I didn’t know where I was going to end up, we all thought we were going to end up in Korea, but I got lucky when they chose my number, and they sent me to Turkey, to a Radar station. I was fortunate because I didn’t have to dodge the bullets, a lot of guys I trained with went to Korea.”

Q. Can you explain the specific military assignment/s of your unit?

A. “I was in the Army Signal Core, its a communications group. We were in charge of communications all over our territories. They assigned me to a radar station in Turkey, to run a power unit that supplied power to the radar station. We used to listen in on the Russians, they were only 150miles away from us. They used to listen in on us, we used to listen in on them. They used to jam the radio when we would put on “Voice of America” which transmitted all over Europe and the far East and the Middle East. The Russians would jam it, it was just a harassment, and we did the same thing to them. We used to monitor the Russian fleet, the ‘Black Sea Fleet.’ Our radar used to pick them up and we would signal the information to the Pentagon in Washington, ‘pick up the fleet, tell us where they are’, and that was our duty every day and every night so that the generals in Washington would know what the next move was going to be. And we, in Turkey, we were the first station to pick up a U2 [spy] plane and transmit the information to the pentagon and say, ‘they’ve passed our territory.’ I was happy that I got chosen to go there [Turkey], because I would’ve been sent to Korea, dodging bullets, where lots of guys were dying every day. I felt lucky, I felt very very lucky.”

Q. Can you describe where you were stationed and speak on what it was like to live there?

A. “It was a small town on the Black Sea coast called Samsun. There was very limited housing and stuff like that. The people, the natives were all living off the land. Most activity we saw was water buffalo and donkeys pulling carts. They would haul wood from the forrest, haul there stuff to the marketplace. It was primitive, there were mud shacks. My attitude there was based on the guys I served with. We played cards and things like that. There was a beer hall outside, we stood out there in the sun and drank Turkish beer. In the summertime we swam in the Black Sea. The locals didn’t swim, they didn’t even have bathing suits. It was just the Americans that knew what a beach was like, and we had an area on the Black Sea that was open to us.”

Q. What was it like coming home from your service in Turkey?

A. “It was the best feeling in the world. It was a joy. I wasn’t facing any military action [in Turkey], but we lived primitively. There were no movies, no shows, no girls, no nothing. It was very restrictive, we were limited.”

From Audio Dec. 3:

Q.  What was the feeling like at your base? Did you feel like an attack by the Russians was imminent?

A. We didn’t feel that we were going to be attacked. At that time no one was really worried about it. But, its necessary for the military to know whats going on in the world so that in the event of an attack, we know what to do. We were not in fear of an attack, it was just routine maneuvers that they [the Russians] were doing. We had to send to Washington, what the ships were, the size of the ships, we could tell by radar, and where they were sailing; if the ships were going to sail just in the Black Sea or if they were going out into the Mediterranean.

Q. Can you talk about monitoring the U2 spy planes?

A. Along with the Russian fleet, we would monitor the U2 planes. They would fly across from Pakistan. We couldn’t see the plane, it would fly so high. They had cameras that would spy on Russia. One of the jobs we had was to track the U2 plane, make sure that the Pentagon knew where they were, because they couldn’t communicate [with the Pentagon], because if they did, Russia would pick up on the signal. The Pentagon would notify us that a plane was taking off at a certain time, and that it should be over Turkey and Russia at another time, so our station was ready to monitor that plane and make sure that the mission was completed, as far as we were concerned. Then it went out of our limits and it flew over a station in Rota, Spain, and they would pick up the flight. From Rota, Spain the plane would fly into Naples, Italy, and that was the end of the mission.

Vincent Warzecha

Professor Pinsker

History 118: US History Since 1877

12/8/17

The Scrutiny and Importance of the Invasion of Grenada

Matthew H. Hinds served in the Grenadian war in 1983, 20 years old at the time, in the 2nd Armored Division out of Fort Hood Texas as an E5 sergeant.  According to H.W. Brand’s Book, American Dreams, “The invasion took the world aback; most Americans had no idea where Grenada was and no conception of why American soldiers should be landing there.” [1] Hinds landed on October 25th, 1983 with three tanks in his platoon and proceeded through the jungle of Grenada. Matt stated “On our first night, I told my men to not go outside of arm’s length of the tank to do their business. Later that night around 3 a.m. I broke my own rules and went about 5 yards from tank when I heard sticks breaking to my right. I sat under a tree in the brush for about an hour listening and waiting for what I was sure were human footsteps. After an hour two men moved towards the tank and were within 2 feet of me. I had the jump on them and in 2 minutes it was over. I think about this event everyday of my life. [2] The United States’ invasion of Grenada was extremely criticized by the world but was necessary to promote immediate and future safety among American citizens.

On the morning of 25 October 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced that 1,900 U.S. Marines and Army Rangers, joined by 300 troops from six Caribbean states, had launched a predawn assault on the island of Grenada. The president explained that he had ordered the invasion for three reasons: to protect the nearly 1,000 American citizens at Saint George’s University School of Medicine, to “forestall further chaos”, and “to help in the restoration of democratic institutions in Grenada’. [3] When asked if the battle of Grenada was a significant memory in her life, Edwina Wiecek replied “No! I simply remember that Reagan ordered an invasion in Grenada to save the students at the university. After this, multiple people on the other side of Reagan questioned his actions on the news and even ridiculed him. The country was still recovering from the loss of life in the bombing of Beirut.” [4] In fact many people did not know where Grenada was or what the situation was at the time. Matt had “No clue at all…none” of where the island was until his briefing on the way to Grenada. [5] On the way to Grenada he was told “some of Fidel Castro’s guys took over Saint George’s University School of Medicine on the island of Grenada and took American Students as hostage.” [6]. From here Matt’s platoon undertook their mission in the invasion of Grenada.

On November 2nd the armed hostilities ceased and peacekeeping missions began. Although the battle only lasted 7 days, the United States forces encountered unexpectedly stiff resistance by Cuban and Grenadian forces, the invading contingent was eventually augmented by approximately 4,000 American troops. [7] After the U.S. army saved the kids from the school Matt’s platoon stayed for 3 weeks. “The armored division cleared out what little armor they had and then the marine recon and their helicopters took care of around 75% of it.. And it was done.. You know a lot of people say the battle of Grenada was five minutes to fight and five weeks to surf because it was so beautiful there”. [8] Alex Warzecha remembers the same depiction of the invasion “When the battle scene was shown on CNN, the island almost seemed like a place for a vacation, not a war ground. The news showed the beautiful coastlines and not a lot of destruction on the island”. [9] The invasion of Grenada was the first time CNN covered a war live on television but not for the first 48 hours of battle due to the distaste for press by military officials after Vietnam. A disconnect between the press and the military created a distaste for the entire operation which led to coverage backed by ridicule. The Washington Post stated on October 26th, 1983, “The invasion of Grenada remained largely a matter for the imagination throughout the day yesterday, as Tv networks made the most of maps, shots of helicopters, and many, many talking heads: at the Pentagon, at the White house, on the hill, at the State Department, on Barbados. [10] The barring of reporters from Grenada quickly turned the news coverage of Grenada towards criticizing the actions of the government including a house hearing on the matter on 3 November, 1983. The media brought up the Bombing of Beirut that occurred just 2 days before the invasion as the reason for invading such a small country in the Caribbean. These accusations are still disputed today. The short takeover of Grenada along with the banning of reporters for 48 hours created much contempt about the entire situation

After the invasion of Grenada the Pentagon reported, 18 American soldiers were killed and 116 were wounded. Cuban forces were estimated to have suffered 24 dead and 59 wounded, while Grenadian military casualties were put at 45 killed and 337 wounded. [11] In a follow-up email interview with Matt, he reported that the Cuban forces killed or wounded were under-reported in order to not report the full Cuban involvement on the island of Grenada. “The U.S. military did not want the media to know of the immediate threat that was among the students at the school”. [12] Matt’s report of additional Cubans on Grenada during the invasion was confirmed in the World News digest in 1983, “As the fighting progressed it became clear that there were more Cubans on Grenada than had been thought.” [13] This is the reason the media was barred from entering the island for 48 hours which led to heavy scrutiny of the government. When asked if the invasion was worth it Matt stated, “Of course it was worth it. Going to help Americans… that’s just it. Part of being a soldier is just doing as you’re told and worrying about the rest of it later.” [14] For Edwina Wiecek, the accusations of the media about the connection of the bombing of Beirut and the invasion of Grenada struck a cord. “I remember questioning if we needed to actually risk our soldiers to take over such a small country that is basically harmless to us.” [15] The aftermath for Grenada was that of peace for the country and Matt even stated “the people did not seem unhappy to see us even though we just beat their army… almost a sense of relief.” [16] A new government was installed in Grenada that promoted democracy and got rid of a chance for communist expansion in the Caribbean.

Reagan invaded Grenada for three reasons, to save the American citizens in the school, to forestall future chaos, and make Grenada a democracy. The invasion of Grenada successfully accomplished these three goals although the way in which it was done was not efficient. The invasion itself was extremely sudden after a huge tragedy for the country which made it easy to question Reagan’s decision and promote the idea of revenge for America. Matt Hinds does not believe this is accurate as well stating “No, I don’t… that’s all politics. Everybody has an opinion but as a soldier you’re told what to do and you do it. But I think we needed to save those kids because Fidel had some of his toughest hardest soldiers there.” [17]  The decision to invade Grenada did not originate from revenge but rather Reagan’s effort to stop communism in the Caribbean and forestall a Cuban arms buildup. The invasion also brought back issues between the military and the media that stem from the Vietnam war. This resulted in a cloudy picture to what actually was happening in Grenada and why. “Ladislaus Warzecha (born Jan 23, 1929-died Dec 27, 2014), a Vice president at General Electric for 40 years, once told me the hardest thing he had to do was help President Reagan in the early 80s with Cuban-Soviet crisis and whether to invade or not to invade Grenada. He said this period brought the most stress to his life and is why he was away from home so much.” [18] Ultimately, the invasion of Grenada was a necessary event for the future of the United States and promoted democracy in the world even though it received heavy scrutiny from the world and the media.

 

Citations

[1] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 246.

[2] Facetime interview with Matthew Hinds, November 8th, 2017

[3] Rubner, Michael. “The Reagan Administration, the 1973 War Powers Resolution, and the Invasion of Grenada.” Political Science Quarterly 100, no. 4 (1985): 627. doi:10.2307/2151544.

[4] Email Interview with Edwina Wiecek, December 2nd, 2017

[5] Email Interview with Matthew Hinds, December 1st, 2017

[6] [Hinds] Facetime interview

[7] Rubner. 628

[8] [Hinds] Facetime Interview

[9] Email Interview with Alex Warzecha, December 2nd, 2017

[10] Kernan, Michael. “Grenada: The Reaction to the Action.” Washington Post. 26 October 1983: 1. [Historical Newspapers]. 

[11] Rubner. 628

[12] [Hinds] Email Interview

[13]”U.S., Caribbean States Invade Grenada…World Leaders Condemn Action.” World News Digest. Facts On File News Services, 28 October 1983: 1. [Historical Online Newspapers]. 

[14] [Hinds] Facetime Interview

[15] [Wiecek] Email Interview

[16] [Hinds] Email Interview

[17] [Hinds] Facetime Interview

[18] [Warzecha] Email Interview

Photo Citations

Ater, Malcolm. GRENADA; Rescued from Rape and Slavery. November 1983.

Luongo, Michael. Rescue in Grenada and Sacrifice in Beirut. November 7th, 1983. Black Star. Grenada and Beirut.

Hinds, Matthew. No name. December 4th, 2017. Matt’s Mantle

Unknown. Map of Caribbean Sea. https://roadslesstraveled.us/grenada/

 

Selections From Interview Transcripts

-Audio recording with Matt Hinds, Facetime interview, November 8th, 2017

Selected Transcript

From Audio:

Q. What was the buildup to the invasion?

A. “They came to Fort Hood looking for Tank Commanders all NCOs… E5 and above… but they didn’t tell us anything until we were offshore and told us that some of Fidel Castro’s guys took over George Washington University on the island of Grenada and took American students as hostage.

 

Q. Were you aware of where the island of Grenada was or what the situation was before the briefing?

A. “No, I had no clue at all. None.

 

Q. How did you and your men feel about the mission? Was it worth it or simply ambiguous?

A. “Of course it was worth it. Going to help Americans… that’s just it. Part of being a soldier is just doing as you’re told and worrying about the rest of it later.

 

Q. Once you had rescued the kids from the school, did you leave right away or did you stay to make sure there was stability?

A. We stayed for 3 weeks.. You know… it wasn’t long. We had cleared out what little armor they had and then the marine recon and their helicopters took care of around 75% of it.. And then it was done.. You know alotta people say the battle of Grenada was five minutes to fight and five weeks to surf because it’s beautiful there.

 

 

Q. Clarification, You don’t think Beirut had anything to do with going into Grenada?

A. No, I don’t… that’s all politics. Everybody has an opinion but as a soldier you’re told what to do and you do it. But I think we needed to save those kids because Fidel had some of his toughest hardest soldiers there.

 

-Email Interview, With Matthew Hinds, December 1st, 2017

Selected Transcript

From Email:

Q. Can you tell me what happened on your first night?

A. On our first night, I told my men to not go outside of arm’s length of the tank to do their business. Later that night around 3 a.m. I broke my own rules and went about 5 yards from tank when I heard sticks breaking to my right. I sat under a tree in the brush for about an hour listening and waiting for what I was sure were human footsteps. After an hour two men moved towards the tank and were within 2 feet of me. I had the jump on them and in 2 minutes it was over. I think about this event everyday of my life.

 

Q. What forces did you encounter personally?

A. We encountered Castro’s top forces. Actually son… we were told to not report all of the casualties. The U.S. military did not want the media to know of the immediate threat that was among the students at the school.

 

Q. What did the Grenadian citizens do when the battle was complete?

A. The people did not seem unhappy to see us even though we just beat their army… almost a sense of relief.

 

-Email Interview with Edwina Wiecek, December 2nd, 2017

(Grandmother)

Selected Transcript

From Email:

Q. What do you recall from the invasion of Grenada?

A. No! I simply remember that Reagan ordered an invasion in Grenada to save the students at the university. After this, multiple people on the other side of Reagan questioned his actions on the news and even ridiculed him. The country was still recovering from the loss of life in the bombing of Beirut.

 

Q. Do you remember the news covering linking the invasion of Grenada and the bombing of Beirut?

A. I remember questioning if we needed to actually needed to risk our soldiers to take over such a small country that is basically harmless to us.

 

-Email Interview with Alex Warzecha, December 2nd, 2017

(Mother)

Selected Transcript

From Email:

Q. What do you remember from the invasion of Grenada on the news?

A. When the battle scene was shown on CNN, the island almost seemed like a place for vacation, not a war ground. The news showed the beautiful coastlines and not a lot of destruction on the island

 

Q.  Do you remember anything that Gramps told you or dad about the invasion of Grenada?

A. Gramps once told Dad and I the hardest thing he had to do was help President Reagan in the early 80s with Cuban-Soviet crisis and whether to invade or not to invade Grenada. He said this period brought the most stress to his life and is why he was away from home so much.

 

 

Desegregation, the fight against Jim Crow laws, and the greater American Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1900s routinely bring about thoughts of the battles fought and won in Southern states by martyrs such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X. Yet 1970’s Boston, the “cradle of liberty,” would play host to one of the boldest and most controversial desegregation movements of the era. Paul Long does not remember his first day at South Boston High School in the fall of 1974, nor would any of his close friends and classmates; none of them attended school that day. September 12, 1974 would mark the first day in a long fight for, and against, desegregation in the Boston Public School system. Through a busing plan put forth by Judge W. Arthur Garrity, students would be transplanted to schools outside of their home neighborhood in an effort to combat the racial imbalance the city had seen in its schools for well over a century.

 

The fight for desegregation in the Boston school system dates back well before Garrity’s 1974 decision. In fact, it is likely that Boston was the first city in the United States to consider and commence desegregation efforts. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Boston schools were not segregated. Yet in the wake of harassment and mistreatment of black children by teachers and fellow students, separate schools for black students were privately funded and built as early as 1798. However, some 40 years later parents of black students began to petition the prejudice created by separate schools that they had seen form over time.[1] Sarah Roberts, a 5-year-old African American, had to travel far outside of her neighborhood, past five schools, to get to her underfunded, primarily black school. Her father, Benjamin, sued the city of Boston on behalf of a group of parents that argued the enrollment process for Boston’s school was unlawful.[2] Although the court ruled in favor of the city, the case rallied support and in 1855, the State Legislature passed the nation’s first official act of desegregation.[3] The ruling in Roberts v. The City of Boston would be the first instance of “separate but equal,” and would be later cited in the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that formally established the doctrine on a national level.[4] Years after this ruling, Brown v. Board of Education (1954) established that separate schools for black and white students was unconstitutional, effectively overturning Plessy v. Ferguson and Roberts v. The City of Boston.

 

In the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the Massachusetts State Legislature passed the Racial Imbalance Act in 1965, requiring the integration of all schools in the state, including Boston’s. The act ruled that any school with a minority enrollment greater than fifty percent was “racially imbalanced,” and would require desegregation efforts so reconcile it. Boston was home to nearly every racially imbalanced school, and as such, the Boston School Committee strongly resisted the act. In 1972, a class action lawsuit was filed against the Boston School Committee by the NAACP on behalf of 14 black parents and 44 black students. Tallulah Morgan headed the group of plaintiffs against James Hennigan, the Chairman of the school committee. Morgan argued “the city and state had consistently denied black children equal opportunities to a public school education by intentionally creating and maintaining a segregated educational system.”[5] On Just 21, 1974, after more than two years of deliberation, the presiding Judge W. Arthur Garrity handed down his decision in favor of Morgan, ordering the immediate desegregation of Boston’s public schools through busing.

 

Garrity’s decision sent shockwaves throughout the Boston neighborhoods leaving residents with a variety of reactions. Paul Long, just fourteen years old at the time, looked back on the ruling: “At the time, I wasn’t too aware of the local political climate, but did know about the civil rights activism going on in the South. I didn’t think the situation was so similar in Boston. But looking

back on it all, it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise.”[6] Although court rulings in the years leading up to 1974 would clearly lead one to expect such a decision, many white Bostonians felt that Garrity’s ruling was an attack against their communities and livelihoods: “ Morgan v. Hennigan came to be perceived as Garrity v. Hennigan, even Garrity v. Boston. Across the city that fall of 1974, slogans appeared on walls, bridges, and roadways: ‘Bus Garrity,’ ‘Fuck Garrity,’ ‘Kill Garrity.’ He was hung and burned in effigy.”[7] Hundreds of people and families protested outside his home in the weeks following the ruling, and eventually federal marshals had to be stationed on his property after men had been apprehended on separate occasions en route to his house with an M-16 and a homemade bomb.[8] Furthermore, angry Bostonians sent threatening letters to his office: “Thousands of letters poured into his chambers, some reasoned arguments against busing, but most of them fierce attacks on his character and lineage (‘nigger lover,’ ‘Nazi,’ ‘child murderer’).”[9] Such hatred towards Garrity would not settle for years.

The most notable element of Garrity’s plan was the busing of students between the poor, black neighborhood of Roxbury and the white, Irish Catholic neighborhood of South Boston – polarizing communities at the time. According to Dr. William Reid, South Boston High School’s Headmaster, “It was like the hostage system of the Middle Ages, whereby the princes of opposing crowns were kept in rival kings’ courts as a preventive against war.”[10] On the first day, black and white parents alike feared for their children’s safety. In South Boston, Peggy Cosetta was worrisome, for her (white) son “Billy was starting his junior year, and like the whole South Boston High junior

class, he was now required to get on a bus and go to Roxbury. She felt like her family was caught in a nightmare. What right did the government have to force her son to leave the safety of his own neighborhood?”[11] On the other side of the city in Roxbury, Phyllis Ellison was excited for her first day of school; she had gotten up extra early and had put on a new outfit she had saved up for. However, her mother Queen felt differently. “Unlike Phyllis, Queen had risen that morning with a tinge of dread. She spent her early life in the deep South, in Mississippi, and was raised in Roxbury, where she learned quickly that black people did not often venture into South Boston… But she also knew that black children, her children, were the ones taking the risk … Phyllis was quiet and vulnerable, and Queen worried.”[12]

Long, like the rest of his classmates, did not go to school on the first day. “I didn’t go to school on the first day, and I’m not sure if anyone I knew did. Most families in Southie were harshly against the busing and didn’t allow their kids to go to school for some time.”[13] Throughout the city, Long and his classmates, along with their parents, siblings, and almost every other white Bostonian, lined the streets in protest of the new busing. Buses carrying black students were led by police, and upon arrival the students were escorted into the school building. All along the way, protestors threw rocks and bricks at the buses, shouted slurs and insults, and spat towards black students. “People would throw anything they could find on the ground at the buses. Others brought bricks and larger stones to throw. Some people spat on the students after they got off the buses. But everyone was yelling.”[14]

The protests and violence continued far past the first day of school. For months, white students refused to attend school, while those that did constantly harassed and attacked black students. “I don’t remember the exact date, but in mid-October I finally went to school. It was weird, but what I expected. Within the first few days I had seen black students get harassed, called names.”[15] ROAR, or Restore Our Alienated Rights, was the largest anti-busing group in Boston, led mostly by women and mothers. The group organized numerous marches and protests and were fearless in their actions: “One day in fall 1975, about 400 Charlestown mothers marched up Bunker Hill Street, clutching rosary beads and reciting the “Hail Mary.” They knelt in prayer for several minutes on the pavement between Charlestown High and the Bunker Hill Monument. And then they stood up and walked toward the police line, still in prayer, handbags held high to shield their faces. Soon a scuffle broke out between the mothers and the police. Some women were tossed to the ground.”[16] In other Boston neighborhoods, however, the conflict was not as extreme as the likes of South Boston and Charlestown. Cassandra and Wayne Twymon were bused to Brighton and saw far less conflict. “On balance, the Twymons enjoyed their year at Brighton, especially when they came home each night to watch television coverage of the violence at South Boston and Hyde Park. The kids who braved the fury of those places were street celebrities, seasoned veterans of the school wars.”[17] The worst part about those school wars, however, was that they wouldn’t end for some time. In fact, they would continue for years as the desegregation initiative continued.

 

In American Dreams, H.W. Brands starts and ends his discussion on the desegregation of schooling with Brown v. Board of Education. However, it is clear that the battle for desegregation ran far deeper, and over a much longer span of time. In Boston’s case, it would require multiple court rulings and over 120 years before the desegregation that was promised would be implemented. At the same time, the reasons for activism against busing were far greater than simple racism. For some, it was perceived as a threat to their way of life and community. “Normally, reasonable citizens in neighborhoods, as Salvucci put it, control ‘the crazies.’ But the reasonable types were offended by the plan and left the stage to the militants. And all sorts of persons, all across the city, viewed desegregation as “a Harvard plan for the working class man.”[18] Others questioned the success of busing in relation to its overall harm: “Although the temperature of local race relations had been rising in recent years, busing pushed it above the boiling point. What was once a generally idle racial animus between blacks and whites swelled into seething bigotry. When the buses pulled up to high schools in white neighborhoods, police had to escort black teenagers through a gauntlet of throw, n rocks and bottles; the students heard shouts of “Die, niggers, die!” and saw signs that read “Bus Them Back to Africa!” If segregation was psychologically harmful to black students, as the Supreme Court had it, how much more harmful was busing?”[19] Similarly, busing was not universally favored by black students and parents, as “whites were not the only Bostonians choking on it. Polls taken during the early days of busing show that only bare majorities of blacks favored the policy.[20] Although busing in Boston will forever leave a blemish on the city’s history, it does provide interesting insight into thoughts on desegregation in a city that was not historically segregated to the extent of the Jim Crow South. Further, Boston’s busing story uncovers concerns that Americans experienced on a micro-level during simultaneous events including the Watergate Scandal, the Cold War, and a major national financial crisis.

 

 

 

 

 

[1] “Prelude to Brown – 1849: Roberts v. The City of Boston.” Brown Foundation. https://brownvboard.org/content/prelude-brown-1849-roberts-v-city-boston.

 

[2] Miletsky, Zebulon Vance. “Before Busing: Boston’s Long Movement for Civil Rights and the Legacy of Jim Crow in the “Cradle of Liberty”.” Journal of Urban History 43, no. 2 (2017): 207.

 

[3] Miletsky, Zebulon Vance. “Before Busing: Boston’s Long Movement for Civil Rights and the Legacy of Jim Crow in the “Cradle of Liberty”.” Journal of Urban History 43, no. 2 (2017): 207.

 

[4] “Plessy v. Ferguson.” LII / Legal Information Institute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/163/537.

 

[5] Hornburger, Jane M. “Deep are the Roots: Busing in Boston.” The Journal of Negro Education45, no. 3 (1976): 237.

 

[6] Interview with Paul Long, email, November 8, 2017

 

[7] Lukas, J. Anthony. Common Ground. Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. 244.

 

[8] Lukas, J. Anthony. Common Ground. Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. 245.

 

[9] Lukas, J. Anthony. Common Ground. Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. 244.

 

[10] Formisano, Ronald P. Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. 70.

 

[11] Irons, Meghan E., Shelley Murphy, and Jenna Russell. “History Rolled in on a Yellow School Bus.” The Boston Globe, September 7, 2014.

 

[12] Irons, Meghan E., Shelley Murphy, and Jenna Russell. “History Rolled in on a Yellow School Bus.” The Boston Globe, September 7, 2014.

 

[13] Interview with Paul Long, email, November 8, 2017

 

[14] Interview with Paul Long, in person, November 22, 2017

 

[15] Interview with Paul Long, in person, November 22, 2017

 

[16] Richer, Matthew. “Busing’s Boston Massacre.” Policy Review Nov/Dec 98, no. 92 (November 1998): 42-50.

 

[17] Lukas, J. Anthony. Common Ground. Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. 279.

 

[18] Formisano, Ronald P. Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. 71.

 

[19] Richer, Matthew. “Busing’s Boston Massacre.” Policy Review Nov/Dec 98, no. 92 (November 1998): 42-50.

 

[20] Richer, Matthew. “Busing’s Boston Massacre.” Policy Review Nov/Dec 98, no. 92 (November 1998): 42-50.

 

Selected Transcript

 

– Email, November 8, 2017

 

 

Were you at all surprised by the decision to implement forced busing in Boston schools?

 

As a fourteen year old going into his freshman year, yes. At the time, I wasn’t too aware of the local political climate, but did know about the civil rights activism going on in the South. I didn’t think the situation was so similar in Boston. But looking back on it all, it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. There was policy already in place that should have desegregated the schools, but it wasn’t until my freshman year that it was really put in place.

 

What was the first day of school like for you and your friends? To what extent did the violence/protesting come into the school and classroom?

 

Actually, I didn’t go to school on the first day, and I’m not sure if anyone I knew did. Most families in Southie were harshly against the busing and didn’t allow their kids to go to school for some time. So I cant really speak to what it was like at the beginning, but when I got there the tension was clear. There would be fights and attacks on black students in the halls day-to-day, but the real violence was outside of the school.

 

Who were the most active in the anti-busing campaign? Specifically, were there any groups/demographics that stood out among others? What was their reasoning behind it all?

 

From what I remember, the mothers of students were really the driving force behind most of the protests. But as far as the violent protests went, men and women of all ages were involved. Some were protesting the busing because they wanted to keep the community as it was, but it was clear that others protested for reasons of race. What you may not realize is that there were a significant number of black students and parents that were also against the busing. In their case, my best guess would be them seeing the cost as outweighing the benefit at the time.

 

What impact did the busing have on your school and community? Did things eventually go “back to normal” over time?

 

Certainly not during my time there. Actually, a few of my friends moved out of Boston with their families because of the busing issue. But that was because they could afford it. I never really knew what a normal day of school was like. Nearly every day there was some sort of issue regarding race and busing. It was certainly harshest at first, but over time things slowly started to come together, but never to a place where it wasn’t an clear problem.

Technology on Wall Street Since 1987: for Better or Worse

By: Charlie Luparello

In 1987, Steve Luparello was working as a junior lawyer for the SEC, in its Division of Market Regulation. The group was responsible for overseeing and regulating a number of different participants in the markets, including brokers and exchanges. The months leading up to October 19, 1987 were comparable to the other stock market crashes in United States history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was at a high and the market continued to rise steadily. Traders were experiencing great success, prompting even people with little market experience to test their chances.  

One of the main factors behind the markets success was program trading. Program trading was a method used by traders in which an automated system bought and sold stocks once the value reached a certain level, and was usually used by larger companies.[1] Although at the time, many traders considered program trading a flawless system, eventually issues began to become evident. Originally, program trading worked as intended. The problem with program trading was the program assumed the person controlling it was the only one buying and selling, when in fact many traders were using the same method. Although there were warning signs of the possible shift of the stock market, traders and investors carried on with their routine. Eventually, on Friday October 16, 1987 the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted. The DJIA dropped 108 points on that day, making it the first hundred-point loss in a twenty-four-hour period. People involved with the stock market were frustrated by the drop, but knew 108 points was manageable. The next trading day, Monday the 19th, the market went from bad to worse. On the morning of Monday October 19, 1987, the DJIA had an initial drop of 200 points.[2] When asked about his reaction to the initial drop Luparello responded, “In some ways there was fear, because there really was no telling how far the market would fall and what that might do to the overall economy.”[3] The fear was justified, as by the end of the day the DIJA dropped a total of 508 points, the largest loss on a single day in stock market history. October 19th, which later became known as Black Monday, was worse than any single day during the Great Depression and had many fearing a profound effect on the economy.[4] In addition, the United States was not the only stock market that experienced difficulties. After the October 16th drop other major foreign stock markets crashed including Tokyo, London and Frankfurt.[5]

During 1987 Stock Market crash regulators suffered from a lack of technology. When asked about how an absence of technology affected Luparello’s situation, he responded, “…the lack of sophisticated technology also added to the level of surprise that we experienced during the event. If our monitoring tools were as ‘modern’ as the trading systems, there was a chance we could have put certain protections in place to minimize the size of the crash.”[6] The SEC did not have the advanced technology to easily deal with the events that were unfolding, because advancements that occurred on Wall Street were more complex and sophisticated.  

A common theme in the stock market is that new technology will be developed and regulators will create new rules and advancements to counter the traders. The issue regarding the Crash of 1987 was the newest technology on Wall Street ultimately contributed to the crash. Many traders considered program trading the future of Wall Street. For a period of time, program trading was making people a large sum of money and everybody thought they had solved the puzzle of stock trading.  The regulator’s response to the issue program trading brought was to implement circuit breakers.[7] Circuit breakers prevent panic selling and ensure the DJIA will never move too far too fast. With circuit breakers in place there is little fear of another crash based of program trading.  

Since the crash of 1987, the stock market has constantly evolved and developed new technology. Although the stock market crash was only thirty years ago, the stock market today is completely different than in the past. A major change in the past thirty years is the diminished roles of New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. During 1987 the NYSE and NASDAQ were titans of the stock trading industry. Today, the NYSE and NASDAQ are still the two biggest exchanges in the country, but control significantly less activity due to more competition.[8] Technology has given traders an easier and more efficient way to trade. In the late 1980’s, stock trading involved a significant amount of human interaction. Now everything is online and the entire process is easier. The internet is a major reason why trading has become a faster process. Present day traders can do research, buy, and sell stock from anywhere. Luparello discussed the downfall of the role of people involved with the stock market by stating,“Pre-1987, human beings still played a big role, always deciding what to buy, but also pretty much using human instinct on how to buy. Now, human touch is still a big part of what to buy, but computer algorithms control the how, and if humans tried to compete, they would lose.”[9]

When traders develop new technology, it is usually in an attempt to make trading stocks easier and quicker, and sometimes that creates problems in the stock market. Regulators will then need to create a solution to the problem the traders have created, and this often calls for the creation of new rules or new technology. In 2010 the S&P 500, the DJIA, and the Nasdaq suddenly dropped and quickly recovered with little know reason. The quick collapse of the exchanges became known as the Flash Crash.[10] As a response to the Flash Crash regulators forced markets to create market access controls. Market access controls limit the total amount of orders sent out on the market at a single time, which makes another flash crash much less likely. In an ideal world, regulators could develop strategies that would stop market disasters before they happened, but that type of forward thinking is very challenging.

Throughout American Dreams, the author, H.W. Brands, references the theme that America will continuously advance and technology will help drive it. New technology creates a quick change in people’s lives. A quick change may be beneficial, but can also be harmful. New technology will be developed and this creation will make everyday life easier, but because technology can create risk, legislators may have to create certain rules regarding these advancements. Wall Street is similar to the real world because whenever traders develop a new system or method, usually regulators will have to construct rules in response. Ideally, regulators would be able to control the stock market and prevent any difficult situations with the technology that they have acquired. For example, regulators create new responses based off what the market has already experienced. Luparello described the situation as, “But the reality is that regulator’s tools always lag behind the tools the market uses.”[11] 

Technology on Wall Street and in the real world have certain parallels. A cell phone ten years ago would be a large piece of plastic with the sole purpose of calling. In the present day, a smartphone is not only a phone, but also a computer, a watch, and a camera, among other things. But progress brings risk. New technology may lead to stress, distraction, or a higher level of deception. Although technology backfires, often new advancements are beneficial.   

Just like on Wall Street, new legislation is necessary in order to control new technology. Certain laws have been placed on new technology, such as the internet, regarding what can and cannot be done. must be progressive. For both Wall Street and the real world, new technology is essential because the world must progress. It is important however because new technology can be either harmful or beneficial, for regulators to monitor and control it.

 

[1] Dean Furbush. “Program Trading.” Library of Economics and Liberty. (2002) 

[2] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 265 

[3] Email interview with Steve Luparello, November 5, 2017 

[4] Ronald H. Filler, “When All Else Fails.” Financial History, no. 188 (2016): 32 

[5] Ulrike Schaede,  “Black Monday in New York, Blue Tuesday in Tokyo: The October 1987 Crash in Japan.” California Management Review 33, no. 2: 42 

[6] Email interview with Steve Luparello, December 3, 2017 

[7] Schaede, 39 

[8] “U.S. Equities Market Volume Summary.” Cboe Global Markets. Accessed December 07, 2017. http://markets.cboe.com/us/equities/market_share/. 

[9] Email interview with Steve Luparello, December 3, 2017 

[10] Edgar Ortega Barrales,  “Lessons From the Flash Crash for the Regulation of High-Frequency Traders.” Fordham Journal Of Corporate & Financial Law 17, no. 4: 1196 

[11] Email interview with Steve Luparello, December 3, 2017 

SELECTIONS FROM INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS  

-Email, November 5, 2017 

-Email, December 3, 2017 

Selected Transcript  

Q. “What was your initial reaction upon learning of the drop of the Dow Jones Industrial average, and what was the overall mood of the work place?Did you have any fears after realizing the situation, if so, what were they?” 

A. “Some different emotions, as you would expect.  In some ways there was fear, because there really was no telling how far the market would fall and what that might do to the overall economy.  But in other ways, there was excitement. I know this doesn’t sound all that great, but my colleagues and friends were mostly young, relatively recently out of college or law school, and much more likely to have student loan debt than to have big stock portfolios, so there wasn’t really a direct personal concern.  And I think we sensed that the event was going to change our jobs, and so that seemed kind of exciting.” 

Q. “What effect did the lack of technology have on your specific situation?” 

A. “In the immediate aftermath, it meant that we had to try to understand a market that had a large technology component using shockingly manual tools, like eyeballing pages and pages of old fashioned computer printouts and doing calculations by hand. But the lack of sophisticated technology also added to the level of surprise that we experienced during the event.  If our monitoring tools were as “modern” as the trading systems, there was a chance we could have put certain protections in place to minimize the size of the crash. But just a chance.” 

 Q. “What major changes has the Stock Market seen since 1987?” 

A. “It is a completely different place than it was 30 years ago. Back then, NYSE and Nasdaq completely dominated the market, handling 90+% of activity in the stocks listed on their markets. Today that number is closer to 20%, as they face competition unlike anything they have seen before.  Then, people running around on the floor of the NYSE was a major way trading got done.  Now the floor of the NYSE barely matters at all. The amount of trading that occurs on an average day is about 25 times larger than it was at the time.  What would have been a record day in 1987, would now be done in a slow hour. But obviously, the biggest change is technology.  Pre-1987, human beings still played a big role, always deciding what to buy, but also pretty much using human instinct on how to buy. Now, human touch is still a big part of what to buy, but computer algorithms control the how, and if humans tried to compete, they would lose.” 

 Q. “What important technological changes has the market adopted since 1987, and has the addition of newer technology helped prevent possible disasters?” 

A. “It’s a bit of an endless race. The market develops new technologies and strategies, and the regulators respond with new technologies, and with new rules.  That works pretty well in terms of making sure that we don’t have a market crisis that looks like a previous market crisis.  For example, I think we figured out immediately after 1987 how to prevent program trading from sending a market into free fall, mostly through the creation of rules called circuit breakers, so we knew how to prevent a repeat.  Likewise, after the Flash Crash, regulators required the markets to create what are called “market access controls, “which puts a limit on the number of orders that can be sent to the market at one time.  Those rules, and the technologies to implement the rules, makes another Flash Crash highly unlikely.   What’s harder is trying to figure out how to prevent a completely new disaster.”  

By David Drawbaugh

In 1947, Lester Maddox, one of the Nation’s foremost segregationists, opened a fried chicken restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia called The Pickrick (1). The restaurant quickly became well known for its quality food, reasonable prices, and strict whites only policy. Axe handles called “Pickrick Drumsticks” were sold in its souvenir shop, and came to symbolize the resistance to African American civil rights in Atlanta (2). In 1964, Maddox came to national attention after he violated the newly signed Civil Rights Act by refusing to serve three black men at The Pickrick (2). When the men tried to order, Maddox threatened them with a pistol and yelled “you no good dirty devils! You dirty communists!” (3). On July 22, 1964 The US District Court of Georgia ruled that Maddox was in contempt of court for failing to obey the Civil Rights Act, and ordered him to desegregate his restaurant within 20 days of the ruling (4). Maddox ultimately decided to close The Pickrick rather than integrate it (5).

Following the Pickrick scandal, Maddox served as Georgia’s 75th governor from 1967 to 1971. He campaigned hard for states rights, and maintained his staunch segregationist stance while in office (6). He was succeeded by Jimmy Carter, who ushered in a new age of Georgian political culture. During his gubernatorial inauguration speech on January 12, 1971, Carter declared that “the time of racial discrimination is over…No poor, rural, weak, or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity for an education, a job, or simple justice.” (7). Carter was a stark contrast to Maddox. He increased the number of black judges and state employees in Georgia. He hired Rita Jackson Samuels, a black woman, to advise him (3). He placed a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr in the capitol building, despite resistance from white supremacists, and pushed policies through the legislature to provide state aid for poor black neighbourhoods so that they could improve their schools, parks, and community centers (3).

Among the social reforms that were accomplished in Georgia in the early 1970s was public school integration (8). The nationwide movement to desegregate public schools started with the Brown vs Board cases in the 1950s. Brown I in 1954 found the separate-but-equal standard to be unjust “on the principle that mere separation of the races violated the constitution.” (9). Brown II in 1955 required public schools across the Nation to integrate with all deliberate speed, “giving Brown I’s vision of equal justice under law enough time and enough legitimacy to enter the hearts and minds of the American people in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” (10). The widespread integration of public schools did not follow any coherent plan. Different states and cities went about it in various ways. One approach that was proposed in Georgia was to bus African American kids from predominantly black neighbourhoods into white neighbourhoods so that they could attend the schools there (8). Although Governor Carter strongly supported African American civil rights, he did not support this method of integration (11). Regardless, mandatory busing was implemented throughout Georgia in 1973, albeit at a limited scale (8).

Kevin and Andrew Drawbaugh were in 7th and 6th grade, respectively, when the busing started in Atlanta. They attended Sutton Middle School, a large public school located in Buckhead, Georgia, a white suburban neighbourhood in central Atlanta. Kevin recalls that on the first day of school in 1973, “the principle said over the intercom that a number of new students would be arriving soon.” (12). This was the first time he, his brother Andrew, and most of his classmates heard about the integration. “We were completely unprepared” he recalls, “there was no direction or warning from the teachers or administration.” (12). The failure of school board officials and administrators to prepare students and parents for the integration worsened the already tense situation it created. “It was a shock to the system” Andrew recalls (13).

Most of the kids bussed into Buckhead’s public schools were from Sandy Springs, a black neighbourhood just north of Buckhead. Kevin estimates that about 2,000 kids were introduced to the school system in 1973, roughly 600 of whom were sent to Sutton. Kevin and Andrew recall things being generally chaotic as a result of the busing. Andrew remembers “two girls getting into a fight with razor blades in the school parking lot, kids spraying hairspray in others kids’ faces, and a student hitting a teacher with a desk during class.” (13). Kevin remembers being regularly attacked on his way home from school, and being unable to learn in class due to disruptive students. “Some classes were alright, but others were pandemonium”, he recalls, “my history class was fine, but I didn’t learn anything in 7th grade math.” (12). Kevin also remembers about one quarter of his white classmates leaving Sutton over the course of the year to go to private schools. After the busing started, “private schools popped up all over the place, seemingly overnight” he recalls. (12). Things calmed down after a few years, and by the time Kevin was a senior at Northside High, Buckhead’s public high school, the violence had more or less ended. “The whole situation was destabilizing” Kevin recalls, “but once things settled down, I came to realize that it was a good thing.” (12). Andrew is grateful to have experienced integration first hand, and feels “sorry for the kids who missed the experience by going to private schools.” (13).

Berkeley Davenport grew up in a black neighbourhood in the southside of Atlanta, and was bussed into Sutton Middle School in 1973. Despite what Kevin and Andrew remember about integration, Mr. Davenport had an overwhelmingly positive experience at Sutton and Northside High. “I was excited to go to Sutton. I had never been in school with white kids, and I wasn’t at all afraid of it” he recalls, “acclimating myself to new teachers and students was a pleasurable thing.” (14). Mr. Davenport was exposed to one instance of violence, but he does not remember it being racially charged. “I was attacked by a bully in a bathroom, but I don’t think he attacked me because I’m black” he recalls (14). In fact, he does not remember experiencing or witnessing any significant black on white or white on black animosity. “I was nice to the white kids, and they were nice to me” he recalls (14). Mr. Davenport befriended Kevin in high school through ROTC, and looks back at his time at Sutton and Northside High with nostalgia, likening it to “a Simon and Garfunkel song that’s been implanted in my brain.” (14).

H.W. Brands’ American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 discusses the immediate reactions to Brown vs Board II’s requirement to desegregate public schools with all deliberate speed, but does not discuss how sentiments towards that requirement evolved throughout the mid to late 20th century. Brands uses Orval Faubus’ resistance to desegregating Arkansas’ public schools in 1957, just two years after Brown II, to represent national discontent towards integration. However, he fails to mention another example of public school integration, and thus provides a somewhat lacking account of it.

The evolution of Georgia’s gubernatorial political culture between the 1950s and 1970s is what paved the way for integration in the state. Marvin Griffin, Georgia’s 72nd Governor who served from 1955 to 1959 was stalwartly against African American civil rights (15). Ernest Vandiver, who succeeded Griffin, defended segregation as well, using the motto “No, not one”, meaning not one black child in a white school (16). Carl Sanders, who followed Vandiver, was also a segregationist, and endorsed Lester Maddox, who was his successor (17). It was not until Jimmy Carter was elected Governor in 1971 that Georgia’s approach to Brown II’s requirement changed in any marked way (3). Understanding how sentiments towards Brown vs Board I and II changed in the 1960s and 1970s is pivotal to understanding the desegregation of public schools. Brands does not discuss this in American Dreams. His account of Faubus’ resistance to integrating Little Rock’s Central High School is valuable but limited. It does not show the important evolution of political culture that occured in states like Georgia, and examines public school integration, an issue that spanned many decades, through a relatively small lense.

Sources

1. Nystrom, Justin. “Lester Maddox (1915 – 2003).” New Georgia Encyclopedia, April 20, 2004. Accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/lester-maddox-1915-2003
2. CNN. “Former Georgia Governor Maddox Dies.” CNN Archives. June 25, 2003. Accessed December 10, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20080115140729/http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/06/25/maddox.dead/
3. Balmer, Randall. Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter. Basic Books, 2014. https://books.google.com/books?id=ezBnAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false
4. Willis vs Pickrick Restaurant (US District Court for the District of Georgia July 22, 1964). https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/231/396/1444843/
5. The New Georgia Encyclopedia. “The Pickrick Trial.” The New Georgia Encyclopedia. September 1, 2017. Accessed December 10, 2017. http://crdl.usg.edu/cgi/crdl?userid=public&dbs=crdl&ini=crdl.ini&action=retrieve&rkey=&rset=001&recno=2&numrecs=25
6. The Guardian. “Lester Maddox.” The Guardian. June 25, 2003. Accessed December 10, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/jun/26/guardianobituaries
7. Carter, Jimmy. “Governor Jimmy Carter’s Inaugural Address.” Speech, Inaugural Address, Georgia, Atlanta, January 12, 1971. Accessed December 10, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20161201224225/https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/inaugural_address.pdf
8. Weems, William. “The Desegregation of Atlanta Schools.” Freedom on Film: Civil Rights in Georgia. 2007. Accessed December 10, 2017.
9. Brands, H.W. American Dreams: The United States Since 1945. Penguin Books, 2010
10. Chen, James Ming. “Poetic Justice.” University of Louisville School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series, August 16, 2005, 1-42. Accessed November 10, 2017. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=778884http://www.civilrights.uga.edu/cities/atlanta/school_desegregation.htm
11. Mohr, Charles. “Carter on Busing.” New York Times. Accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/1976/05/26/archives/carter-on-busing.html
12. Phone interview with Kevin Drawbaugh, November 11, 2017
13. Phone interview with Andrew Drawbaugh, December 5, 2017
14. Phone interview with Berkeley Davenport, December 8, 2017
15. Buchanon, Scott. “Marvin Griffin (1907-1987).” New Georgia Encyclopedia, August 20, 2013. Accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/marvin-griffin-1907-1982
16. Carrier, Jim. A Travellers Guide to the Civil Rights Movement. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004. https://books.google.com/books?id=Sh2fEcB7vVwC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false
17. Cook, James. “Carl Sanders (1925-2014)” New Georgia Encyclopedia, March 12, 2015. Accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/carl-sanders-b-1925

Timeline

Selected Interview Quotations

1. Interview with Kevin Drawbaugh, November 11, 2017.
   1. the principle said over the intercom that a number of new students would be arriving soon.
   2. We were completely unprepared, there was no direction or warning from the teachers or administration.
   3. Some classes were alright, but others were pandemonium. My history class was fine, but I didn’t learn anything in 7th grade math.
   4. Private schools popped up all over the place, seemingly overnight.
   5. The whole situation was destabilizing, but once things settled down, I came to realize that it was a good thing.
   6. Middle school is hard enough, and integration made it even harder.
   7. It was a hard few years, but things eventually calmed down.
   8. In shop class I saw one black girl slam another black girl in the head with a two by four.
   9. It was tough, but something had to happen. It was just unlucky that it had to happen to us.
   10. By Junior year I was going out to parties and restaurants with black kids. There was this pizza place on the border of Buckhead and Sandy Springs that we’d go to.
2. Interview with Andrew Drawbaugh, December 5, 2017.
   1. It was a shock to the system.
   2. Two girls getting into a fight with razor blades in the school parking lot, kids spraying hairspray in others kids’ faces, and a student hitting a teacher with a desk during class.
   3. I feel sorry for the kids who missed the experience by going to private schools.
   4. Some teachers were indifferent, some were scared.
   5. I skipped like half a year of high school. I didn’t go because I was terrified. Why was I gonna go there, man? That’s crazy!
   6. There was a guy who would play drumsticks on the bell like 10 minutes before class was actually out. It was like a mental zoo, man.
3. Interview with Berkeley Davenport, December 8, 2017.
   1. I was excited to go to Sutton. I had never been in school with white kids, and I wasn’t at all afraid of it.
   2. Acclimating myself to new teachers and students was a pleasurable thing.
   3. I was attacked by a bully in a bathroom, but I don’t think he attacked me because I’m black.
   4. I was nice to the white kids, and they were nice to me.
   5. Like a Simon and Garfunkel song that’s been implanted in my brain.
   6. The Jewish students were the friendliest. I don’t know if it’s because they were more open minded than other students. I would go out to parties with them and hangout with them.
   7. I learned how to respect people there. I learned how to be a person there.
   8. Everybody was trying to make life better it seemed, the white kids and the black kids.
   9. Prejudice is because people haven’t grown up, because people haven’t been exposed to other cultures.

Driving down Vermont street 

By Heidi Kim

Fires erupting, glass being broken, people running with items they have stolen from stores, police driving up and down the streets, civil unrest; the latter is what most use to describe the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. Judy Daley had been living in the neighborhood in which the riots erupted and recalls the “whole situation [feeling] surreal because I was in the car and everything is happening around me as if I was watching a movie.”[1] She remembers her disbelief in the actions of the civilians after news broke of the acquittal of four white officers. Daley recounts, “it was kind of scary because you know what’s good and bad and you see all the people stealing. So, you’re thinking, “My God, what is happening in the world?”[2] The LA Riots are an important event that is omitted from H.W. Brands’ book, American Dreams. Brand mentions and describes the Watts Riots of 1965, but omits any description of the LA Riots. The omission of the LA Riots and its outcome does not enlighten readers about the continued racial tensions and injustices that have occurred and continued to occur in the U.S. well after 1945. 

The LA Riots were a result of the acquittal of four white police men who severely beat a black motorist, Rodney King, during a routine arrest stop. Unbeknownst to the arresting officers, the arrest was recorded by local, George Holliday, who “sold [it] to a local television station, [which] subsequently broadcasted on television thousands of times.”[3] The video clip sparked national debate and produced many reactions. The police men responsible were indicted, but their trial was moved from Los Angeles to Simi Valley in the Ventura County, a “white, prosperous, suburban [neighborhood].”[4] Moving the trial gave an advantage to the police men awaiting their trial because the trial would now be held in a community that was predominantly white, upper-class citizens. By the end of the trial, while many were angry at the video, they were even more furious at the verdict. This erupted into angry crowds and mayhem; the riots lasted from April 29th – May 4th and resulted in “more than 50 people killed, more than 2,300 injured, thousands arrested, 1,100 buildings damaged, and total property damage [at] about $1 billion, [making] the riots one of the most-devastating civil disruptions in American history.”[5] Many extreme measures were taken because of the severity of the riots; these measures included shutting down public transportation, cancelling schools, and deploying the California National Guard. The LA Riots became another symbol for racial tensions that progressed and continue progress in urban cities. 

As stated previously, the LA Riots resulted in looting of stores and physical violence amongst races. The LA Riots were also known as a “race riot” because of the tensions between different races. One of the focal points of the riots was the beating of Reginald Denny. Reginald Denny was a white truck driver who “was pulled from [his truck] by several black men, kicked and knocked to the asphalt, where one of the men smashed his skull.”[6] This, in addition to the looting and arson, contributed to the increasing tensions and disputes.   

The LA Riots further intensified the racial tensions not only between blacks and whites, but among other races as well, in particular, Asian-Americans. Many Asian-owned business were targeted for looting and destruction. Historian Shelley Lee explains that the LA Riots represented a “shattered ‘American Dream’ and brought focus to their hold on economic mobility in a society fraught by social and ethnic tension.”[7] Many Asian-Americans looked forward to their hard-earned success with their businesses because Asian-Americans lie in the gray area between whites versus blacks. For Daley, being an Asian-American during these looting and arson incidents of Asian-owned businesses made her fearful because “what was happening on the streets, you don’t know if you’re going to be the next victim. You see that these people are looting already, then what is the next thing they are going to do?”[8] Asian-Americans were a significant part of the LA Riots and a part of racial tensions in history. Brands’ omission allows for readers to forget the racial tension between blacks and other races rather than just blacks and whites. The impact it had on Asian-Americans was a saddening thought to Daley because “these Asians worked hard to get their business up and running and they were being looted by these bad people.”[9]  Driving down Vermont street (the main street leading into the Asian populated area of Los Angeles), many storefronts had shattered glass and broken structures. Daley recalls witnessing “a lot of people who were carrying appliances, like TVs, stereos and bags and carts of goods and foods; I saw them coming in and out of the stores.”[10] Tensions between the black community and the police had already erupted, so while the riots occurred police efforts were no match for the angry citizens. Many took advantage of the uprising and of “the ‘no police watching’ and [thinking] that they could take anything they want.”[11] Brands’ omission of the consequences of the LA Riots in his book does not reinforce that racial tensions are still high and very much alive even after previous events. 

The rioting continued until May 4th, when “6,000 National Guardsmen and another 4,000 federal troops and Marines”[12] were deployed to ratify the incident. For most, many had started to resume their day-to-day activities towards the end of the riots. Public transportation that had been shut down was up and running again, children were going back to school, and adults were going back to work. For others who were spectators, like Daley, work did not really stop; “yeah, we still have to go to work. It’s not like the work is going to close. People are just talking about it [riots] at work; what they have seen, what has happened, what’s going on.”[13]

Daley’s account of her experience of the LA Riots offers a different perspective on racial tensions. While Brands does not discuss the LA Riots, Daley’s memories are able to give insight to the chaos that was a result of racial injustice. 

 

[1] Phone Interview with Judy Daley, November 11, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Jacobs, Ronald N. Race, Media and the Crisis of Civil Society: From Watts to Rodney King. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed November 10, 2017).

[4] Reference List. 1992. “Days of rage.” U.S. News & World Report 112, 20. Readers’ Guide Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost (accessed November 10, 2017).

[5] Wallenfeldt, Jeff. “Los Angeles Riots of 1992.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Last modified November 17, 2016. Accessed November 10, 2017. https://www.britannica.com/event/Los-Angeles-Riots-of-1992.

[6] Reference List. 1992. “Days of rage.” U.S. News & World Report 112, 20. Readers’ Guide Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost (accessed November 10, 2017).

[7] Lee, Shelley Sang-Hee. “Asian Americans and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots/Uprising.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Accessed November 11, 2017. http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-15?rskey=jAFWiP&result=1

[8] Phone Interview with Judy Daley, November 11, 2017.

[9] Interview conducted by e-mail with Judy Daley, December 3, 2017.

[10] Phone interview with Judy Daley, November 11, 2017.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Staff, History.com. “Los Angeles Riots.” History.com. 2017. Accessed December 4, 2017. http://www.history.com/topics/the-los-angeles-riots

 

Phone Interview with Judy Daley 11.11.17 

H: In your own experiences, what were the LA Riots of 1992? 

J: Well, let’s put it this way: I was oblivious of what’s going on because I’m not really watching the news, but the day of, I had to pick up your uncle Dick at the airport at LAX and I drove downtown – not downtown – to LAX, not knowing that the riots were happening. So I was on the freeway on my way to pick up uncle Dick and your uncle Dick was saying, “how come at the airplane, when looking out the window, there’s a lot of fires?” And I said, “I don’t know.” So I picked him up, I drove him to his place, came back to LA, but there’s a lot of traffic already. The next day, when I went out, that’s when I see troubling sceneries. So, it was like watching a movie and I was driving. The people are more interested in looting the stores than hurting people. 

H: Oh, okay. 

J:  So that’s why when I was driving at Vermont, between Beverly and 3rd street. So there’s a lot of people who were carrying appliances, like TVs, stereos and probably, uh, bags and carts of goods and foods. And I see them coming in and out of the stores, and I see all the stores on that street before, the glasses – the front glasses – are broken. So they’re just – for them it’s like having a party where they could just get everything. It was kind of scary because you know what’s good and bad and you see all the people stealing. So you’re thinking, “My God, what is happening in the world?” 

H:  So did you feel the need to call someone? Or you were just like, “This isn’t my problem”? 

J:  No, like I said, it was like watching a movie. I was like a spectator, I was just seeing all this happening in front of my eyes. So it’s not just like black people are stealing, it’s everybody: Asians, even those white people.  

H: So how was it being an Asian-American during that time?  

J: Well, it was kind of scary because what was happening on the streets, it’s like you don’t know if you’re going to be the next victim. You see that these people are looting already, then after what is the next thing they are going to do? It’s like they’re having a big party of something doing bad. So you don’t know what the next thing they’re going to do.  

H:  Do you remember watching all of this during the six-day period? 

J: It was just like, um, during that week it was more on the vigilantes, because we still have to go to work. 

H: Really? 

J: Yeah, we still have to go to work. It’s not like the work is going to close. Because I was at the City of Commerce at the time, which is more industrial, so people are just talking about it at work; what they have seen, what has happened, what’s going on. So we feel secure when we’re at work, but then when you go to the street, especially in the streets with retail [stores]. You start to wonder, “Okay, are there they again? What’s the next move they’re [rioters] going to do?” 

H: Did they ever try and aim for neighborhoods or did they stick to stores? 

J: Where we live, they’re more [focused] on the stores. 

H: Oh, okay. 

J:  So I think it was like people took advantage of the situation. The people who were looting during that time was taking advantage of this ‘no police watching’. That they could take anything they want. 

H: Do you remember where you were when you, I guess, or when the news that the police men were acquitted of the Rodney King arrest? 

J: I think it was Thursday/Friday. I’m not really sure, I might be at work. 

H: So was that day kind of normal until you left work? 

J: Until we went home. So it’s like, you know, after watch The Purge [movie], everybody stays inside. And all these people who wanted to do something bad are all on the street.  So that was the part where we don’t really go out as much at night during that week. And then I think it was concentrated on some areas. It’s not like everybody just went berserk. 

H: So when did you guys come to the U.S.? Around the sixties? 

J: No, oh my God, you have to talk to your mom more often, haha. [We came here] in the eighties.  

H:  So you guys came in the eighties, what were your expectations of America and how did seeing the mayhem of the riots kind of changed that, if it changed at all? 

J:  Well, we were at Riverside, so which is more of a rural place. And then, ten years after – we came here in [nineteen] eighty-two and now it’s [nineteen] ninety-two, ten years – we have nothing to compare it except for what we know, which is that the United States is cold, weather wise. Okay? But other than that, it was like more of a fascination of what we see. We’re fascinated that they have all these freeways, we’re fascinated that people are driving. So it’s not like, how would you say it? It’s not like we would say that – I would say probably America was really rich. That everywhere you go, there is – its organized. Because in the Philippines it’s not that way; people are being resourceful, they do their own thing. 

H: So you guys thinking that the U.S. is organized, it’s rich, and it’s well resourced, what was your guys’ initial reactions? 

J: Oh, when the riot came? 

H: Yeah. 

J: Yeah, we were just saying, “Where did these people come from?” That people started beating each other, that there’s no remorse. Why are people being violent? Because we were not raised in a violent environment. And then you are seeing people, there’s so much hatred. So we were saying, “Where did this come from?”. Because in the Philippines, even though we had typhoons, we had all these monsoons, people tend to look at it – people tend to look at the brighter side.  

H: And so seeing the LA Riots… 

J: Seeing the LA Riot, we were just starting to say, “Why is there so much hatred? Why is it that you hate something and then suddenly they become violent with everybody else who’s not hurting you? Why are you taking their belongings that’s not yours?” 

H: So prior to the actual riots, did you know of the case of Rodney King? Were you following the case? 

J: Not closely, but it’s more of a what we call a “cooler” – “water cooler” discussion. It’s a “water cooler” conversation. Because before water bottles, when people wanted to get a drink of water in the office, there’s a water cooler, which is like what your Lola has at home. And then we just go there and get our water and then the people are going to say “oh did you hear? Oh did you know?” Things like that. And then people started discussing. And that’s how I know my news.  

H: Is there anything else that you want to add? 

J: Nothing I’ve already told you. 

H: Okay, thank you!

 

Email Interview with Judy Daley 

H: How did it feel being an Asian-American during this period of “white v. black”? Why did it you feel this way? 

J: The whole situation felt surreal because I was in the car and everything is happening around me as if I was watching a movie. The people looting didn’t bother me at all. They were focused on getting as much as they can from the store. 

H: How did it feel seeing Asian stores being looted and destroyed? 

J: I felt bad because morally, what the they are doing was wrong. Felt disappointed to the looters because these Asians worked hard to get their business up and running and they were being looted by this bad people. 

H: What was the difference in Asian-Americans rioting (if there were any) versus the Blacks rioting? 

J: I think black rioting is more physical riots – hurting people of other races. 

H: What were the reactions of other Asian-Americans during the riots? 

J: Some Asians were indifferent because they don’t want to be involved. Very few Asians were involved with the protesting. 

 

 

 

 

By: Max Menkes

Stephen Menkes was a 9-year-old boy when World War II ended in 1945.  He had spent most of his early years being raised by his grandmother while living in her small apartment with his parents and his Uncle Joe. As the fear of war subsided a whole new era began, the Post War Baby Boom. As H.W Brands writes, “After World War II the combination of more time, more resources, and more kids created a child-based culture unlike anything previous in American History…But they grew up with a sense of entitlement, a feeling that the world existed for their benefit.” [1] Stephen would probably agree as he recalls, “I remember vividly the day my dad loaded my mom and me in our brand new black Packard and drove us out to Atlantic Beach on Long Island to show us our new house. I was so excited to discover that I would have my own room and a huge backyard. It got even better when I learned that my mom was quitting her job to stay home and that she was pregnant.” [2] It would be a whole new way of life for Stephen, “my dad commuted to the city each day to go to work but he spent most nights and every weekend at home. We had barbecues in the backyard and block parties with friends and neighbors.” [3] Long gone were the days of pinching pennies, eating cabbage soup, sleeping on a cot in the living room, collecting fat for the war effort and preparing bomb shelters. The post war baby boom was a new beginning for the nation.  “They would grow up more confident and secure with who they were and what their future would hold.  They had no worries, no money problems and no war!” [4] The Post World War II Baby Boom gave birth to a society comforted by a more focused family life and homogeneous suburbs and raised to believe that the world was theirs for the taking.

As a child of the Great Depression Stephen lived through both emotional and physical changes that affected his family life. “A worldwide depression struck countries with market economies at the end of the 1920s. Although the Great Depression was relatively mild in some countries, it was severe in others, particularly in the United States, where, at its nadir in 1933, 25 percent of all workers and 37 percent of all non farm workers were completely out of work. Some people starved; many others lost their farms and homes.” [5]

Money was tight so Stephen’s mother was forced to find a job to help support the family. Since his mother went back to work as a secretary and money was tight his family was forced to move into his grandmother’s two bedroom apartment over a bakery in the Lower East Side of New York with his Uncle Joe. He candidly admits, “At first I was excited at the idea of living with my grandmother since I had grown accustomed to her amazing Friday night dinners that included homemade Rocky Road candy but I soon discovered that all that was a thing of the past.” [6] The living space was so crammed; he slept on a cot in the living room and as a young boy he remembers, “Playing stick ball in the street with my friends until the sun went down because none of us wanted to go home to our cramped apartments and cabbage soup dinners.” [7] Things got worse as the war started and demanded more of his family.  He barely saw his parents that worked all day and then volunteered for the Civil Air Patrol in the evenings. His parents now committed to helping the war effort after work and he rarely spent time with them. Even as a young boy he realized the significance of contributing to the protection of his family and his country and he states that “ I remember my mom and grandmother collecting fat and putting it in coffee cans and then I had the proud job of bringing it to the District Office. I felt very proud and grown up that I could do something to help the war effort.” [8] President Franklin Roosevelt helped create the significance of the war effort in his Third Inauguration speech on January 20, 1941, “Democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men’s enlightened will… It is the most humane, the most advanced, and, in the end, the most unconquerable of all forms of human society. The democratic aspiration is now mere recent phase of human history… We… would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.” [9] The war occupied the nation’s thoughts and their activities. Stephen and his family lived in fear of sirens going off warning of bombs. Then to make things worse his Uncle Joe enlisted and the family now had to rely on one less income and live with the new fear of losing a loved one to the war.

 

In 1945 as the war came to an end, a new car and a move out to the suburbs would be the start of a whole new life for Stephen and the beginning of a new era for the country. The move to family centered neighborhoods was not easy, “In the years after World War II, however, not everyone could attain that promised tranquility. One problem was a severe housing shortage. A combination of unusually high birth rates (which bred the baby boomer generation) and plummeting construction left many families struggling to find any suitable shelters, sometimes living in boxcars, chicken coops and large ice boxes. To many of those families, the Levittown’s in Long Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania were the answer to their prayers.” [10]   

The house provided a new spacious way of life and the new car provided a way for his father to spend more time with him and just commute to the city for his job.  H.W Brands writes the new way of life was partially due to, “the eight-hour day and forty-hour week that became a standard during the Depression, partly as a way of rationing the available work.” [11] Family life for Stephen changed for the better and his younger sisters benefited from this new way of life, “my parents were very active in my sister’s lives and attended recitals and school functions.  They each had their own room and they were constantly bringing friends over to the house for dinner and parties. Our house was filled with laughter and good food not like the somber home of my grandmother.  They didn’t know how sick you get of eating cabbage soup or how it feels to sleep in the living room.” [12]

The move to the suburbs provided a sense of community and a much needed sense of safety that deeply affected family life. Since the families no longer feared sirens Stephen and his sisters were allowed to stay out late and walk into town, a new freedom that he cherished.  But it wasn’t just the fact that the war was over, the suburbs provided a sense of community that gave them a needed sense of security.  Stephen remembers fondly that, “We all knew one another, my dad worked in the city with the other dads, I went to the same school as my friends, and my mom was surrounded by her friends.  Everyone had common interests which seemed to provide a sense of safety that was important after the war.” [13] William Levitt believed that nothing was wrong with the homogenous suburbs he created, “The plain fact is that most whites prefer not to live in mixed communities. This attitude may be wrong morally, and some day it may change. I hope it will. But as matters now stand, it is unfair to charge an individual with the blame for creating this attitude or saddle him with the sole responsibility for correcting it.” [14] This sense of safety that came from common interests and backgrounds was later looked at as discrimination but for my grandfather Stephen Menkes it was no different than living in the city, “I guess it wasn’t a very economically or racially diverse neighborhood but most people didn’t care about that back then.  In the city we had neighborhoods for Jews and others for Italians so living with people that were similar was nothing new.” [15]

The increase in the family’s disposable income after the war also changed the family dynamic.  The purchase of a television was one of the factors that contributed to this shift.  The family dinner was an important part of family life but the time in front of the television also became a new family activity.  The dinner table provided a formal time for the family to discuss their day but even that was different after the war, “ When I was younger my dad did most of the talking and conversations were more solemn but when we moved out to the suburbs my mom definitely had more to say. I think working had given her the confidence to feel like she could contribute something more to the conversation.” [16] The television was a source of information for those conversations, “My mom would always tell us about the latest and greatest soap or new product that she saw on TV that would somehow greatly improve our lives!” [17] Stephen admits that, “his conversation at the dinner table was more about his class work and hearing that with good grades the world was his for the taking.” [18] After dinner the family now gathered in the living room and bonded over shows on television.  Stephen laughs as he remembers that it wasn’t just the shows but the close proximity to each other and to the television that brought them closer, “We all sat close to the television because it wasn’t as big as the ones we have today and it was black and white!” [19] The shows were mainly family shows that enhanced the quality of family life.  Stephen shared that his favorite show was Howdy Doody which he watched every afternoon but says that as a family he remembers watching the Milton Berle variety show in the evening.  Stephen is quick to confess that the TV commercials were just as important as the TV shows, “We all got our cues as to what was the latest and greatest from TV” [20] and that was definitely the intent of those commercials.  The new purchasing power that existed and the new idea that the purchaser deserved those purchases, especially after years of war and financial difficulties, was a boom for advertisers.  Stephen remembers his favorite commercial was the one for Bosco chocolate syrup, “my friends and I wanted it on everything after we saw the commercial and the chocolate egg cream soda became my favorite, and still is.” [21]

The family car also contributed to a change in family life.  The car provided a way for his father to commute to the city and come home to a house and family with a better quality of life than what they had previously had in the small apartment in the city, “Postwar Affluence redefined the American Dream. Gone was the poverty borne of the Great Depression, and the years of wartime sacrifice were over.  Automobiles once again rolled off the assembly lines of the Big Three: Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. The Interstate Highway Act authorized the construction of thousands of miles of high-speed roads that made living farther from work a possibility.” [22]

A road trip now provided a new form of family entertainment that brought the family closer together.  Family time was valued as Stephen looks back, “I remember the long car trip to Florida but it was a family adventure that became a family tradition.  We took more car trips to visit relatives or go up to the country for the weekend and my world got bigger” [23] The baby boom was not just a boom in the number of children being born but a boom in the quality of family life that gave children the sense that they could do anything and go anywhere.

The Post War Baby Boom was a welcome reprieve from the dark days of war and it created a confident and self-assured new way of life.  “Almost exactly nine months after World War II ended, “the cry of the baby was heard across the land,” as historian Landon Jones later described the trend. More babies were born in 1946 than ever before: 3.4 million, 20 percent more than in 1945. This was the beginning of the so-called “baby boom.” In 1947, another 3.8 million babies were born; 3.9 million were born in 1952; and more than 4 million were born every year from 1954 until 1964, when the boom finally tapered off. By then, there were 76.4 million “baby boomers” in the United States. They made up almost 40 percent of the nation’s population.” [24]

The new generation of baby boomers had never experienced poverty or war.  They were born post-depression, after incomes had increased, and during a time after the war when opportunities for spending were at a new high for several reasons.  Firstly, production lines and factories that had been directed to produce products necessary for war were once again producing cars and televisions.  Secondly the new commercials on televisions were targeting the parents with new disposable income and tapping into their desire to give their children what they had done without. Thirdly the man power for assembly lines returned to the normal strength as men returned from war.  As Stephen Menkes describes the baby boom era allowed his younger sisters to be raised by their mother who was able to return home from the workforce and concentrate on improving the life of her family. The new quality and quantity of time spent with family and community led to a confident and secure environment which for him was a positive not a negative. As H.W Brands writes, “parents and grandparents wanted their children to have what they had been compelled to do without.” [25] So while Stephen boldly admits to agreeing with H.W. Brands characterization of the generation as one with “a sense of entitlement” he proudly confesses, “they were spoiled but even I enjoyed spoiling them.  There was a ten-year difference between me and my sisters so I am just as guilty as my parents of trying to make sure that they had everything they ever wanted.” [26] The new attitude associated with the Baby Boom propelled the nation into a time of prosperity through increased spending and created an attitude that they deserved everything that the world had to offer.  This sense of entitlement could be why the nation grew to consider itself a leader among nations with an air of superiority but could also have been the reason that our nation is in debt today.  The baby boom generation that was coddled by their parents and brought up to believe that they deserved to have it all was a symptom of the previous generation suffering through a financial crises and war. Stephen’s experiences describe that this was a natural and protective response and not one intended to harm others. In fact, the new sense of love and security that was a byproduct of larger families with greater resources greatly influenced Stephen in becoming an OBGYN with a specialty in infertility, “I chose to become an OBGYN so that I could help bring that same feeling to all families.” The more focused family life, child centered environment, and homogeneous suburbs allowed Stephen to reach for the stars and go from sleeping on a cot in the living room to providing a much needed service that would bring forth a new generation.

[1] H.W. Brands, American Dreams, p.70

[2] Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, November 10, 2017

[3] Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, November 10, 2017

[4] Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, November 10, 2017

[5] Smiley, Gene. Rethinking the Great Depression: A New View of Its Causes and Consequences. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002.

[6] Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, November 10, 2017

[7] Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, November 10, 2017

[8] Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, November 10, 2017

[9] Quoted in Second world war history, President Franklin Roosevelt (secondworldwarhistory.com, 2003-2017)

[10] Galyean, Crystal. “Levittown.” US History Scene. 10 Apr. 2015. Web. 8 Nov. 2017.

[11] H.W. Brands, American Dreams, p.70

[12] Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, November 10, 2017

[13] Second Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, December 5, 2017

[14] Kyle Sabo, “The Levittown Legacy: Segregation in Suburbia?” Newsday, September 2, 1957

[15] Second Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, December 5, 2017

[16] Second Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, December 5, 2017

[17] Second Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, December 5, 2017

[18] Second Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, December 5, 2017

[19] Second Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, December 5, 2017

[20] Second Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, December 5, 2017

[21] Second Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, December 5, 2017

[22] ushistory.org. Suburban Growth. U.S. History Online Textbook, 2017

[23] Second Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, December 5, 2017

[24] History.com Staff. Baby Boomers. A+E Networks, 2010

[25] H.W. Brands, American Dreams p.70

[26] Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, November 10, 2017

 

Second Interview with Dr. Stephen Menkes, December 5, 2017

1. How did you like moving out to the suburbs and who lived there?

Answer:  I loved living where we could all get together in backyards instead of just playing on the street or in the park.  My parents let us stay out late because they no longer feared sirens going off and having to worry where I was. My sisters never had that fear of trying to get home because you were afraid a bomb was going to get dropped.  My friends and my parent’s friends all lived close to us.  We all knew one another, my dad worked in the city with the other dads, I went to school with my friends and my mom was surrounded with her friends.  Everyone had common interests which seemed to provide a sense of safety that was important after the war!  I guess it wasn’t a very economically or racially diverse neighborhood but most people didn’t care about that back then. In the city we had neighborhoods for Jews and others for Italians so living with people that were similar was nothing new.

2. Did you eat dinner at a table or did you eat in front of the television?

Answer:  We always waited for my dad to get home from work and we always sat at the kitchen table.  It was a little more formal then today.  I helped my mom set the table and we had conversations at the table and then we all moved to the couch to watch a show.

3. What did you discuss at dinner?

Answer:  We usually waited to see my dad’s mood and then conversations went from there. When I was younger my dad did most of the talking and conversations were more solemn but when we moved out of the city after the war my mom definitely had more to say.  I think working had given her the confidence to feel like she could contribute something to the conversation. My mom would always tell him about what the latest and greatest soap or new baking product that she and her friends were now using and how it would greatly improve all our lives!! I usually discussed my classes and was always reminded of how my academic success was the key to my future.

4. What kind of shows did you watch?

Answer:  I loved Howdy Doody and at night I remember watching Milton Berle, which was a variety show.  We always sat together probably because we only had one TV but all the shows seemed like family shows anyway. We sat close to the TV because it wasn’t as big as the ones we have today and it was black and white!! The commercials on TV were just as much fun as the TV shows.  We all got our cues as to what was the latest and greatest from TV.  I remember the Bosco commercial for chocolate syrup!  My friends and I wanted it on everything after we saw the commercials and chocolate egg creams sodas became a favorite!! Commercials were definitely product driven and designed to make us feel like we deserved to have the best so why not shop and get them.

5. How else do you think your life changed after you moved out of the city?

Answer:  We were all together more and we planned family activities more.  We always had backyard barbecues at someone’s house but we also had more things that just my family did together.  Family vacations were new to me.  I remember the long car trip to Florida but it was a family adventure that became a family tradition. We took more trips in the car to visit relatives or go up to the country for the weekend and my world became a lot bigger.

By Jake Pesko

Frank Letteri was a member of the US Navy Intelligence Services and he recalls being drafted into the Vietnam War in 1969. Mr. Letteri remembers his sentiments after being drafted to serve in one of the most controversial wars in history; he states, “I understood the implications. I have never been a person with much fear. The uncertainty of what we were to accomplish was the most bothersome factor to me.” [1] In the same year President Nixon implemented the policy of Vietnamization to slowly remove United States troops from the battlefront. Yet simultaneously Nixon was pushing the war into Laos and Cambodia through a bombing offensive. Frances FitzGerald shows the magnitude of this strategy by stating “extensive bombing campaigns wreaked more destruction on the Indochinese than had been visited upon them in all preceding years of war.” [2] Mr. Letteri’s company played a significant role in these campaigns.

The escalation of war did not come without criticism from the home front, particularly on college campuses. Although Vietnam War Protests were not a novel event in the early 1970’s, President Nixon’s escalation of war efforts sparked more organized and frequent protests. In the book American Dreams the author H.W. Brands describes how the bombings drove the country into protest, he writes, “Whether or not these efforts conveyed to the communists the message Nixon intended, they got the attention of the antiwar movement in America.” [3] The experiences of Mr. Letteri enhance this statement by Brands as he not only had a significant role in these war efforts that were a catalyst for protest, but he can also recall his own reaction to the antiwar movement while still being stationed in Vietnam.

Mr. Letteri’s experience in the war cannot be explained without understanding the policies of the Nixon Doctrine and Vietnamization. Furthermore the events surrounding these policies are what inflamed the antiwar culture in the United States. The goal of Vietnamization was to slowly remove American troops while training and supporting the Southern Vietnamese troops and government; this reflected the need to maintain the anticommunist regime in Saigon. [4] Yet, this is not what happened and as Jeffrey Kimball said “These customary understandings of the Nixon Doctrine are erroneous in whole or substantial part.” [5] Instead of pursuing the policies of the Nixon Doctrine, the President initiated one of the largest offensives in history by secretly bombing the Northern Vietnamese and National Liberation Front forces in Cambodia. [6] Cambodia was not previously a participant in the war and acted as a safe haven for the aforementioned groups. [7] This was followed by ground operations in Cambodia by United States troops; they proved to be deadly for the United States as 20,000 causalities were recorded. [8] This is where Mr. Letteri’s story fits into the historical context. The bombings did limit the effectiveness of the National Liberation Front as a military power but they also created the instability that led to the rise of the bloodthirsty Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. [9] The acts of war also caused a great deal of skepticism on the home front where the ideals of the Nixon Doctrine were being preached but not executed leading to discontent and protest. [10}

These actions also reflect Nixon’s personal sentiments during the time period. Kimball argues that Nixon placed “the value of threat and force over negotiations”. [11] Furthermore Kimball argued that the main purpose of Vietnamization was to buy more time on the home front so these bombings and other strategy such as the “China Card” could unfold. [12] This was the complex strategy to play China and the Soviets against each other to end Vietnam. Yet this façade didn’t last for long, and Nixon’s opposition began to use the contradictions between policy and action against Nixon especially after the events in Cambodia. [13]

Mr. Letteri provides stories that directly support the claims by many such as Kimball and FitzGerald that Nixon was in fact escalating a war during the time of Vietnamization. Mr. Letteri’s job was inherently risky, as a member of the Naval Intelligence Services he had to set up listening stations for Long Range Patrols; these stations provided communications for the patrols operations. [14] The job of Long Range Patrols was to get intelligence from deep behind enemy lines and then these groups helped locate the areas where bombs should be dropped. [15] Although he was not a member of these dangerous patrol groups, Mr. Letteri still exposed himself to the high risk that comes from being behind enemy lines. This description of his job alone shows that United States troops were still working at high frequency even after the implementation of the Nixon Doctrine.

Specific missions described in great detail further this claim. For example he describes an operation called Sanctuary Counter offensive conducted by the 1^st cavalry as well as the 4^th and 25^th infantry divisions of the Army. [16] He set up the listening stations for this campaign and he describes firefights as the troops pushed into Cambodia’s capital of Phnom Penh. [17] Out of the 14 members in his company they lost 2 men in 3 days. [18] He also describes Operation Rockcrusher. During this operation he was part of a task force called Shoemaker in which the United States sought to raid Northern Vietnamese bases in Cambodia, he set up the landing zones for United States air forces. [19] Mr. Letteri describes the danger of this task and ends this story with an extremely personal example that is hard to preface, he says, “We did incur quite a few injuries myself included. I was hit by a 60-mortar attack that hit a troop carrier and pinned me between them. I than took 2 rounds, one to the chest and one in the back, not a good day. My right leg was badly damaged and I was medevac’d out to a MASH unit.” [20] This is one significant example that demonstrates how the United States troops were still in harms way throughout much of this time period. Those are just two isolated examples of American involvement in the area but these are the types of events that fueled protest on the home front.

As the war in Vietnam followed the opposite trend proposed by Nixon the American public grew more polarized on wartime policy then ever before. [21] College campuses were the setting for protest. The shooting of protestors during a demonstration at Kent State University thrust these problems to the forefront of national news. [22] Jackson State in Missouri saw eerily similar events unfold on their campus. [23] It is also important to note that not all protests were violent and many remained peaceful such as on the campus of North Carolina State, which was a historically conservative institution. [24] Nixon maintained that the “silent majority” still supported the war and a 1970 poll served him right as a majority of the population supported the Cambodian effort. [25] Nonetheless the news of these major events had an impact on the members of the armed forces still stationed in Vietnam such as Mr. Letteri.

His responses to questions about protest indicate that there was a strong knowledge of the major protests at home by United States soldiers abroad. When questioned broadly about what was one of the most significant events of his entire experience he cited the Kent State protest. [26] He blamed mass media for dividing the nation and hurting the backing for troops abroad. [27] He claimed “This event stirred a lot emotion in guys like me that were willing to go to war.” Followed by this had “a significant impact on us.” [28] Of interest is also the confusion he felt, receiving limited news caused him to be unsure who was to blame. [29] Furthermore he said “you always saw the bad days on TV” which shows how he was not able to get the full grasp of the climate at home. [30] Looking retrospectively on the events and getting the full picture when returning home he formulated a more focused opinion. He said that “those kids have every right to voice their opinion peacefully” and that he sees “this as a senseless act of violence by the US on its own people.” [31] He was much more critical of those who went to college to avoid the draft, which is logical considering his situation. [32]

Mr. Letteri’s experiences in Vietnam strengthen Brand’s claim that growing the war was the backdrop for protest in a way that the scope of his book did not allow for. His description of the events that unfolded show that the Nixon Doctrine and Vietnamization did not do all that they promised. This is also reiterated in Kimball’s critical analysis, and his story fits directly into FitzGerald’s summary of the events in unfolding in Cambodia. The encounters he endured are examples of events that stirred domestic emotions towards the war and created an antiwar movement. Hearing first hand the impact and mixed emotions of soldiers towards the movement provide an additional lens that none of the authors consider but does reinforce a connection between escalation and protest. His injury is an example that specifically highlights why the public was becoming more frustrated. Mr. Letteri now works in communications at Montefiore hospital using a lot of the skills he learned setting up listening stations to create a successful communications career for himself. [33]

[1] Email Interview with Frank Letteri, November 9, 2017

[2] Frances FitzGerald, “Dissent.” Symposium: Getting Out, no. 158-080 (2009): 53, accessed November 9, 2017, http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=5337f9bc-6c7c-4f80-bf38-bda13a2a8a4e%40sessionmgr4009

[3] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York:Penguin Books, 2010), 170.

[4] Frances FitzGerald, “Dissent.” Symposium: Getting Out, no. 158-080 (2009): 53, accessed November 9, 2017, http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=5337f9bc-6c7c-4f80-bf38-bda13a2a8a4e%40sessionmgr4009

[5] Jeffrey Kimball, “ The Nixon Doctrine: A Saga of Misunderstanding.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1 (2006): 60, accessed November 9, 2017, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/27552747.pdf

[6] Frances FitzGerald, “Dissent.” Symposium: Getting Out, no. 158-080 (2009): 53, accessed November 9, 2017, http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=5337f9bc-6c7c-4f80-bf38-bda13a2a8a4e%40sessionmgr4009

[7] Ibid, 53.

[8] Ibid, 53.

[9] Ibid, 54.

[10] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York:      Penguin Books, 2010), 170.

[11] Jeffrey Kimball, “ The Nixon Doctrine: A Saga of Misunderstanding.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1 (2006): 66, accessed November 9, 2017, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/27552747.pdf

[12] Ibid, 66.

[13] Ibid, 67.

[14] Email Interview with Frank Letteri, November 9, 2017

[15] Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine: 1942-1976 (Washington D.C.: Defense Dept., Army, Center of Military History, 2006), Google Books edition.

[16] Email Interview with Frank Letteri, November 27. 2017

[17] Ibid

[18] Ibid

[19] Email Interview with Frank Letteri, November 27. 2017. Also see John (Jack) Peel, Walk Tall: With the 2^nd Battalion 1^st ARVN Regiment (Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris, 2014), Google Books edition.

[20] Email Interview with Frank Letteri, November 27. 2017

[21] Frances FitzGerald, “Dissent.” Symposium: Getting Out, no. 158-080 (2009): 53, accessed November 9, 2017, http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=5337f9bc-6c7c-4f80-bf38-bda13a2a8a4e%40sessionmgr4009

[22] Christopher J. Broadhurst, “We Didn’t Fire a Shot, We Didn’t Burn a Building”: The Student Reaction at North Carolina State University to the Kent State Shootings, May 1970.” The North Carolina Historical Review vol. 87 no. 3 (2010): 283, accessed November 9, 2017, http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=8007b651-ebdf-43f9-b1cb-270a7cfd97c9%40sessionmgr104

[23] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York:      Penguin Books, 2010), 170.

[24] Christopher J. Broadhurst, “We Didn’t Fire a Shot, We Didn’t Burn a Building”: The Student Reaction at North Carolina State University to the Kent State Shootings, May 1970.” The North Carolina Historical Review vol. 87 no. 3 (2010): 309, accessed November 9, 2017, http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=8007b651-ebdf-43f9-b1cb-270a7cfd97c9%40sessionmgr104

[25] Ibid, 288

[26] Email Interview with Frank Letteri, November 9, 2017

[27] Ibid

[28] Ibid

[29] Ibid

[30] Ibid

[31] Email Interview with Frank Letteri, November 27. 2017

[32] Ibid

[33] Background Information Received from Mr. Letteri and Joseph Pesko

Interview Conducted:

11/9/17 via email

Selected Interview Responses:

Q. What branch and position were you?

A. US Navy, Naval Intelligence Services

Q. Did you enlist or get drafted into the war?

A. I was drafted in 1969.

Q. Did that change your perspective on the war? Maybe compared to others around you?

A. I did not, I was going to enlist. I was not collage material and I needed to learn a trade. I eventually was trained on many devices you see in the market today.

Q. After being drafted what was going through mind at the time, realizing you were heading into a jungle half way across the world?

A. I understood the implications. I have never been a person with much fear. The uncertainty of what we were to accomplish was the most bothersome factor to me. I grew up in the Bronx and it was a war zone in itself. On another note I believed and still believe that this country was worth fighting for so guys like you would have a free and hopefully productive future.

Q. I am going to try and hit on the major issues of the time but are there any experiences in particular either during your time in Vietnam or at home that you think is extremely important to telling your individual story, which is the main point of the interview. I don’t want to miss something that you think needs to be noted before we get started?

A. One of the most disturbing events to me was the killing of the students at Kent State University. This was an indication of how divided the US was on the war and how much mass media (TV) hyped the events and pulled support from the troops. This event stirred a lot of emotion in guys like me that were willing to go to war.

Q. Were you apart of any major battles or events such as Operation Rolling Thunder, or the Tet Offensive?

A. It is funny that you say that. This operation [referring to the 1970 spring bombings] was actually carried out in Laos and Cambodia, in the “BVM’s” Black Virgin mountains where I was stationed. The US until 1989 would not admit that we were carrying out missions in the area. My job was to go in and set up listening stations in areas before the ‘LRP’s” Long Range Patrols arrived. This was why we had such a high rate of injured guys. I was detached to the 2nd Marines and it was not fun. The amount of ordnance dropped during this offensive has not be duplicated, even in the current situations we are in today.

Q. Generally speaking across all sources is there anything based on your experience that is always misinterpreted or wrong?

A. The actual communications from the field troops to the support facilities is always wrong. The radios did not work. We had delays in the Sat. COMM’s from the carriers that were providing coordinates and fire control information. We relied on the chopper pilots to give us the real feedback so we could make better decisions in the field.

Q. A lot of sources cite Nixon’s plan of Vietnamization as America giving up on the war, or do you think this is a misconception?

A. Well I do, the ruling government was handpicked by the US. Once it was clear the people of Vietnam were going to support the Khmer Rouge it was all over.

Q. Do you think that your view shifted and that you felt isolated by the government?

A. I did. It was clear that a shift in policy took place and once again it was back to business a usual, no supplies, short useless missions, and tons of red tape.

Q. Did you have any knowledge of the protests going on at home and did this have any impact on you, or was the focus on getting home and obtaining whatever objective was at hand?

A. As I said earlier we were very aware and it did have a significant impact on us. It was unclear if the kids were to blame or if it was a result of the incorrect information they were feeding us, was the issue. You always saw the bad days on TV not when it was business as usual.

Q. Transitioning back to the home front can you talk about some of your experiences returning home?

A. I was in a hospital for an extended period of time having my leg rebuilt. My experience was much different than the grunts. With that said once I was back home some folks respected you while others felt you were just another “Baby Burner”. This was not what you would expect for putting yourself in harm’s way.

Follow-up Interview Conducted:

11/29/17 via email

Interview Responses:

Q. Can you elaborate on your experiences in the BVM’s providing specifics about operations and your role?

A. In May of 1970 through June of 1970 there was an operation called Sanctuary Counter offensive. This was the prelude to the carpet-bombing to follow. There were operations conducted by the 1 cav, 4th Infantry Division, and the 25 Infantry among others. My company was there in April of 1970 and we encountered many opposition points. There were 14 members of my company at this time.  The first firefight we encountered took place in Phnom Penh and the city of Kampong Cham. There was an ARVN Battalion that took the NVA base with in the border of Cambodia. My company had set up the Listening Stations and the forward perimeter for this campaign. We were there for 3 days and lost 2 men. The NVA had retaliated for the US closing down the port of Sihanoukville.

The next operation was “Rockcrusher” officially known as Operation Toan Thang 43. I was part of the task force code named “Shoemaker” and the attack was on an area called the “Parrots Beak”.  There were 10K US troops and 5K SVA regulars. My company set up the LZ for the air dales. We were there for 10 days and my company did not lose any men. We did incur quite a few injuries myself included. I was hit by a 60-mortar attack that hit a troop carrier and pinned me between them. I than took 2 rounds one to the chest and one in the back, not a good day. My right leg was badly damage and I was medevac’d out to a MASH unit.

Q. Can you give me in-depth details about your opinion on the student protests?

A. As to the Kent State issue I view this as a senseless act of violence by the US on its own people. In one of my Humanities classes we studied this in a class called ” Mans inhumanity to Man”.  This was a group of kids that had an opinion. There were allowed to voice it in a peaceful way. Yes there were a lot of participants but they had the right to be there. The National Guard was not ready for this and they were not prepared in my view. I did not agree with hiding in collage to avoid the draft but it is what it is. Some of us decided that the US was worth fighting for and we did.  Because of people like our Veterans you and your piers can attend collage if a county that is free of Communism.