Category: Vietnam

By: Olivia Zoratto

“Was I naïve? You bet! Was it a good time to be naïve? Absolutely!! Protesting to rock and roll was actually fun at times, scary at others…but it was always interesting…” stated Dr. Geoffrey Kurland when reflecting on the anti-Vietnam war protests which he attended during the 1960’s. Now, an eminent, valued, and well-respected pulmonary specialist at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, PA, Dr. Kurland has worked for twenty-eight years in his field of profession, ameliorating the lives of his unwell and infirm patients each day. He began his occupation in the year 1988, after graduating from Amherst College and later Stanford University for medical school, where he diligently devoted his time to medicine as an industrious and conscientious student. However, during his time at the university, more events where transpiring on campus than just that of studies. A greater phenomenon was sweeping the nation, transfiguring tranquil and peaceful campuses into locations of riot and uproar amongst liberal minorities. As an influential reaction to the Vietnam War, the phenomenon of anti-war protests evaded America throughout the 1960’s, commencing a new movement towards an adapting American culture.

As an accomplished author, H.W. Brands illustrates in his book The United States Since 1945: American Dreams, many Americans had objected the Vietnam War since its beginning.[1] “They asked whether the status of a small country far away justified the expenditure of American blood and treasure,” Brands quotes as he discusses President Johnson’s decision to further involve the United States with Vietnam in 1965.[2] However, the repercussions of escalating the war were both grim and consequential, as more casualties were reported and troops were drafted, resulting in an immense and commanding expansion of publicity for anti-war protests. An advertisement for the March for Peace in Vietnam stated, “It’s costing YOU $80 million a day! $80 million a day, $30 billion a year–For what? To wound, burn, and kill innocent children…to sacrifice the youth of America before they have their chance to begin their lives as adults…to raise your rent, food, costs…to bomb a peasant country…”[3]

Dr. Kurland, did not challenge nor oppose Brand’s assertion. “The protests brought attention to the war and tried to emphasize the perceived injustice inherent in our participation in it,” he stated, suggesting that the protests themselves were “trying to prop up a regime that, itself, was not democratic.”[4] Additionally, according to Dr. Kurland, the U.S. drafted men from poorer economic backgrounds, placing them in uniform, while those enrolled in higher educational institutions could be exempted, further demonstrating the injustice and inequity of the war.[5]

As the war developed, and the feeling of injustice and inequity expanded, a particular type of non-violent protest grew to popularity as “teach-ins” began arising on college campuses throughout the mid 1960’s. While still in college at Amherst, Dr. Kurland took part in a teach-in protest himself. “They consisted of a group of scholars and academics and were usually run by historians, political scientists, and others who were both passionate about their feelings on the war. In addition, they were also able to focus their attention on historical and political facts that dealt with the war,” Dr. Kurland stated.[6]

Dr. Kurland as Amherst student

Specifically, the teach-in that Dr. Kurland attended was both historically and politically factual, just as he had suggested. “I went to a teach-in and learned something about the complicated history of Viet Nam, a history of its previous occupation by the French, and the true origins of the war in terms of the artificial division of the country into North and South.  I won’t go into great detail, but I remember coming back to my dorm with a lot of questions about the validity of the American involvement in the conflict…” said Dr. Kurland.[7] Similarly, many liberal minorities and college students embraced this point of view, as they feared that the news and government pronouncements were inadequate to explain the intricacies of the events occurring in Vietnam.[8]

After Dr. Kurland had graduated from Amherst College, he had found himself in far more “Left” learning place.[9] During this time, American culture was being refined, metamorphosing itself into a nation of drugs and rock and roll. “The music, the style of dress, and the whole emerging “hippy” scene were both infectious, intoxicating (in a good way, no pun intended), and completely different from the life I’d had prior to medical school,” Dr. Kurland stated.[10] However, as the irresistible and contagious lifestyle disseminated throughout America, the protests did as well.

Contemplating on the protests he attended, Dr. Kurland spoke of a few in particular such as the march to support the People’s Park in Berkeley, California in 1969. “The land [of the park] was being considered to house a car park, but meanwhile had turned into a dumping ground of refuse and was a mess,” Dr. Kurland began.[11] “Inspired by the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley as well as the anti-War movement, a local committee of protesters decided to use the land as a park, and planted shrubs and trees, took out the garbage and were cleaning it up with the help and money of local merchants who were tired of the eyesore,” he continued.[12] Regrettably, during this time Ronald Reagan had run for office where his platform included clamping down anti-war protestors and their ilk.[13] “Governor Reagan referred to the University of California, Berkeley as “a haven for communist sympathizers, protesters, and sex deviants…(We all thought he was just missing a good time)” Dr. Kurland joked. However, Reagan later appointed the Highway Patrol and Berkley police to reclaim the park, attracting more protestors who were tear gassed and one student by-stander was shot and killed.[14]

As time progressed, with the park fenced in, a peaceful rally and march throughout Berkeley was instigated by the Berkeley Barb, a local underground newspaper. “Many of us (me included) in the medical school went over, and joined about 30,000 people who marched peacefully through Berkeley, with music playing from the windows of residents and people cheering us on from their windows. Ultimately, the park became…a park; the chancellor of the university, who’d helped to gather the police and Highway Patrol officers, was forced to resign. Berkeley residents took a leftward turn that to some extent remains to this day,” Dr. Kurland discussed as he reflected on this indelible occurrence.[15]

Satirical poster featuring “Blue Meanie” (a cartoon villain referencing the popular Beatles film “Yellow Submarine”). The poster depicts how poorly U.C. Berkeley and the local police managed public opposition to People’s Park.(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/df/5d/6b/df5d6b132f4d9b93d73fbdec0a605401.jpg)

Furthermore, Dr. Kurland attended another protest a few years later in San Francisco, once President Nixon took office because he “had a plan” to end the Vietnam War. “His plan, it seemed, included bombing the neighboring country of Cambodia, which to many of us didn’t seem like the correct way to be ending a war and was actually more like extending it to another country,” Dr. Kurland explained.[16] The protest he attended was a massive rally in Golden Gate Park, consisting of 50,000-75,000 people and an article from the Boston Globe stated “the marching column extended nearly 40 blocks when reinforcing groups joined at three assembly areas along the seven mile parade route.”[17] “We heard speeches deriding Richard Milhouse (emphasis of the Milhouse, by the way) Nixon as going back on his campaign promise, resulting in more unnecessary deaths of Americans and Vietnamese,” he said.[18] Additionally, hundreds carried signs and posters as one quoted the President: “ ‘It will have no effect’. Give Nixon no choice.” and another “45, 595 Americans, 693, 492 Vietnamese killed in the war in Vietnam.”[19]

While the reasoning for the protest was violent and intemperate, the march itself was peaceful according to Dr. Kurland. “The speakers, while vitriolic, didn’t call on us to go around destroying things. The desire to was rebuild…make the country better, making us less of a seemingly imperialist country and more a country willing to tolerate differences in the world just as we like to think we can tolerate differences of opinion here in the USA…” he said.[20] For Dr. Kurland, the rally was a great idea, and a great time for it educated Americans on the war, while also provided entertainment for the adapting culture and “hippy” generation.

Dr. Kurland and a fellow medical student at the rally in Golden Gate Park on January 14th, 1967.

Advertisement for the rally in Golden Gate Park(http://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Human_be-in_poster.jpg)

Nonetheless, not all protests served to be as restful and cordial as the rally in Golden Gate Park, being that many resulted in brutality and arrests. Dr. Kurland discussed, in particular, a faculty member at medical school whom had been arrested during a protest, Hadley Kirkman. “At a local protest against the war early in my time at Stanford, Hadley and some others had apparently locked themselves to some building (I’m not sure what the building was, but it apparently was in some way associated with the Government, I think). He was among those arrested and spent the night in jail. It was a transient big deal and word rapidly went around the medical community,” Dr. Kurland recollected.[21] Kirkman became an instantaneous celebrity and was recognized for having the courage to speak his mind, although never participated in other protests.

Unfortunately, Kirkman was only one of a vast majority who were arrested for anti-war protests. An article in the Washington Post, “11 Arrested in Melee after Antiwar Protest” stated, “At least 11 persons, including four juveniles, were arrested in Washington last night during several melees that erupted after a peaceful demonstration against the use of tax dollars for the Vietnam War.”[22] Police were brought in after demonstrators smashed windows in federal office buildings along the Avenue, however some of the more aggressive and belligerent demonstrators threw rocks at the force, resulting in arrests.[23]

Comparably, according to another article in the Washington Post “Protest for Peace Brings 34 Arrests on Steps of Capitol”, “Thirty-four Vietnam War protesters were arrested yesterday on the Capitol steps in two separate incidents after they refused to stop reading the names of 35,000 American war dead.”[24] Moreover, the group’s arrest was similar to arrests made four times earlier in the month by Capitol Police. [25] Evidently, Kirkman’s arrest, the 11 arrested in Melee, and the 34 arrested on the steps of the Capitol, only serve as a few examples of protests and demonstrations, and indicate the escalating feelings of negativity towards the war.

Nevertheless, although sometimes violent, while other times harmonious and undisturbed, Dr. Kurland asserted that anti-war protests did possess value and avail. “Doing things like this with others results in an amazing sense of community, particularly if one is protesting something that one feels is monstrous and too big to be attacked by one person,” he stated.[26] In particular, one of the aspects of the Vietnam War was that it involved the entire U.S. military, the U.S. government, foreign policy, and everything else. “They say it’s hard to fight city hall…it’s both harder (and yet sometimes easier) to fight the government itself.  It is somewhat removed (Washington seemed very far away from Amherst and Stanford, for example), and it’s possible in our society to actually disagree with the government and not get put in jail for life,” Dr. Kurland admitted.[27]Those in favor of the war, the government, the unjust society, often went further suggesting that those in opposition should leave the United States. Dr. Kurland, however, felt differently. “It’s my country, so what I think is right about it I accept and what I think is wrong about it I will work to change. I had no interest in leaving my country (after all, it was and is my country, too).  I just wanted it to be a better version of my country…” he said[28], a version that many wished for, of concord, harmony, and contentment.

[1] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 152.

[2] Ibid, 152.

[3] “Advertisements” Jesús Colón Collection: Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection: Series 2.

[4] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), April 15th, 2016.

[5] Interview with Geoffrey Kurland (email), May 03rd, 2016.

[6] Interview with Geoffrey Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[7] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[8] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[9] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[10] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[11] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[12] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[13] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[14] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[15] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[16] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[17] “85,000 attend golden gate protest.”Boston Globe,16 November 1969.76.

[18] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[19] “85,000 attend golden gate protest.”Boston Globe,16 November 1969.76.

[20] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[21] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[22] “11 Arrested in Melee A After Antiwar Protest.” The Washington Post, 16 April 1970. A1.

[23] Ibid, A1.

[24] “Protest for Peace Bring 34 Arrests on Steps of Capitol.” The Washington Post, 19 June 1969. B1.

[25] Ibid, B1.

[26] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[27] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

[28] Interview with Dr. Kurland (email), May 03^rd, 2016.

By Jack Lodge

First Draft Lottery (Courtesy of HistoryNet)

Tom Hay was a freshman at Earlham College when the first United States Army Draft-Lottery broadcast aired across the nation in December of 1969, in order to acquire more troops to combat the ever growing communist threat of the North Vietnamese in South East Asia. Hay remembers the night of the lottery, saying “when the day came to draw the numbers out of the big drum, I can still remember it all the boys of draft age that year gathered into a room, and it was just the boys… I can still see the faces of the people who got numbers of like one, two or three…” [1]

That night only numbers one through one hundred and twenty were chosen for service in Vietnam. Hay’s number was 254. “I had the luxury of just walking away and planning my life without having to worry about being drafted or anything.”[2] Hay recalls thankfully, however as H.W. brands writes in his book American Dreams, “Some Americans had objected to the war in Vietnam from the outset.”[3] Hay was one of those Americans who opposed the war because of his upbringing in the Quaker Community and their tradition of nonviolence.

Had he been drafted Hay would have registered to receive conscientious objector status, which mean he would have to appear in front of a draft board to make his case on why he could could not serve. Hay was confident that because of his Quaker upbringing that “The cards would have been stacked in my favor, coming from southern Chester County, which has so many Quakers… and being a Quaker of course with their tradition of pacifism and not participating in war, I think there was very little chance that I wouldn’t have been granted my conscientious objector status…”[4] During this time many men drafted into service via the lottery system would try to claim conscientious objector status, and the majority succeeded like Hay’s older brother who was granted conscientious objector status and was sent to work in Denver, Colorado as an orderly. Hay describes the process of alternative service as “what you do is you present options and they approve one… I don’t think they sent you somewhere, you offered and said ‘well, I’ll do this,’ and they said well that’s okay or that’s not okay.”[5] However, those who did not go to war faced scrutiny on the homefront.

In the early years of the conflict Hay recalls that “initially people who were against the war were pretty much looked down upon as being unpatriotic, or “chicken,” or… you know… whatever, just somehow not quite adequate, either in terms of their love of country or their manliness.”[6] This form of disdain and apprehension of citizens who objected to the war in Vietnam was spread throughout the country to the point that draft boards in certain areas of the country would not approve any application for conscientious objector status.[7] In many instances, those applying for conscientious objector status, claiming that Vietnam in particular was an “unjust war.” Judges and draft boards alike were skeptical of this claim and saw it as a cop-out in order for the majority of applicants to avoid service.[8] However, Hay would not have had this problem, coming from an area of the country that had a high population of Quakers and himself being a practicing Quaker. Religion was a large factor or why people who applied for conscientious objector status were approved. In some cases, though an individual had their own moral objections to war, they were not granted conscientious objector status because they had no religious foundation for their opposition.[9]

Not only did some judges and draft boards have disdain for would-be conscientious objectors, but the area in which Hay was going school at the time, Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana “was at that point… a very conservative town. In fact a number of people earned a living at the munitions factory in Richmond and had no patience or tolerance for the ‘hippy-Quakers’ at Earlham.”[10] This was a different environment than what Tom was used to; growing up in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania in a Quaker community, and even Earlham college which had been “entirely supportive of my attitudes and my beliefs.” Hay describes Earlham College as a “community isolated within its’ own community.”[11]

Hay likens the Earlham College community as similar to that of the community in which he grew up being more oriented with the Quaker traditions. As result, the war was heavily protested on his campus in the form of protest marches, or to the more extreme, tearing up draft cards.[12] Though Hay never tore up his draft card, he recalls friends who did: “Certainly I had friends who were a little bit more extreme than me the tore up their draft cards, which was against the law. They did it publicly or on purpose in front of an official and some of them did time in jail, which was brutal, some of them were horribly mistreated by other prisoners because, again, they were considered to be cowards.”[13] Hay goes to recount an experience of a friends husband, saying that “I don’t recall how long his sentence was, at least a year, and he was never the same again when he came out- he was emotionally traumatized- I do not know specifically what happened to him but [I] can imagine [what happened to him] because draft resisters were typically seen as unmanly.”[14]

Mistreatment of this hippy-Quaker counter culture that Hay had associated with at the time was common where he was in Richmond. He and/or his friends would often be called out or shamed in public because they were seen as unpatriotic or lacking in manliness. “It could be a pretty hostile experience,” Hay recalls, “and you would go into stores and they would refuse to serve you, and one time when I was walking back from town some of the Richmond folks sort of walked around me and threatened to beat me up and all the rest of it. You know, one time when I walked down town someone threw a beer can at me and it hit me in the head.”[15]

Despite the scrutiny that Hay endured in Richmond, Indiana, he still did not budge on his stance against the conflict, and war in general. As the war progressed into the early 1970s, opposition became more mainstream so to speak after President Nixon ordered the bombing of Laos and the invasion of Cambodia, two areas in South Vietnam were not only trade routes but were also where the North Vietnamese “had taken refuge from the fighting”[16] When these actions taken by the president became public knowledge, especially the invasion of Cambodia, Hay says “more and more of the country began to turn against [the war], and so then of course it became less difficult to be a protester against the war.”[17] After this information came to light, large scale anti war protests, violent and nonviolent alike became more common, especially in colleges and universities. Hay did not discuss with me his personal experiences with protests at Earlham, other than his aforementioned friends that tore up their draft cards. Across the nation however, protests on university campuses became more common as Brands states: “On hundreds of campuses across the country students boycotted classes and faculty suspended their teaching in favor of discussion…”[18] However, Hay did participate in the anti-war protest march on Washington D.C. in 1971. While where he was he says was a peaceful protest, other protesters in other parts of the city were tear gassed by the police. He says “[when I was] on the bus and headed back to Earlham feeling positive about publicly expressing my belief that the war was wrong.”[19]

The war in Vietnam was possibly one of the most controversial wars in terms of the United State’s motive for intervention in the country’s history up until that point. Objection to this war amongst citizens such as Tom Hay and his peers were on both religious and moral grounds, and they, like so many others did not let their objection to the war stop at more than just words. As more and more came to light about this war, more and more protests against came into the forefront of American culture, and as did the hippy counter culture of nonviolence and moral objection to war.

[1] Telephone interview with Tom Hay, April 4, 2016

[2] [Hay] interview

[3] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 152

[4] [Hay] interview

[5] [Hay] interview

[6] [Hay] interview

[7] [Hay] interview

[8]  “Draft Resister Upheld In Objecting to Viet War: Draft Resister Upheld In Rejecting Viet War Adopted by Hundreds Denial of Guarantees,” The Washington Post, Times Herald, December 25, 1969 [ProQuest]

[9] Goldfarb, Ronald L.. 1966. “Three Conscientious Objectors”. American Bar Association Journal 52 (6). American Bar Association: 564–67

[10] [Hay] interview

[11] [Hay] interview

[12] Email interview with Tom Hay, May 2, 2016

[13] [Hay] interview

[14] [Hay] e-mail interview

[15] [Hay] interview

[16]  Brands, 170

[17] [Hay] interview

[18] Brands, 170

[19] [Hay] e-mail interview

By Sarah Goldberg

Students protest the Vietnam War outside of Denny on May 6, 1970 (Photo courtesy of Pierce Bounds).

“I’ve never been a radical,” insists former anti-Vietnam War activist Pierce Bounds.[1] In an oral history interview about his years at Dickinson College, Bounds laments the historical treatment of the student anti-war movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s: “There’s been a lot written about veterans coming back and being spat on and I think most of that is urban myth.”[2] Bill Poole, a classmate of Bounds, agrees: “We really played at being hippies and played at being freaks.”[3] Yet the narrative of radical leftist student protest certainly dominates conventional historiography. Popular images of the period depict violent student protest leading to mass destruction of property; film footage features leftist ideologues calling for anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist revolutions.[4] Historian H.W. Brands aligns with this mainstream historical perspective by highlighting the radical organization Students for a Democratic Society as the face of the student anti-war movement. Focusing his analysis on the work of SDS leader Tom Hayden, Brands quotes the organization’s “earnestly provocative” manifesto and links the organization to its most extreme faction, the Weathermen, a group known for their violent tactics of bombing and riots.[5] While Brands focuses on the anti-war movement’s most radical moments, Bounds’ testimony of social change and peaceful activism at Dickinson College seems a world away. Bounds’ unique college experience highlights a movement born not of the radical left, but instead of a generational adolescence that inspired social changes even beyond anti-war activism. Bounds’ memories of student protest culture ultimately complicate Brands’ radical narrative by framing the trajectory of Dickinson’s moderate anti-war movement in the context of a larger generational shift towards new campus norms rather than radical politics.

Bounds’ denunciation of radicalism was rooted in his conservative childhood. While Brands uniformly labels the Baby Boomer generation as solidly liberal, [6] Bounds admits that he supported Nixon in 1960 and even wrote an essay in support of the war in Vietnam during junior high.[7] Bounds’ parents boasted a solid Republican voting record and his comfortable white-collar family had little reason to challenge the status quo. Yet as Bounds was introduced to the working class neighborhoods of Philadelphia, he began to question the political influence of his parents.[8] His growing political consciousness was further fueled by a “wake up call,” when an older peer became one of the first casualties in Vietnam. “The more you knew about [the Vietnam War], the more you realized it was kind of a hopeless policy,” explains Bounds.[9] As the young Bounds witnessed the horrors of Vietnam both in his community and on television, he grew more involved in liberal politics, much to the chagrin of his parents.

Far from dissuading Bounds, the disapproval of his parents merely encouraged his liberal leanings. “All of us baby boomers hit college and we knew we didn’t want to be like our parents,” explains Bounds of the widening generational divide.[10] He and his friends actively sought ways to distinguish themselves politically from their parents. Bounds and his friends liked “irritating our elders” by flaunting a copy of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. “I never read it. Most people never read it. But we loved to hold that little red book,” Bounds reminisces.[11] Rebellious acts sought to distance the Baby Boomers from what they saw as the Establishment. Judge Edward Guido, a peer of Bounds at Dickinson, recalls the historical context of this division: “Our parents were the World War II generation… and so they didn’t understand how these snot nosed little kids, who had everything handed to them their whole life, couldn’t appreciate [it]. How dare they question authority?”[12] Bounds notes that this resentment could even break families up entirely. While his own parents tacitly accepted his growing liberalism, he recalls that some of his peers were disowned for their involvement in the anti-war movement and other liberal causes.[13] For the Baby Boomers, however, this generational divide was not a burden but rather the primary appeal of liberal politics.

Yet as Bounds left the conservativism of home, he soon found that Dickinson College in 1967 was far from the hotbed of leftist politics described by Brands.[14] Perhaps Berkeley or Ann Arbor were swept up in new liberal attitudes, but changing social norms had yet to reach the sleepy town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Dickinson clung steadfastly to the rules of the 1940s and 1950s, mandating strict limitations on student independence. “All of the old rules, social rules were still firmly in place,” remembers Bounds, describing how female students had to obey a 10 pm curfew or else risk “big trouble.”[15] Former Dickinson College President Bill Durden recalls similar restrictions: “We couldn’t go upstairs [in a women’s dormitory]; we would have been, you know, arrested or something.”[16] Dickinson’s harsh policies represented the last vestiges of an age of institutional conservativism. As Bounds arrived on campus, so did major social and cultural upheavals.

At first, these new liberal impulses represented only a minority of Dickinson students. Bounds notes that the vast majority of his peers were far removed from the hippie ideal remembered in survey histories. Among “the fringe,” however, anti-war and anti-Establishment sentiment had begun to flourish. Bounds reminisces fondly about the “back of the dining hall culture,” where artists, musicians, hippies and protesters smoked cigarettes and chatted for hours.[17] “We were young kids and we were full of piss and vinegar,” remembers Poole, recalling that he and his friends in the fringe were eager to protest just about anything.[18] During his freshman year, Bounds describes the liberal factions of the school as a secluded minority.

Yet it wasn’t long before the national move towards liberalism infiltrated the campus mainstream. Soon, even bastions of conservative culture like the fraternities and ROTC started to challenge social norms. The sexual revolution arrived at Dickinson shortly after Bounds’ arrival, challenging gender roles and catalyzing protests for co-ed dormitories.[19] Recreational drug use grew more common, as the administration frantically tried to prevent the spread of drug culture: “Marihuana [sic] is part of the student’s environment,” admitted Dickinson’s Drug Education Committee.[20] Bounds also cites an “amazing blossoming of the arts” as inspired students pursued their creative impulses.[21] At Dickinson, the movement towards a more liberal campus was assisted by a wave of younger professors with progressive ideals of education and a relaxed sense of hierarchy. “The professors weren’t necessarily our enemies,” recalls Durden, noting that some even allowed students to call them by their first names.[22] As the college moved gradually toward a more liberal campus environment in late 1960s, almost all students felt empowered to challenge authority in ways that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago.

This new attention to student’s rights culminated in D.E.C.L.A.R.E Day, or Dickinson’s Expression Concerning Learning and Re-Evaluating of Education.[23] On March 5, 1969, the administration announced a moratorium on classes so that students could participate in discussions with faculty. Students hoped to address the conservative academic environment that felt anachronistic among the social and cultural shifts of the late 1960s. “My courses add up to a degree – do they add up to an education?” questioned the front page of The Dickinsonian.[24] In particular, students called for “revision of the school’s grading system, reduction in course distribution requirements, reduction of the course load for freshmen and sophomores, opening of co-educational living units, and a new college government arrangement.”[25] The college began a rapid institutional shift to catch up with the new culture of the campus. “[D.E.C.L.A.R.E. Day] was just to rethink the whole social order of things and out of that came what you’re still living under,” explains Bounds.[26] Kisner-Woodward Hall soon opened as the first co-educational dormitory and academic reform swept through the college. When Mary Frances Watson, the Dean of Women at Dickinson College, spoke to first-year women and their parents during the 1969 orientation program, her speech notes read: “DC is not the conservative little college in Penna. that will ‘take care of my daughter, see that she’s in at 10, never tastes a drink, etc.”[27] The Dickinson of Bounds’ freshman year was gone. The Baby Boomers ensured that even the conservative Dickinson could not go unaffected by the national shift towards generational empowerment.

Ultimately, the anti-war movement at Dickinson followed a similar trajectory as other campus reform efforts. Popular opposition to the Vietnam War moved liberal politics out of the domain of the fringe and into mainstream campus discourse. Inspired by this same generational empowerment to challenge authority, the larger student body soon embraced criticism of the war. By 1970, Bounds remembers that “the majority… were fed up and joined the march.”[28] As a member of ROTC, Durden was as far away from the fringe as you could get. Yet even he recalls “internally questioning, ‘What is this all about?’ This is a war that didn’t seem to be making sense.”[29] These doubts were compounded by a fear of the draft: “More and more people our age were getting shot,” remembers Bounds, “that really came to the forefront of our minds when the lottery system was introduced.”[30] As fear of the draft increased as the war in Vietnam expanded to Laos and Cambodia, opposition to the war grew stronger among all social groups. No longer a subculture of the school, the anti-war movement in 1969 and 1970 was poised to act on this new spirit of youth liberation.

Due to the mainstream nature of the movement, anti-war protest at Dickinson was far removed from the violent scenes described by Brands at other universities. By 1968, Dickinson was merely catching up to the true pioneers in campus culture. “We weren’t the Berkeley types,” stresses Poole, labeling the protest culture at Dickinson “middle class hippie-ism.”[31] For all their successes in pushing forward co-ed dorms, protest culture at Dickinson was nothing like the radicalism of SDS. Citing his Quaker background, Bounds notes that he “never had any stomach for [violence].”[32] The relatively restrained disposition of even Bounds’ liberal subculture highlights the campus’s prevailing moderate nature. At Dickinson’s largest anti-war protest, more than a thousand marched through Carlisle to the War College in May 1970 in reaction to the shootings at Kent State and the invasion of Cambodia.[33] “I remember saying that in a lot of these protest marches, it was really, that was the social way to connect with women back then,” remembers Guido, who chose to march separately from the crowd to demonstrate his serious dedication to the cause.[34] Bounds admits that while he and his fringe took the cause quite seriously, the protests were hardly a gloomy affair.[35] During the strike in the days leading to the march, students voted against shutting the school down and ensured that all students who wished to go to classes could be able to do so. “We were a very polite group of radicals,” jokes Poole, “We wanted our voices heard, but we didn’t want to disrupt anybody else’s life.”[36] After the march on the War College, the anti-war movement gradually faded away as the activist spirit died down over summer vacation.

Bounds’ account of student protest culture at Dickinson offers an interesting counter-narrative to Brands’ tale of radical activism. While Brands relates campus protest to nationalist leftist politics, Bounds’ memories seem to connect the anti-war movement more closely with campus reform protests for coed dorms or a relaxed academic hierarchy. Among Dickinson’s largely moderate student body, opposition to the Vietnam War was inextricable from a larger movement of generational empowerment. Despite its ideological distance from the radical left, Bounds looks back on his student activist days as a formative experience: “Those four or five years were unlike anything since,” Bounds remembers fondly, “It was a great time.”[37]

[1] Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Interview with William Poole by Christian Miller and Jason Snow, October 24, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[4] Flint, Jerry, “Students Debate New Left Tactics: Seek to Battle Draft and Set Up Radical Organizations,” New York Times (New York, NY), July 3, 1967.

[5] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 153.

[6] Brands, American Dreams, 213.

[7] Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Interview with Judge Edward Guido by Flint Angelovic and Michael Gogoj, February 22, 2005, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[13] Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.

[14] H.W. Brands, American Dreams, 153.

[15] Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.

[16] Interview with William G. Durden by Michael Gogoj and Jason Snow, December 8, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[17] Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.

[18] Interview with William Poole by Christian Miller and Jason Snow, October 24, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[19] Interview with William G. Durden by Michael Gogoj and Jason Snow, December 8, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[20] “Report of Drug Education Committee,” The Dickinsonian (Carlisle, PA), February 7, 1969.

[21] Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.

[22] Interview with William G. Durden by Michael Gogoj and Jason Snow, December 8, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[23] “March 5, Declare Day, 1969,” The Dickinsonian, (Carlisle, PA), March 7, 1969.

[24] Ibid.

[25] “Declare Day,” The Dickinsonian (Carlisle, PA), March 13, 1969.

[26] Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.

[27] Watson, Mary Frances. “Notes for Orientation Speech,” June 13, 1969, Box 4, Folder 7, President’s Office Series 4, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[28] Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.

[29] Interview with William G. Durden by Michael Gogoj and Jason Snow, December 8, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[30] Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.

[31] Interview with William Poole by Christian Miller and Jason Snow, October 24, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[32] Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.

[33] For further reading on student-led protests at Dickinson College in May 1970, check out The Dickinsonia Project’s “The May Crisis: Voices of Protest at Dickinson College in 1970.”

[34] Interview with Judge Edward Guido by Flint Angelovic and Michael Gogoj, February 22, 2005, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[35] Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.

[36] Interview with William Poole by Christian Miller and Jason Snow, October 24, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[37] Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.