History 118: US History Since 1877

Peaceful End to the Cold War video

By Luke Beiles

When John Sullivan joined the United States Naval Academy in the 1980s, the Cold War was at the forefront of American minds. A peaceful end to the war was hard to imagine, with the arms race in full effect. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had enough nuclear warheads to destroy one another multiple times over. “You feared nuclear annihilation… it did kind of consume your physic,” [1]  said Sullivan, who began service as a chief medical officer in 1987. Upon his entrance to the Navy, Sullivan believed that the Cold War would “persist longer or even result in a nuclear war” [2]  In 1992 he was sent on a 2-year set of orders, stationed in Gaeta, Italy aboard the USS Belknap. If someone had told Sullivan when he was joining the Navy that he would be peacefully sailing the USS Belknap into Novorrossik in 1994, the first United States ship into Russia since World War II, he would’ve said that’s simply impossible, especially for a medical officer. [3] This inconceivable dream did indeed come true for Sullivan. In American Dreams by H.W. Brands, the peaceful end to the Cold War is attributed to the Reagan Arms acceleration, the role of Mikhail Gorbachev in peace talks, and the diplomatic efforts of President Bush, but, although John Sullivan’s recollections from his time aboard the USS Belknap do add depth to Brands analysis, the peaceful end should also be attributed to the Malta Summit of 1989.

Sullivan served in the United States Naval Academy as a Medical officer for 32 years

The early 1980s saw the Reagan administration begin a buildup of arms in hopes of restoring American self-confidence in the Cold War against the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union. [4] Reagan’s actions at the beginning of his presidency annoyed then Premier Leonid Brezhnev, of the Soviet Union, “His frustration grew as Reagan approved a program calling for defense expenditures that totaled $1.5 trillion.” [5] The United States arms buildup coincided with the decline of the Soviet Union economy, which was going to struggle to keep up with the spending of the Reagan administration. Brezhnev passed away in 1982, and “most elite groups understood that the Soviet economy was in trouble.”[6] Mikhail Gorbachev, who came into power in the Soviet Union in 1985, understood the economic trouble that the Soviet Union was going through and sought to cut government spending. The Soviet Union was spending around 25 percent of its gross national product on its defense build-up. [7]   This spending was not sustainable given the economic dilemma that the Soviet Union faced. The nail in the coffin was when the Reagan administration proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, at which point Gorbachev decided that the Soviet Union could not continue to attempt to “match the Americans at each step of the technological way” [8] As a result, Gorbachev knew that their Cold War policy had to change. Gorbachev’s intention to create change became immediately apparent, he intended to make it clear to not only the United States but to the world that the Soviet Union was not an international threat. Sullivan recalls having a “favorable impression of Gorbachev. I knew that his decisions were reducing our angst over the possibility of nuclear war. For that I was grateful.” [9]  

Despite the introduction of a true peacemaker at the helm of the Soviet Union, the Cold War was still not over, although Reagan and Gorbachev had discussions of arms reductions and even of the elimination of nuclear weapons entirely in October of 1986 in Reykjavík, the two leaders could not come to an agreement. Reagan and Gorbachev were both facing pressure from their respective governments, and the history of mistrust between the nations hindered the possibility of a comprehensive end to the Cold War. Sullivan joined the Navy just a year later in 1987, and at the time he still feared the possibility of nuclear war due to the “proliferation of nuclear weapons and intransigence on each side.” [10]  Although Reagan certainly played his part in the easing of Cold War tensions, particularly with his own ideological shift from building up American arms when entering office, to agreeing to destroy nuclear missiles through the 1987 INF treaty, it wasn’t until George H.W Bush entered office where peace truly became in sight.  

When Bush entered office, he was aware that the Soviet Union was “imploding”, but he also knew he had to be wary of the fact that the Soviets still had the firepower to destroy the United States within minutes. [11] The Soviet Union was collapsing, much to the surprise of the world. Sullivan recalled, “I didn’t think that the Soviet Union would dissolve, and certainly not so precipitously.” [12] But this was the reality, Gorbachev’s reform effort was effectively “surrendering the superpower status,” of the Soviet Union. [13]  Gorbachev intended to make this very clear to President Bush on December 2nd, 1989, off the coast of Malta. The soviet cruiser, Slava, was to moor alongside the USS Belknap, where Bush and Gorbachev were to engage in serious discussions regarding arms reductions. Although Sullivan himself was not on the ship at the time, one of his friends named Jeff Kaiser, who was the medical officer on board the USS Belknap at the time, described to Sullivan the remarkable story of the Malta Summit. Meeting planners hoped that Malta would be a picturesque site for the crucial get-together of Bush and Gorbachev. [14] However picturesque would be far from the word to describe the inclement weather that the ships encountered. Kaiser described the elements as “just horrible… there was so much wind that the ship was at risk of being pulled off its mooring.” [15] As a result of the weather, those who were not used to being aboard the ship were experiencing sickness, including Secretary of State James Baker, Chief of Staff John H. Sonunu, and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. Kaiser treated the gentlemen with scopolamine, and despite the weather, President Bush and Gorbachev went on to ensue discussion the following day. H.W. Brands does not mention the Malta Summit despite it being a huge turning point in the Cold War. At this meeting, Gorbachev made clear to Bush that “the Soviet Union will not under any circumstances initiate a war… Moreover, the USSR is prepared to cease considering the U.S. as an enemy and announce this openly.” [16] Although this meeting did not effectively end the Cold War, Gorbachev’s senior foreign policy aide, Anatoly Chernyaev, came out of the meeting with the understanding that “the threat of nuclear war was a thing of the past. As was the Cold War itself” [17] Given the magnitude of this change in understanding after the discussions in Malta, it was surprising that Brands did not cover the Malta Summit in any capacity.

The USS Belknap, the 6th fleet flagship, is the ship that was present at the Malta Conference. Sullivan sailed this ship into Novorossiysk, Russia in October of 1994.

The end of the Cold War was solidified during the Bush presidency, notably marked by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. While the formal end of the Cold War wasn’t a result of a single agreement during the Bush term, his approach to diplomacy and cooperation with Gorbachev played a pivotal role in managing the peaceful transition of the Soviet Union. Despite the Cold War being more or less done by the time Sullivan was called into service in 1992, the job was not finished. Very few envisioned the downfall of the Soviet Union, and those who did, expected the dismantling of the Empire to occur violently. [18] Bush had a large task on his hands of handling these countries that were in a transition phase from the Soviet Union. The president visualized a “New World Order” that would share a “respect for freedom, democracy, and free markets.” [19] Sullivan and his comrades aboard the USS Belknap were responsible for executing the vision of the President. The role of the USS Belknap was to “go around the Mediterranean, port to port, and conduct diplomacy.” [20]  This included diplomatic visits to former Soviet states such as Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia. When visiting these countries, Sullivan described something of a victory tour, “It felt like we won the Cold War – we pulled into these places, set up American bands, and danced with their women.” (20, Zoom) The receptiveness to American presence was apparent even in the former Soviet states, which surprised Sullivan, who had “assumed that they were more loyal to the Kremlin.” (21, Email) In October 1994, the Belknap was set to arrive on a diplomatic visit to Novorossiysk, Russia. Sullivan, who had received the officer of the deck award the day prior for effectively communicating the presence of a Russian backfire bomber within striking range of the Belknap, received an incredible honor from Captain Moller: the first Naval officer to pull a ship into Russia since World War II. (22, Zoom Interview)

Left to right: US Navy hat, Russian doll of Gorbachev, USS Belknap hat, Russian sailor “Black Sea Fleet” hat

Sullivan pulling the USS Belknap into Novorrosik shows a remarkable change in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union since Sullivan’s upbringing in the 80’s and 90’s. Sullivan went from entering the Navy with true fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, to peacefully sailing the USS Belknap into Novorossiysk just 6 years later. This extraordinary achievement would not have been possible had it not been for Reagan and his arms buildup, Gorbachev’s intentions for peace and his role in the fall of the Soviet Union, and Bush’s effective diplomacy. While H.W. Brands does an excellent job of describing the roles Reagan, Gorbachev, and Bush had in the mellow end to the Cold War, through John Sullivan’s recollections it was made clear that Brands should have included the events in Malta in 1989. The illustration of Sullivan pulling the USS Belknap into Russia tremendously personifies the peaceful end to the Cold War, to which the world is astoundingly grateful. 

[1] Zoom Interview with John Sullivan, November 17, 2023.

[2] Email Interview with John Sullivan, December 6th, 2023.

[3] Email Interview with John Sullivan, December 6th, 2023.

[4] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 219.

[5] Wilson, James Graham. “Did Reagan Make Gorbachev Possible?” Presidential Studies Quarterly 38, no. 3 (2008): 456–75. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41219690. 

[6] Britannica Academic, s.v. “Russia,” accessed December 5, 2023, https://academic.eb.com/levels/collegiate/article/Russia/109504#38564.toc. 

[7] Britannica Academic, s.v. “Russia,” accessed December 5, 2023, https://academic.eb.com/levels/collegiate/article/Russia/109504#38564.toc. 

[8] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 260.

[9] Email Interview with John Sullivan, December 6th, 2023.

[10] Email Interview with John Sullivan, December 6th, 2023.

[11] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 272.

[12] Email Interview with John Sullivan, December 6th, 2023.

[13] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 276.

[14] Gorbachev and Bush: The Last Superpower Summits. Conversations that Ended the Cold War (Central European University Press, 2020),  7.

[15] Zoom Interview with John Sullivan, November 17, 2023.

[16] Gorbachev and Bush: The Last Superpower Summits. Conversations that Ended the Cold War (Central European University Press, 2020),  7.

[17] Gorbachev and Bush: The Last Superpower Summits. Conversations that Ended the Cold War (Central European University Press, 2020),  13.

[18] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 291.

[19] Eales, Stewart C. “Democracy Promotion in the Post-Cold War Era.” Edited by Larry D. Miller. The Army War College Review. Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep11940.4. 

[20] Zoom Interview with John Sullivan, November 17, 2023.

[21] Zoom Interview with John Sullivan, November 17, 2023.

[22] Email Interview with John Sullivan, December 6th, 2023.

[23] Zoom Interview with John Sullivan, November 17, 2023.

Appendix

“The reunification of Germany might have marked the definitive end of the Cold War – which, after all, had started with the division of Germany – had another event, still more definitive in concluding the contest between the United States and the Soviet Union, not followed within several months.”  (H.W. Brands, American Dreams p. 276)

Interview Subject

John Sullivan, age 58, currently Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at St. Clair Health in Pittsburgh, served as a Medical Officer in the Navy for 32 years. He was stationed in Gaeta, Italy from 1992 to 1994, where he was on board the USS Belknap.

Interview 

Zoom recording with John Sullivan, Carlisle, PA, November 17, 2023.

Selected Transcript

Luke: Did you feel like the Cold War was over when the Wall fell?

John: It felt like we won. It felt like we won the Cold War – and then we pulled into these places and set up American bands and danced with their women. It felt like our American trophies. I literally was dancing in the squares of Odesa Ukraine with a beautiful Ukrainian women – it felt like it was over. It felt like they (Ukraine) were going to be moving towards democracy, it didn’t feel like it was moving to an autocratic state at all. The former Soviet Republics had broken off but I still perceived them as part of the Soviet Union, certainly Ukraine felt like Russia to me. Growing up in the 70s and 80s you feared nuclear annihilation. It did kind of consume your physic growing up. So this felt like the end point. Summer of ’91 it was like ok we won, we’re done. We outspent them. I joined the military in the ‘80s during the Reagan run up to just outspend the Soviets and you could argue that that worked. It was a little risky, there were skirmishes, the Russians were in Afghanistan at the time in ‘80s.

Luke: So when did you end up going overseas again?

John: I went over in August of ’92, on a 2 year set of orders that got extended another 6-8 months. THE war in Bosnia had just started, most of my time over there was spent intermittently cruising the Mediterranean and serving on the 6^th fleet Flagship.  I spent August ‘92 through the winter of ‘94. The ship I was on interestingly hosted a major nuclear arm agreement between Bush Sr and Gorbachev in December of ’89. The ships met off the coast of Malta. In a bay in Malta. It was the USS Belknap, the 6^th fleet Flagship and a Soviet cruiseliner, it wasn’t a military vessel. They moored alongside each other. Bush and his cabinet advisors who included Scowcraft, secretary of state, Sonunu and Baker. They were on board the ship negotiating the last minute deals to this nuclear disarmament agreement. My friend, the medical officer on board told me this anecdote from it. He said that it ended up being this horrible storm. They were anchored in this protected harbor on the North side of Malta. Horrible winds and seas. So much wind that the ship was at risk of dragging anchor and being pulled off of its mooring. The ship was rocking even at anchorage, but for whatever reason a lot of the non-ship board company, essentially the secret service, were all sick. They were vomiting passageways, my friend Jeff Kaiser, who was the medical officer at the time, described handing out sea sickness medication. But late that evening, the night before Bush was to meet Gorbachev, he got called to the admirals cabinet where the president and his advisors were for sea sickness medicine. He said I went to my drawer and he said his armamentarium was the same as mine at the time, he had the antihistamine pill called meclizine, and a patch called scopolamine, the side effects of each of them he quickly considered before he went up there. The meclizine was not as effective and it tended to make you sleepy, and he said that seems disadvantageous for this group working on a nuclear disarmament agreement. The scopolamine patch is more effective and it has a lower side effect profile, but for some elderly people it creates psychosis. He says well that doesn’t sound good for a nuclear disarmament working group. He said well he figured the likelihood of that happening to all of them was nil. He said I went up to the admirals cabin, the president of the United States was behind the admirals desk, he was fine. He was an old navy man and he had fished off of Maine a lot, he had no problem. But Baker, Sonunu, and Scowcraft  were sick. Baker was a 6 foot 5 Texan, and he stood up from behind a little booth in his office, where my friend was about 5 foot 6. He said this man was towering above him. He said the longest minute of his life was when Baker said, “give me the patch doc” He said he handed out the patch plenty of times over the last 2 years but never actually opened one. He was trying to peel open this package and then peel the patch off of its backing. Meanwhile the leader of the free world was watching him try to do this as he goes so slowly. He slapped the patch on James Baker, he said the next day they were planning to go over to negotiate with Gorbachov, and they were still decided whether it was safe or not to cross on small boats over to the Soviet ship. They were all on the bridge and wind was blowing, in really heavy winds you can put a man forward called the anchor watch, who is outside the very bow of the ship in heavy wind and rain, freezing in December as you could imagine, with his pea coat pulled up around his head. He just stands and watches the anchor and sees if it starts to drag and alerts the ship to get underway. Everyone is up on the bridge decided whether they should go or not. They decided that ultimately it was up to the President, and they looked around themselves and the President was missing. And they said well where is he? They were sending people in different directions looking for him and finally someone looked out and saw that the President was out on the bow of the ship with the kid on the anchor watch. And he had his arm around this guy in his pea coat. The kid later said I’m out there freezing my tail off, thinking I only got like 15 more minutes on this watch and President Bush shows up and asks me “where are you from?” Ultimately the President decided to go over to the Soviet ship, they conducted the negotiation, it was over the START II nuclear disarmament agreement. The purpose of it was to reduce total number of nuclear weapons. I remember at that time we were just building, we were each at 40 or 50 thousand nuclear warheads. It was an arms race, it was getting to the point where each of us had hundreds if that thousands more weapons than you needed to destroy the other one. So why don’t we just both cap what we’re doing, save money and improve world safety.

But yea this was on my ship, the USS Belknap, based out of Italy. Which you can imagine was a glorious duty station. I was 25 years old and I got assigned that. I was pretty convinced I got the best duty station in the Navy. A ship between Rome and Naples on the coast for several years, and all we did was go around the Medittereanean, port to port and conduct diplomacy. At first I had this moment within my first couple of months thinking whether this was good use of taxpayer dollars. And then I realized it was actually fairly cost effective diplomacy, when the French were balking participating in a no fly zone over Bosnia, we got sent up there and put on a party and conducted a negotiation settlement and they were in. And I thought to myself well it probably cost 10,000 gallons of Marine diesel fuel, 20 cases of champagne, and a frozen shrimp tree. We used to have parties on the night we would get there, we would all get in our dress uniforms, get on the fan tail, they would open up the alcohol cabinets. We were one of the few Navy ships that had alcohol on board because we were always entertaining the Europeans. Your Aunt Aleca would hop in the car and drive up to like Southern France and we usually said, whether it was Barcelona, St. Tropez, Toulouse, wherever we pulled in. I said “well what day are you gonna get up there?” And whatever we said we would agree to meet at the shrimp tree at the reception. She would like pull in, throw a dress on, come up to the party. But it was interesting, we would have the reception, the next day we’d go into the ward room, and the negotiators would hammer out the negotiations. Sometimes, for whatever reason they didn’t like empty seats on the table, like I had no role in negotiating diplomatic issues. They, if there were 2 empty seats at the end of the table, they wanted it filled with junior naval officers just to make it look good. We stayed there a couple of days in Odesa, we pulled around the Cremian peninsula, and I remember thinking to myself as we steamed along the coast there. I look out, I see Sevastipole, the lights of Sevastipole and just thinking like “that was the enemy fleet right there”, we were pulling along the coast and at this very moment I was looking on the chart, there was a gap along the coastline, the valley of Balaclava, where the British light brigade made their failed charge in the Cremian war. I remember in that very moment just thinking about the history of that when I got the following call, I had the deck on the ship. Even though I was a medical officer, I started taking officer of the deck watch, like a line officer just because I liked to, I just thought it was cool. I got a call from combat, sir we’ve got an inbound aircraft, hostile profile, 80 miles out. I was like ok, track it, follow up with report, and like 30 seconds later I got another call saying “sir confirmed inbound Russian backfire bomber, on hostile profile, now 70 miles out, what do you want to do?” I remember just thinking, we’re pulling into Russia tomorrow, but youre also thinking like your at the range where if he puts a missile down, missile hit to a ship is usually 50-100 people dead, including potentially you. You have to make some decision but it didn’t make any sense, we were an invited guest. Why would they be coming for us? But hostile profile means it was coming right down at you. So I called the captain and just described “Sir I’ve got a Russian backfire bomber 70 miles out hostile profile, I’m gonna continue to track with air search radar, I’m not gonna light him up with fire control radar” and he said “Roger that John I don’t want to see myself on the cover of Newsweek here” To light him up with fire control radar would mean my missile is on him, which is technically an act of war. But that’s kind of your next step, I’ve tracked him, should I shoot him before he shoots me.

We pulled in the next day, I got the honor of getting the officer of the deck award. So the captain gave me the honor: the first Naval officer to pull a ship into Russia since World War II was me. In the Black Sea, it was amazing, into Novorossiyk. We were pulling in, it was a beautiful October day in ’94, it was warm almost 80 degrees. It was unusually warm, we were wearing black wool uniforms because that was typically what you wear at that time of year. The uniform was set by Moscow. The Russians came out in a small boat as I was maneuvering the guided missile cruiser in. A couple of their admirals came up to the bridge, and on the bridge the only voice that’s above kind of a whisper is mine. “Right full rutter, right full rutter” I hear my three star admiral saying to them through the translators, “please tell them that that is our medical officer driving the ship.” And I hear the Russians say back through the translators “Uh Admiral, in the Russian Navy medical officers don’t drive ships”. And he said “Please tell them that in our Navy they do.” I remember thinking to myself that was one of my glorious moments. Pulled the ship, moored to a cravat class cruiser called the Marshall Usitinav. We toured the Russians through our ship and they toured us through their ship. I remember thinking when we were on their ship that everything onboard their ship was analog, I was just stunned. We had computer screens and everything was digital while these guys were like dialing 096, and I remember thinking like how were these guys a serious threat. One of my intelligence officers, said looking out “I’ve spent a 20 year career in the Navy spying on the Russians. I’ve looked at pictures of this ship through grainy photographs taken at the risk of someone’s life. And now im moored to the ship right next to it.” He couldn’t believe it. And they had their spies, CGB guys on our ship and one of them I remember being pretty clear that he was CGB by this conversation. I said to him about the uniforms, which I was like sweating in my uniform, and I said “It’s warmer here than we expected” and he said “Yes um I think you Americans would call this Indian summer” and I’m thinking wow that’s real command of the language, he’s intel for sure if he knows that much. But whatever they were spying on us we were spying on them. But it was extraordinary to be there, my sailors didn’t want to leave. They were all taking girls out to dinner, buying them things. I remember them telling me they didn’t want to leave and I was like “what do you mean you don’t want to leave Russia?” and he goes “I just took this girl out to dinner I paid her 20 bucks and I slept at her place all night. Not only that but I signed autographs all the way back to the ship the next morning.” And I’m like yea that’s pretty cool. Nontheless this is Russia. It was weird to be there. The city squares theres like Lenin, we walked into department stores where the shelves were empty and the lights were off. It was just weird. We went to a museum called the heroes of the Soviet Union. It just felt like we were just thrown out of time, like all this stuff the Russians were the enemy and we were in this museum called Hereos of the Soviet Union.

Second Interview 

Email Interview on December 7, 2023.

Transcript

Luke: One quote from the textbook that I found might directly relate to you and your ships involvement was – “Those few who had foreseen the demise of the Soviet empire had generally expected the breakup to occur violently… but the dismantling of the empire had occurred peacefully for the most part. That it did so owed a great deal to the diplomacy of George Bush. American officials might have pushed too hard too fast.” My question for you after seeing this quote is – Do you feel that Bush deserves credit for the peaceful end to the Cold War?

John: Well many credit the demise of the Soviet Union to the aggressive military buildup under Reagan that preceded Bush. They ulitmately couldn’t keep up economically against a capitalist society. Not sure how true that turned out to be. Gorbachov deserves most of the credit I think for being forward-thinking and progressive probably when he was surrounded by many old-school, hardliners who knew of nothing but communism. The personalities of Gorbachov and Bush toghether likely fostered a smoother transition. I was surprised to see how enthusiatistic many of the former Soviet states were to peel away from Moscow. I had assumed that they were more loyal to the Kremlin. Ukraine being the most noteworthy of those that I observed personally.

Luke: Or does the credit really belong to the Gorbachev and his willingness to surrender the Soviet’s superpower status?

John: Yes, Gorbachov was likely very pragmatic in realizing the current confrontational course was unsustainable. And perhaps the rise of Putin reflected a underlying bitterness among Russians to have lost their preeminant status on the world stage in this transition.

Luke: What did you envision as the outcome of the Cold War when you joined the Navy? Did you think there was any way the war would end peacefully?

John: I think many of us thought it would persist longer and even result in a nuclear war. We really feared that liklihood given the proliferation of nuclear weapons on both sides and the intransigence of both sides. I didn’t think that the soviet union would dissolve, and certainly not so precipitously.

Luke: Could you ever have imagined sailing the first ship into Russia when you joined the Navy?

John: Of course not. It’s hard to even think of it now particularly for a medical officer. I assumed I was just going to perform medical duties when deployed. It was remarkable to be given the chance to qualify as an officer of the deck on a warship. I’m not sure why Captain Moller gave me the honor. It’s possible that it was intentional, or that it was just the natural rotation of the watch. He did like that I was ambitous about obtaining line officer qualifications. He sometimes used that to motivate his regular officers, “For God’s sake gentleman, the doctor is doing this better than you.” Being in Russia in uniform was simply surreal only 6 years after attending officer school and listening to a lecture about the psychology of Russians at the Newport Naval War College. What stands out is seeing statues of Lenin, going to the Hero of the Soviet Union museum in Novorosisk (it felt llike going to a Nazi history museum), buying soviet trinkets on the streets, and seeing bare shelves in department stores. I also remember thinkking that we had substantially overestimated their military capabilities when we toured their ship, the Marshall Ustinov, with its pitiful analog technology.

Luke: What was your opinion on Gorbachev? What was your overall awareness of his policies during the 1980s?

John: I had a very favorable impression of Gorby although I didn’t know much about the specific details of his policies in the 1980s. He was easing the policy of detente. I knew that his decisions were reducing our angst over the risk of nuclear war. For that I was grateful. I recall how extraordianry it was that he and Reagan met in Reykjavik, Iceland and then he visited Washington DC. And for that enlisted man on USS Belknap’s honor guard to have been standing on the portico when Gorbachov pulled up and met Reagan and overheard their conversations at that historic moment was memorable. Reagan pointed to this sailor and said, “This is my Navy.” The sailor whose name I forgot was so proud of that.

Further Research 

Bialer, S., & Jervis, R. (1991). Soviet-American relations after the Cold War. Duke University Press.

Simmons, Dean, Phillip Gould, Verena Vomastic, and Philip Walsh. “Air Operations over Bosnia.” Proceedings 123, no. 5 (May 1997): 131.

Steinmetz, Greg, and ROBERT S GREENBERGER Staff Reporters of THE WALL,STREET JOURNAL. “U.S. Embassies Give American Companies More Help Overseas: End of the Cold War, Surge in Competition Change the Game for Diplomats an Envoy Eats a Hamburger.” Wall Street Journal (1923-), Jan 21, 1997, pp. 2. ProQuest, https://dickinson.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/u-s-embassies-give-american-companies-more-help/docview/1619943839/se-2.

Gorbachev and Bush: The Last Superpower Summits. Conversations that Ended the Cold War, Central European University Press, 2020.  

Ekedahl, Carolyn Mcgiffert, and Melvin A. Goodman. “Eduard Shevardnadze: Leading the Soviet Union out of the Cold War.” International Journal 52, no. 2 (1997): 219–42.  

Eales, Stewart C. “Democracy Promotion in the Post-Cold War Era.” Edited by Larry D. Miller. The Army War College Review. Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep11940.4. 

 Philps, Alan. “Handshake That Ended the Cold War.” The World Today 70, no. 6 (2014): 38–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45048695. 

 Britannica Academic, s.v. “Russia,” accessed December 5, 2023, https://academic.eb.com/levels/collegiate/article/Russia/109504#38564.toc. 

 WILSON, JAMES GRAHAM. “Did Reagan Make Gorbachev Possible?” Presidential Studies Quarterly 38, no. 3 (2008): 456–75. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41219690. 

By Myra Naqvi

Video (ClipChamp)

YouTube Link

Newspaper article detailing the boycott of the New York AC track meet in the Philadelphia Inquirer, 1968, courtesy of ProQuest

Craig Nation was twenty-one years old when he and his teammates at Villanova University decided to boycott the New York Athletic Club’s indoor track and field meet in 1968. The meet was supposed to mark the 100th anniversary of the first indoor track meet in U.S. history and was expected to be the highlight of the indoor season [1]. Not to mention Villanova was the reigning NCAA champion. While it was a prestigious event, the NYAC prohibited black and Jewish membership, continuing segregationist policies that were supposed to have been abolished four years prior [2]. Nation remembers making the decision to boycott the meet with his team and how a year later, the NYAC was no longer a segregated organization. He describes the event as a “great, great thing which we accomplished as a team, or made a contribution to as a team. All of this put together in the context of the time made it a special sort of thing. I can say it’s still a big point of pride” [3]. In his book American Dreams, historian H.W. Brands details the rise of spectator sports in the 1950s and the subsequent use of athletics as a means of protest [4]. Craig Nation’s experience as a college athlete in the 1960s reflects Brands’ description of the slow dismantlement of the Jim Crow System and the power of protest in sports as a mechanism for change.

The NYAC boycott was part of a greater movement led by Dr. Harry Edwards and the Olympic Project for Human Rights, who sought to boycott the 1968 Olympics in protest of human rights injustices within sports [5]. While the boycott did not fully materialize, Olympic medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in protest of inequality in what Brands detailed as “the action that garnered the greatest attention for the black power movement” [6]. Nation recalls that the day after Tommie Smith and John Carlos podiumed in the 200 meters, his teammate and friend Larry James won gold in the 4 x 400-meter relay, and silver in the open 400 meter. He remembers that “Larry and his teammates were under terrible pressure to do something [like Carlos and Smith had” [7]. But Carlos and Smith were thrown off the Olympic team and sent home, putting Larry in a difficult place. Larry and his teammates “went for a slightly more modest form of protest by wearing black berets on the podium” [8]. Nation explained that people competing at such a high level of competition “had choices to make about how to comport themselves. They could use the stage or abuse it. It was a difficult, personal choice. Yet sometimes it was an opportunity” [9]. While H.W. Brands addresses the impact that protests in sport had on the Civil Rights movement, Craig Nation’s first-hand account and connection to the NYAC and Olympic protests provide humanity and complexity to the issue.

Craig Nation expressing his excitement after Villanova won the 1968 NCAA championship, The Villanovan, Courtesy of Craig Nation

Across the nation and on the international stage, black athletes faced persistent discrimination on and off the field, but Craig Nation did not recall having any problems at Villanova University. He remembers feeling like he was in a “fully integrated harmonious environment” [10]. Nation and Larry James were teammates at Villanova. In fact, he was James’ mentor when he joined the team in 1967. Nation described James as a “great, great American track and field runner. An Olympic gold and silver medalist and world record holder… Just great. I was his mentor. Black, white, no issue. No question” [11]. Nation was always impressed that on his team they had “a very positive atmosphere in a day and age when it was really difficult, when there was a lot of tension” [12]. Of course, this was not the case at every university. For example, the Southeastern Conference did not begin to integrate until 1966, and the University of Mississippi was not fully integrated until 1971 [13]. A common phenomenon in the south was that black athletes were hated throughout the day but celebrated under the lights. This caused many black athletes to become nonpolitical to avoid confrontation and violence from their white counterparts, which ultimately emboldened universities to continue to uphold racist practices that would allow the edifice of the Jim Crow System to survive, even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1965.

On April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. That weekend, the Villanova team was scheduled to travel to Knoxville to compete at a meet hosted by the University of Tennessee. Back in Philadelphia, Nation’s team gathered for a team meeting to decide whether they would compete in the meet. Nation remembers that on his drive to the meeting, “there were a lot of African American people on the street. They were very upset, and for a good reason. A group of people for around my car and started to pound on it. I tried to show solidarity and continued to move throughout the crowd. Nobody did anything. They were just expressing their anger” [14]. After making it to the meeting, his team voted to go to the meet. Nation remembers that their flight to Tennessee flew over Washington, and “through the air it looked like the whole city was on fire” [15]. He explained that “it was a very striking thing to see. I was twenty-one years old trying to put it all together” [16]. Nation’s experiences as a student-athlete at Villanova in the late 1960s illustrate how the Civil Rights Movement impacted the everyday lives of American citizens, like Brands alludes to throughout his novel.

The Philadelphia Pioneers after winning 4 x 400 at the AAU national championship, courtesy of Craig Nation

Upon his graduation from Villanova University in 1968, Nation began a new running career with a local track club, the Philadelphia Pioneer Club. The Philadelphia Pioneer Club was a historically black segregated organization, but in the era of desegregation, Craig Nation became the first white person to join the team. He remembers how interesting and eye opening it was to cross the color line and immerse himself in a culture that he was unfamiliar with, “to see the world the way the other side sees it” [17]. While Villanova’s head coach, Jim Elliot, was in full support of integration, not all of Nation’s coaches were in support of him joining the Philadelphia Pioneers. Nation remembers some of his coaches saying, “well what are you doing that for? Why are you running for that club?” [18]. While he was fortunate that his experiences at Villanova were mostly positive in regard to race relations, Nation acknowledges that “not everybody was on board for change,” yet that “segregated track and field, segregated sporting culture seemed so ironic” [19].

In his chronicle of American history since 1945, H.W. Brands illustrated the complexity of history by detailing the American pursuit of democratization and development abroad contrasted with the ongoing battle over race relations at home. While he briefly mentions the impact that sports had on the Civil Rights Movement, Craig Nation’s experience as a student-athlete in the late 1960s gives humanity and perplexity to the issues being faced by everyday people. His account proves that “nobody was immune, and certainly not collegiate athletics. You had to deal with the issue in some way. Either by self-consciously ignoring it or by engaging with it. Either way, you had to do something” [20].

[1] “Boycott may End NYAC Track Meet,” Chicago Daily Defender (Big Weekend Edition) (1966-1973), Feb 03, 1968. [ProQuest]

[2] Dexter L. Blackman, “’RUN, JUMP, OR SHUFFLE ARE ALL THE SAME WHEN YOU DO IT FOR THE MAN!’: The OPHR, Black Power, and the Boycott of the 1968 NYAC Meet,” Souls 21 no. 1, (2019), 52-76. [Taylor and Francis Online]

H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945, (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 127.

[3] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[4] Brands, American Dreams, 74-76.

[5] Nikole Tower, “Olympic Project for Human Rights lit fire for 1968 protests,” Global Sport Matters, (2018). [Web]

[6] Brands, American Dreams, 152.

[7] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[8] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[9] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[10] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[11] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[12] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[13] Matthew Wills, “The Uneasy History of Integrated Sports in America.” JSTOR Daily, (2017). [JSTOR Daily]

[14] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[15] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[16] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[17] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[18] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[19] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

[20] Interview with Robert C. Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

Appendix

“The second shortcoming of the Brown decision was that it applied only to schools […] Segregated public schools were an important pillar of the Jim Crow system, yet the edifice could survive without them. The much larger realm of segregation remained untouched.” (H.W. Brands, American Dreams, p. 86)

Interview Subject

Robert C. Nation, age 77, Dickinson College professor who ran track and field for Villanova University in the late 1960s and witnessed the slow desegregation of sports.

Interview

Interview with Professor Craig Nation, Carlisle, PA, November 20, 2023.

Selected Transcript

Q: Can you tell me a little about the culture of your team at Villanova as it pertained to race relations?

A: “I have always been impressed with Villanova as a model for what a collegiate athletic program can be. Our coach, Jim Elliot, left no doubt about priorities. Your first priority is to be a student. To learn, to grow, to educate, to mature. And then comes track […] I think we probably managed to have a successful team at the highest level of competition without sacrificing any principles or priorities. That was that was good.”

“Race relations were very interesting. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can say what I remembered. We didn’t have a problem at Villanova with race relations. In this era. I was at Villanova from 64 to 68, so this is the height of the civil rights movement. Intense engagement.”

“I never perceived it as an issue in my environment I felt like I was in a fully integrated harmonious environment, that’s the way I perceived it.”

“I think my junior year the way we did it was a team member was assigned to a first year as a mentor. I was assigned to Larry James. He was a great, great American track and field runner, Olympic gold medal, Olympic silver medal, world record holder, just great. From White Plains, NY. I was his mentor. Black, white- No issue. No, no question. It always impressed me that on our team we had a very positive atmosphere in a day and age when it was really difficult, when there’s a lot of tension.”

“My senior year, my black teammates raised the issue that track was in many ways still a segregated sport. And one of the biggest track and field organizations was the New York Athletic Club which hosted a big indoor track meet every year. But the NYAC was a white only organization, not just the meet, but the organization. So, as national champions, we said we wanted to boycott this meet. And we had a big discussion about it as a team. We decided unanimously to boycott and not low and behold it the next year the NYAC was no longer a segregated organization. It was a great, great thing. Which we sort of accomplished as a team or made a contribution to as a team. All of this put together in the context of the time made it a special sort of thing. It meant a lot to me that we could do that. I can say it’s just still quite a big point of pride. It’s like 50 or 60 years ago or something like that.”

Q: Was your coach supportive of your team boycotting the meet?

A: “Absolutely. Although I had more than one coach, and not all of them had… like when I went to run for the Philadelphia Pioneers some of them said “well what are you doing that for? Why are you running for that club?” This was part of that time; those perceptions were out there. Not everybody was on board. It was a battle in some ways, but in sporting culture it seems so ironic. Segregated track and field…” (15:15)

“My senior year in 1968 was the assassination of MLK. That weekend we had a track meet at the university of Tennessee- where MLK was assassinated. We had to have a team meeting to decide whether we would go. There were a lot of African American people on the street, they were upset for a good reason- they got around my car and started to pound on it. I tried to show solidarity and keep moving. Nobody did anything, they were just expressing their anger. I got through and made it to the meeting, and we voted to go. We flew down to Tennessee. I remember our flight flew over Washington; through the air it looked like the whole city was on fire. It was a very striking thing to see. I was 21 years old trying to put it all together. Those are all my experiences as an athlete at Villanova.”

Q: Today it feels easy for college students to disengage from current events and remain protected in a “bubble.” Was everyone engaged? Were the opportunities to remain passive in this time?

A: “Nobody was immune, and certainly not collegiate athletics.”

“You couldn’t dodge the issue. You had to deal with it in some way. Either by self-consciously ignoring it or hunkering down or engaging with the issues but you had to do something like that.”

“I don’t think the majority was all that engaged back then either- when you look closely maybe it’s not as different as you think (the generations)”

“There was then too a lot of disengagement.”

Q: Were you and your teammates moved by the demonstrations of the 1968 Olympics?

A: “Larry James was also involved in [the 1968 Olympics] because John Carlos and Tommie Smith had their dramatic demonstration, fist raised all that, and then the next day, Larry and his teammates won the gold medal in the 4×400, so they were under terrible pressure to do something like that. Remember, Carlos and [who] got thrown off the team, it was awful, they were sent home with gold medals around their neck because they took a knee basically. They didn’t hit anybody in the head. So then Larry and company, he talked to me about this in great detail, they didn’t know what to do. Larry was one of the leaders of this movement and demonstrations at the Olympic games, and he was the best athlete too, so he had a lot of prestige, everybody admired and respected him. And I was supposed to be his mentor [laughs] So they went for a slightly more modest form of protest. They wore berets black berets it was a a more temperate version of Carlos and Smith. The people that engaged in those activities had choices to make they were making risks. […] All of these people had to make decisions about how to comport themselves. They can use the stage or abuse it. How to represent the causes they believe in. It is a difficult, personal choice. Sometimes it can be seen as an opportunity.”

Further Research

Fraser, Gerald C. “Black Athletes Are Cautioned Not to Cross Lines.” The New York Times Company. (1968). Olympic History (nytimes.com) 

“1968: Mexico City. Black Power Struggles.” The New York Times Company. (1968). Olympic History (nytimes.com) 

“Tommie Smith and John Carlos Raise Their Fists at the 1968 Olympics.” History.com, A&E Television Networks. (2021) https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/black-power-salute-1968-olympics 

Wills, Matthew. “The Uneasy History of Integrated Sports in America.” JSTOR Daily. (2017) The Uneasy History of Integrated Sports in America – JSTOR Daily 

Spivey, Donald. “The Black Athlete in Big-Time Intercollegiate Sports, 1941-1968.” Phylon (1960-) 44, no. 2 (1983): 116–25. https://doi.org/10.2307/275023. 

“Sports- Levelling the Playing Field.” National Museum of African American History and Culture. Smithsonian. Sports | National Museum of African American History and Culture (si.edu) 

Reese, Renford. “The Socio-Political Context of the Integration of Sport in America.” Journal of African American Men 3, no. 4 (1998): 5–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41819345. 

Sellitto, Anthony. “Villanova Track and Cross Country Teams 1966 1967 & 1968 NCAA Champs.” YouTube.  https://youtu.be/l2yHIZlM-dI?si=KW45RbtbKwQpCfcK.

In November of 1960, Thomas Randall was 15 years old and living on Long Island, New York when then-U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy was campaigning for President of the United States and visited Long Island that month. Randall remembers going to a campaign event and remembers seeing him in person. It was a weekend in Commack, and Kennedy arrived in an open convertible, and Kennedy was sitting in the back of it. Randall explains how he “broke through the police barrier and ran up to Kennedy’s car and touched him on the shoulder.” Randall was able to get back to safety without being arrested by the police or anything. Randall’s memory of bursting through the police barrier to touch Kennedy gives a sense of the extreme excitement that many people felt during the last days before the election, due to Kennedy’s powerful charm, but this charm was not empty or meaningless. Kennedy’s magical, Pied Piper charm was the charisma of a great leader, who was likely, had he lived, to have become a great President.

John F. Kennedy campaigning in Commack, New York on November 6th, 1960.

Randall was not the only bystander who did something like this. In “The Making of the President, 1960” by Theodore H. White, he wrote “One remembers the grabbers, bursting through police lines, trying to touch and reach him, and the squeezers who grasped his hand and, to prove their affection, squeezed extra hard until, one day in Pennsylvania, even the candidate’s calloused hand burst with blood.”[1] Kennedy reportedly loved riding with the top down. During a parade in Dublin, which Kennedy attended, Irish President saw him standing up and waving to crowds. His immediate thought was “what an easy target he would have been.”[2] according to Larry J. Sabato in “The Kennedy Half-Century.” He was quoted as saying “The whole point is for me to be accessible to the people.”[3] The date was November 6th, 1960. This was one of Kennedy’s last campaign stops before the election took place on November 8th. At this event, Kennedy said that “with a new Democratic administration…we can demonstrate that we are a strong and vital and progressive society.”[4]

John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon shaking hands just before a debate.

Kennedy was very charming, and H.W. Brands says that his “style charmed the Democratic convention, and it charmed the country after he landed the nomination.”[5] Vice President Richard Nixon, Kennedy’s opponent in the presidential race, was critical of Kennedy’s charm. On November 3, 1960, in a speech in Houston, Texas, Nixon said, referring to Kennedy, that “when the people go to the polls they should know where the roads lead. They must not follow a Pied Piper from Boston down the road to disaster.”[6] Kennedy responded to Nixon’s criticism at a campaign event in The Bronx on November 5. “Nixon, in a high-level or high-road campaign which emphasizes the issues, in the last 6 days has called me an economic ignoramus, a Pied Piper, and all the rest. I just confine myself to calling him a Republican. But he says that is really getting low.”[7] It wasn’t just Kennedy’s charm that landed him the nomination, it was also his background. He came from a very rich family. His father, Joseph Kennedy, “made a fortune on wall street”[8] and managed to “hold on to his fortune”[9] when the Great Depression happened. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Joseph Kennedy as director of the Securities and Exchange Commission. John F. Kennedy was able to work his way up through the ranks due to his privileged background. After he returned from WWII a hero, he won election to the House of Representatives in 1946, and was elected to the Senate 6 years later in 1952. After Dwight D. Eisenhower won the 1952 and 1956 elections in back to back landslides. Kennedy ran for President in 1960, winning the Democratic nomination in the summer of that year. Kennedy wasn’t done just yet, as he had to face incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon in the presidential election of that year. Randall remembers very much about the 1960 debates between Kennedy and Nixon. H.W. Brands says that Nixon “knew far more about government and policies than Kennedy.”[10] but this was the first televised presidential debate in U.S. history, and Kennedy used that to his advantage, along with his charm. He appeared “tanned, fit, and rested, while Nixon looked harried and worn.”[11] Randall remembers watching the debates and remembers the public opinion on the debates. Randall recalls, “Because of the visual nature of television, Kennedy was a much more handsome guy than Nixon, who always looked like he had a 5 o’clock shadow, which means dark, dark cheeks, that hadn’t been shaved, which probably wasn’t true. He probably did shave, but he didn’t look like he had. Whereas Kennedy was handsome and outgoing and so on, so it was significant for that because it showed the power of television.” Randall and his family supported Kennedy in the 1960 election. “We were loyal Democrats.” says Randall. When asked what he thinks of Kennedy as a president, looking back on his presidency all these years later, he says “I think he is a President in the making. They botched a lot of stuff, especially in regard to foreign policy, like the Bay of Pigs, for instance. He was very charismatic, and came from a very wealthy family.” Kennedy did a number of good things during his presidency, such as avoiding nuclear war with Cuba and the Soviets, supported Civil Rights and was a staunch opponent of communism. He challenged Americans to take action to make the country better, and he set a goal of going to the moon by the end of the decade. He inspired people, not just with charm, but with great new goals for the nation. If John F. Kennedy’s presidency did not come to an abrupt end as a result of his assassination, he may have gone down as one of the best Presidents. He was a young man, and it is possible he could have succeeded in reaching many of his ambitious goals for the country.

John F. Kennedy riding in his motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22nd, 1963, just seconds before he was killed. Next to him is his wife, Jackie and sitting in front of them is John Connally, the Governor of Texas, and his wife, Nellie.

On November 22nd, 1963, Kennedy was campaigning for re-election in Dallas, Texas, when he was killed by an assassin’s bullets. On this day, Randall was in ROTC. As Randall says, “We were all dressed up for Friday afternoon. Every Friday afternoon the troops had to be—we were the troops—had to be reviewed, they had to pass muster.” While he was lined up with the other troops, one of the leaders on the campus was talking to someone else on a walkie-talkie, and came over and told Randall and the other troops that the President had been shot. Randall recalls, “I don’t think anybody at that point used the word, “killed.” But that he was shot. And there was complete silence and nobody could believe it. It was a total shock to everybody, and I say that including Republicans as well. It was such a significant event that politics took a back seat for quite a while.” Randall doesn’t remember much about JFK’s funeral, but his wife, Judi does. She recalls, “I remember especially his son, John John, was about three or four years old, and I remember him saluting when the coffin went by. It was very moving. He was this little boy who had just lost his father and didn’t really understand anything that was going on.” She also recalls that the funeral was “endlessly televised” on all television channels.

Kennedy definitely had great plans for the nation, and possibly would’ve gone down as one of the best Presidents in the history of the United States if he was never assassinated. In considering the legacy of his presidency, “it must be acknowledged that the Kennedy thousand days spoke to the country’s better angels, inspired visions of a less divisive nation and world, and demonstrated that America was still the last best hope of mankind.”[12]

[1] White, Theodore H. The Making of the President, 1960. Cape, 1962, 331.

[2] Green, Robert. “Kennedy’s love for convertibles made him an easy target.” The Globe and Mail, November 21, 2013, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/kennedys-love-for-convertibles-made-him-an-easy-target/article15543696/

[3] Green, “Kennedy’s love for convertibles made him an easy target.”

[4] Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 914a, “Long Island Arena, Commack, New York, 6 November 1960.” (https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/commack-ny-19601106) John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

[5] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 102.

[6] “Remarks of the Vice President at Herman Park, Miller Memorial Theater, Houston, TX.” The American Presidency Project, November 3, 1960. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-vice-president-herman-park-miller-memorial-theater-houston-tx

[7] “Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy, Concourse Plaza Hotel, Bronx, New York, November 5, 1960.” JFK Library. Accessed May 6, 2023. https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/bronx-ny-19601105

[8] Brands, 100.

[9] Brands, 100.

[10] Brands, 102.

[11] Brands, 103.

[12] Dallek, Robert. An unfinished life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. New York: Back Bay Books/Little Brown and Company, 2013, 942.

In his book, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945, H.W. Brands offers insight into race relations up until the Civil Rights Act.  Although detailed depictions of race relations trail off post-1964, Brands writes “Americans challenged poverty, inequality, and prejudice and mitigated these historic scourges substantially.”^[1]  His recognition of mitigation connotes that racial integration continued as American society addressed equality issues in daily life.  The real-life accounts of people who came of age after 1964 reveal practical lessons and challenges of true desegregation, not based on legal precedent or legislative mandate but upon personal connections among people.

Brown v. Board II (1955) prohibited segregation in schools, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation in all other aspects of life, ending the longstanding “separate but equal” doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).  Although history notes that the effects of Brown and the Civil Rights Act were not felt immediately, history often fails to articulate the everyday process of integration.  Real integration happened beyond the headlines and court cases.  Judicial rulings cannot educate ordinary citizens about how to enact change, especially when upending multigenerational norms. Such change takes time.

Blackwell (right) with his twin brother and mother, 1969, from Andrew K. Blackwell

Andrew Kevin Blackwell, born in 1964, lived through the aftermath in the small town of Monticello in southern Mississippi’s Lawrence County.  Blackwell recounts growing up in the newly integrated South.  He began first grade in 1969, the same year Monticello’s school system was desegregated.  He says, “My class was the first to actually go all the way through school in an integrated system.”^[2]  It was not until the following summer, in 1970, that all public schools in Mississippi were fully integrated.^[3]

Blackwell describes being unaware of racial issues.  He says, “I was six years old and more interested in baseball and frogs … than I was in race relations at that time.”^[4]  He said, “All of my neighbors for miles in any direction were white.”^[5]  Once he went to school, he met many black children, but “society there was [still] segregated.”^[6]  For example, school buses were one of the numerous aspects of life that remained segregated.  Blackwell described how the buses lined up outside of school every day with a clear distinction between those ridden by the white student versus black students:

One day in the fifth grade, [I see] a different bus located where [my bus] is supposed to be…this bus was dilapidated, it was old…the seats were torn…And all of my black friends who were going to get on their bus were laughing at us basically saying, “you get to ride the n-word bus today.”^[7]

Blackwell noted the delineations among white students as well: the town kids and the farm kids.  The town kids’ “parents were on the school board,” and those students had the newest buses.^[8]  The farm kids, like Blackwell, rode the average buses; they were not shiny and new like the children in town, but they were not run down like the buses for the black students.  While Brown v. Board of Education dictated school integration, communities leveraged the decision’s lack of implementation details to funnel resources away from black students.

In 1976, the bicentennial brought joyous celebrations and filled classrooms with discussions of the nation’s founding.  A school field trip took his sixth-grade class to the local theater to watch the movie 1776.  He recalls, “I was thinking on the way over there, you know, I’ve never seen any black kids at the movie theater. That’s a white kid thing.”^[9]  Upon arrival, Blackwell entered through an unfamiliar side door.  It was dark and led to a steep, narrow stairwell that he did not know existed.  At the top of the stairs was a balcony.  When he sat down, his chair

The old Monticello (Mono) Movie Theatre with segregated entrances, 2018, from Scott Boyd

broke.  His friend in the next chair, Bessie, “looks at it and says, well get used to it. That’s what we deal with all the time.”^[10]  Bessie was a black girl.  The reason Blackwell had never seen the black kids at the theater was that they sat in the rundown balcony, despite no rule forcing them to do so.  For the black students, “it was just understood that’s the way it had always been.”^[11]  Black and white students attending a movie together to celebrate the bicentennial marked significant progress, but racial separation remained omnipresent two centuries after the country’s founders grappled with the issue of slavery.  As 1776 illustrates and Brands writes, “Americans have been dreaming since our national birth,” but full racial reconciliation remained unfulfilled.^[12]

Blackwell relayed a subsequent story from high school.  A white friend who lived in town, Shellie, came to him for help.  Her mother and other mothers were hosting a pool party, so Shellie was talking to friends, both white and black, about attending.  When other mothers learned that black friends were being invited, “as politely as southern ladies can be polite, not necessarily nice, [the mothers] basically told Shellie, go back to school and tell ’em all they can’t come.”^[13]  Shellie wondered what to do.  Blackwell proceeded to tell their black and white friends about the situation, effectively beginning a boycott of the party.  Embarrassed by the situation, the hosting mothers retracted their previous statements, and Blackwell told everyone to go.  He said, “We all got along and here intrusive mothers are driving wedges between us based upon rules that we didn’t have anything to do with creating, nor certainly any interest in propagating.”^[14]  This event illustrates the progress of breaking generational attitudes.  Shellie had no hesitation about inviting her black friends, but other parents were making unfair rules.  So, Shellie and other students responded.  The host parents’ swift retraction demonstrates that the new generation was intolerant of rules against their black peers and supports Brands’ belief that “the moral foundation of America’s dreams had always been the right to dream, and Americans weren’t about to surrender that.”^[15]

Segregated Homecoming Court, Monticello High School Yearbook, 1982, from Andrew K. Blackwell

Buses and the local movie theater were two examples of segregation’s remnants that followed Blackwell as he moved into high school in the fall of 1979.  Perhaps coincidentally, some policies put in place in order to combat segregation created further divides.  For example, in order to create the opportunity for black students to be homecoming king and queen, even with a student body that was 55% white and 45%black, the school board implemented a policy to have both a black homecoming couple and a white homecoming couple. This well-intentioned policy further projected a divide among students that Blackwell said had largely diminished by the time he began high school.  Students began to reject “these old archaic rules and stupidity that was created many, many years ahead.”^[16] The homecoming dance itself was another issue.  The attitude of the school’s administration was, “Now you got white kids and black kids dancing together…No way!”^[17]  The solution was not to have a dance between 1970 and 1980  The students eventually took a stand against the administration, leading to the first integrated homecoming dance in 1980.

In 1969, the Supreme Court ordered the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals to enforce the desegregation of schools in Mississippi, which led to integration in 1970.  However, de facto segregation in Mississippi remained prevalent after this order, and private schools emerged as an alternative to public education.  Lawrence County Academy opened in 1970 in Monticello, Mississippi, Blackwell’s hometown.  The all-white school began as a so-called “segregation academy,” even selecting The Rebels, a nod to the Confederacy, as its mascot.^[18]

Further, in 1984, a group of black families filed formal complaints about continued segregation in Lawrence County.  In United States v. Lawrence County School District, the Circuit Court ruled that the county’s tri-district school system reinforced racial segregation in the small, mostly white Topeka and New Hebron districts.^[19]  As buses remained segregated in integrated districts, in 1984, the U.S. demanded that the 1969 order be enforced, and the judge presiding over the case found that Lawrence County had not implemented the 1969 ruling.  In response, the Lawrence County school board voted to combine the tri-district into a single one.  Blackwell noted that the community largely supported this approach because it created a larger district that could better utilize resources.^[20]  To eliminate the vestiges of past rivalries, the newly-formed Lawrence County School District created new mascots and school colors.

Blackwell (middle) with brother and friends, Monticello High School Yearbook, 1980, from Andrew K. Blackwell.

The path to true integration was a long one.  Beyond the court cases and headlines, “the dreaming persisted,” and residents of small towns like Monticello, Mississippi, desegregated schools and communities.^[21]  The integration process extended far beyond the 1960s.  Residents did not have a clear roadmap, and as children, people like Mr. Blackwell formed friendships across racial lines and challenged long-standing social norms.  True integration occurred through daily activities, sports, and hallway conversations, far away from courthouses and news cameras.

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

^[2] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[3] Charles C. Bolton, “The Last Stand of Massive Resistance: Mississippi Public School Integration, 1970” (Mississippi Historical Society, February 2009), https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/the-last-stand-of-massive-resistance-1970.

^[4] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[5] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[6] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[7] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[8] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[9] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[10] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[11]Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[12] Brands, ix.

^[13]Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[14]Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[15] Brands, x.

^[16] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[17] Video Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

^[18] Ashton Pittman, “Hyde-Smith Attended All-White ‘SEG Academy’ to Avoid Integration” (Jackson Free Press, Inc., November 23, 2018), https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2018/nov/23/hyde-smith-attended-all-white-seg-academy-avoid-in/.

^[19]Alvin B. Rubin, “United States v. Lawrence County School Dist” (Casetext Inc., September 15, 1986), https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-lawrence-county-school-dist/.

^[20] Phone Interview with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, May 6, 2023.

^[21] Brands, x.

Appendix

“The promise of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the rest of Johnson’s Great Society seemed distant and often irrelevant to the trials of everyday life on the streets.” (H.W. Brands, American Dreams, p. 148)

Interview subject

Andrew Kevin Blackwell, age 58, grew up in a small town in newly integrated South Mississippi in the 1960s and 70s.

Interviews

– Video recording with Andrew Kevin Blackwell, April 23, 2023.

Q. So Brands doesn’t really discuss race relations post-Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. He does acknowledge that these acts didn’t eradicate racism from America, the South in particular, but doesn’t continue the race discussion afterward. What was your experience like growing up in the newly integrated South?

A. So, just to put myself in the proper timeframe here, I’m 58 and a half years old, and so schools were integrated in Mississippi in about 1969, just as I was entering the first grade. And back then in Mississippi, we didn’t have kindergarten, so all students started school in the first grade. So I was the first in my county, a rural county in Mississippi called Lawrence County. I was the first class, my class was the first class to actually go all the way through school in an integrated school system. I never went to school with whites. Only there were blacks in my school system. That said, uh, there was a lot to, um, deal with, not so much me because I never knew any better. And I was six years old and more interested in baseball and frogs and whatever else than I was in race relations at that time. But definitely, society there was segregated. And so the first time, other than a black family, a man and a woman older who lived on the property where I lived, close by and on a family property, rented a house there and served as our, my part-time babysitter, I never met or dealt with any black people whatsoever until I went to first grade. Uh, I have an older brother who’s two years older and he went to first two years of school in an integrated school system, only white kids. Sometime during his second grade, they started integrating the schools. So that was kind of my perspective. It was limited. My parents would give you a very different, um, perception of what was going on there, I would assume because they actually had an understanding of the politics, the Civil Rights movement, the Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King. I wouldn’t have heard of him in the first grade. I wouldn’t have known who he was. So I think it does, um, I, I’ve always consider it a unique perspective to have gone to the first grade or, you know, from first grade through 12th, uh, integrated with black students. I had the same, you know, there wasn’t a lot of in and outgoing students in rural Mississippi. So pretty much most of the kids that I started first grade with, I graduated with in high school after 12 years. So a couple of, um, interesting points. And incidentally, I actually write short stories about these experiences. I called a grouping of the short stories remnants, that’s the name of, uh, list of short stories. Most of these stories I just tell as I will do today, but I have a few of ’em that I’ve started writing down. And one day when I finally retire, I’ll, I’ll finish ’em. But they’re just stories of experiences of a young kid anywhere from first grade to about, well, really senior in high school, just different things that happened to me or that I was involved in or aware of that sort of gave a unique perspective on what it was like to integrate with a bunch of black kids that you didn’t have anything to do with outta school. These are actual true experiences, true stories of things that happened.

Q. So I think, of course, the Civil Rights Act was really monumental legislation, but it sounds very much like society was still very much segregated, despite the fact that legally, that was not the case.

A. That’s correct. I’ll give you a real story. This one I called number 29. That’s the name of the story. When I started school in the first grade, my brother had been going to school for two years. He was going into the third grade and every day the school bus, we lived in a rural community about eight miles from town. And the town is where the school was. So we had to ride the school bus to town every day. All of my neighbors for miles in any direction were all white. And the black kids, the black families lived in other parts of the county, some in the town part in the center of the county, some of ’em in more rural areas. But we didn’t encounter them on any given day. I’d never had black friends that I went fishing with or anything like that when I was really young. So my brother always, I watched him get on the school bus every day and go to school and the school bus was number 29. All the school buses were numbered. And I couldn’t wait to start school and get on old number 29 and go to school with my brother and all of my friends because all of my friends were on that same bus. We lived in the same area, same general area, big farms and all. All my friends were on number 29. So I went on number 29 all the way through first and fifth grade. Uh, and in the fifth grade I went to the middle school. Now it’s interesting how the schools went before integration in my county, there were three schools for the white kids. They had two schools. One, the Monticello Elementary School, which went first through sixth grade if I recall correctly. And then the high school, which went eight or seventh through 12th grade. That’s what the white kids did. And that was called Monticello Elementary and Monticello High. The black kids went to another school, it was called McCullough High School at the time, or McCullough School I think. It included all 12 grades and only black kids and black teachers went there. When integration came, the solution to actual buildings was to keep the elementary school, but take the fifth and sixth grade out of it. So all the kids went to Monticello Elementary School, first through fourth, middle schoolers, fifth through ninth grade went to McCullough, which they renamed McCullough junior high. And then for high school, 10th through 12th, we all went to the integrated high school, which was the white kids high school originally. So in the fifth grade I was at McCullough Junior High, which had been the black school. Interestingly McCullough was the name of a guy. He was the superintendent of education some years before. And they named that black school after him. And he was a white guy, superintendent of education. He was a white guy. So in the fifth grade, I leave one day after school, right bell rains. We all go to the school buses and the school buses are lined up down this street. Two in two different columns, basically Two buses, two buses, two buses on the on back. And I never paid much attention. My bus was always at a particular location, old number 29. And I went and jumped on it and all my friends were there. And the bus would go from the elementary school to the junior high pick up students, then to the high school, pick up more students, and then start going out into my community and dropping ’em off. So I get there one day in the fifth grade after school and there’s a different bus located where old number 29 is supposed to be. And I was confused. So I looked and in fact my bus driver was on there and all my friends were on there. But this bus was dilapidated, it was old, it had, the seats were torn, it had duct tape all over the seats, keeping them together. And I thought, what the heck? Why are we riding in this? And all of my black friends who were going to get on their bus were laughing at us basically saying, you get to ride the n-word bus today. And that was one of the buses that they rode every day. And I had never paid attention. But if you actually look at the buses, the way they were lined up, there were three statuses of buses. The first four were brand-new shiny buses. And they took all of the kids from town whose parents were teachers or doctors or you know. And all of the black buses that were, I don’t know, maybe three or four, maybe five were at the back of the line. And those buses, none of them were new. The, the one they had given us our bus that day had broken down, had a problem, whatever. And the school system kept one or two extra buses in case they had a problem with the bus. And because old 29 was broken down, they gave us this old broken down bus that wasn’t even good enough for the black kids. Right. It wasn’t, they didn’t even rate that on a day to day. Uh, you know, they, they, they had a little bit better buses than that, but not much. So it taught me something that, while there was definitely a black-white divide in rural Mississippi at that time, there were other divides as well. There were the town kids whose parents were on the school board. There were the farmers’ kids who were in the middle tier and were sent with average buses. And then the black kids. And I always thought about those drivers. All the black buses had black drivers, all the white buses had white drivers. And I was never aware of a black kid being on a white bus or vice versa. So the school, the bus system was still very segregated, very segregated many years after the school systems actually integrated. And I don’t think most people know that. But it also taught me, you know, there’s, there’s a little bit of a divide here, even, but among the white kids, and maybe there were some I didn’t understand among the black kids, I’m not sure. But, um, anyway, that’s my story of old 29.

Q. Would you say that the, um, black families and as there still a noticeable difference in sort of the jobs that black people tended to have or like those kinds of things?

A. Yes, there were differences. I’m not sure that they would be as stark as some of the ones with the white kids. Just cause, you know, some of the white kids’ parents were better educated and made more money. In some cases, some cases not. I mean, some of those farmers in rural Mississippi were loaded, right? Some of them made a lot of money, but their kids were different. They didn’t live in town. They didn’t swim in swimming pools. We swim in rivers and lakes. We went hunting and fishing. We did play baseball, but we didn’t play a lot of other sports. The town kids had a diving team. We never dreamed of having a diving team among the rural kids, you know. So, um, I can tell you another story if you want.

Q: Go for it.

A: Okay. So in the sixth grade was 1976. And what was 1976?

Q: The bicentennial.

A: The bicentennial. Now of course you weren’t born yet, but that was a big deal, the 200 anniversary of our founding of our nation. And they printed, they had all kinds of, you know, all kinds of activities in, in America to celebrate the bicentennial all year long, but especially around July 4th. But really all year long, lots of things educational-wise. They printed new coins, whatever, all celebrating the bicentennial. So one day at school, I’m in the sixth grade, and they load us all up in these buses, all of the fifth and sixth graders as I recall. And they took us across town to the local movie theater. Now, the bigger town, which you’ve been to Brookhaven even back then, had a more modern movie theater. Not quite as slick as they have ’em today, but you would recognize it and whatever, it wouldn’t be that different than what you’re used to. But in our local little town, there was an old theater that we used to go to and watch horror movies in. They never had like real release movies or whatever. It was just a bunch of kids being silly. And they would have old movies or whatever on Friday night we’d go watch a movie. So, I had never been on a field trip to the movie theater. That was weird. So they loaded us up on these buses ‘for a field trip, and they took us across town, which is only about three miles to the theater, this local theater. And the movie they were playing was 1776, which is the old, uh, you know, celebration. We have the Decoration of Independence written, there’s a Broadway play, whatever. And I know you’ve, you’ve seen that. Um, and so, you know, it was just teaching us about the history and all. So we get on the bus and I’m thinking, oh, this will be cool. It’s better than sitting in math class or whatever else. And they put us on each bus, not segregated. My bus, whatever bus I was on, wasn’t old 29 was my class. Whatever class I was in, which was fully integrated, probably about 40% black, 60% white, thereabouts, fairly even. And so we go to this place the, to the movie theater. And I was thinking on the way over there, you know, I’ve never seen any black kids at the movie theater. That’s a white kid thing. I’ve never seen any of ’em there. That’s, so I wonder if any of these kids have ever been there. So when we get to the movie theater, I’m expecting to go in the front door and sit. They have these old wooden chairs that are in rows, you know, the old-timey kind of chairs by today’s standards, not a lot of padding or whatever else. And the place isn’t real fancy, but the chairs were sturdy and, you know, everything was, was, um, simple but fine. But when, when I get there, they redirect us through this side door to the movie theater that I had never been, and didn’t even notice was there. So we go in and I’m thinking, why are we going in? There’s a lot of kids there. They got, you know, two class loads, probably 250 kids there. And, um, I’m thinking, where are they taking us? I’ve never been in this door. Don’t know. And as I go in, I start going up this narrow stairway, it’s really narrow. And so we go stomping up there and I’m just following the leader. And when I get up there, I realize there’s a balcony to the movie theater that I never knew was there. And I’ve sat in the bottom before, never looked up, never knew there was a balcony there. And so I go on up and sit down. There’s probably enough, maybe for my class, so maybe 25, 30 students, something like that. Maybe. I’m not exactly sure. It’s been a while. But anyway, I start to sit down and my chair is broken and it kind of folds back. I’m thinking, geez, I can’t sit here. And I tell the teacher who’s with us, my chair’s broken, and she’s a black teacher and she says, just sit there, you’ll manage, you’ll manage. And all the other kids sit there too. And next to me is a girl, a black girl who I’m still friends with. Bessie Williams is her name. And I look at Bessie and I say, my chair is broken. I don’t know if I can sit here through the whole movie. And she looks at it and says, well get used to it. That’s what we deal with all the time. So I didn’t know it, but the whole time that me and all of the other white kids in town are sitting in the bottom of the theater, the black kids are in the balcony with the broken chairs remaining fairly quiet if they can afford to see a movie at all. But there was no sign that said blacks up, white’s down. It was nothing like that. It was just understood that’s the way it had always been. And so, you know, I sat through the movie and it’s interesting, the movie is, has a big part of the movie when they’re trying to do the declaration and they’re debating slavery as to whether they should outlaw slavery and the Declaration of Independence. And they’re singing songs about it and drowning on and on, and finally putting the issue of slavery aside so that they can have, you know, um, unanimity among all of the founding fathers, all white fathers, of course. Um, and they put slavery aside. And here I am in the balcony of a rural movie theater, 200 years later. And to some extent, we’ve still put the issue aside.

Q: So there was also sort of complacency among everybody because that’s just kind of the way that it had always been?

A: That’s Correct. And it, it took time. There were, you know, I would say that blacks and whites had kind of come to a conclusion about how things worked, whether they should work that way or not work that way or whatever else. But I think the interesting thing about my generation and particularly my school year, I think it gave us the chance to, uh, reset expectations on how things were going to work. And it took a while. It did, because of course we were young and there were other people in charge of things.

Q: So, both of those stories were kind of about you going, like in your younger years of school, like, um, elementary and middle school, how did sort of race relations evolve as you got into high school in the late seventies, early eighties?

A: So I think when, by the time I got into high school and my class, and even my brother’s class who’s two years older than me, we started resetting some of those, uh, historical precedents, I would say, or trends or characteristics or whatever. As an example, when the schools integrated, it’s easy enough to say we’re gonna put ’em all in the same class. They did things to help bridge to transition. Like for instance, when I went to the first grade, the year before, if any student was given a first-grade teacher, they would’ve been all white, of course. And, um, you had that teacher all day long, they taught it’s first grade, so they teach math and teach math and reading and everything all at once. But now you’ve got black kids and white kids in the same class. So they changed it so that I had two first-grade teachers and I would, they were right across the hall from one another. So I would spend the first half of the day with Mrs. Baggott, who happened to be black. And Mrs. Fortenberry was white across the hall. And I would go into her class for half the class too. So we each had black and white students, uh, all through high school. Well, not, some of this was still in place as I graduated high school, although the students actually killed some of it. For instance, you have the homecoming queen. It’s a big football game, right? Well, is the homecoming queen going to be black or are they gonna be white? Well, in 1971 when the county was about 65, 60 to, well, 60 to 65% white and the other percent black, that would’ve been reflected in the student body of any given class as well. There was never going to be a black homecoming queen in those years. It wouldn’t have happened. So they changed the rules and they had a black homecoming queen and a white homecoming queen. And we voted for both. I got to vote for both queens, black and white, but all the ones running for black were black. All the ones running for white were white. We didn’t have to worry about Jewish people and Muslims and all the other, we didn’t have those people in rural Mississippi at the time. You were black or you were white or you were Tim Smith, whose mother happened to be from Spain, and he was Catholic, he was unique. That’s the only Catholic student in my high school. Um, but we treated him as though we, he was part of the white group, right? He happened to be Catholic. So any case, by the time I got into high school, there were still several of those things. One of them, how do you deal with the homecoming dance. Now you got white kids and black kids dancing together in 1979? No way that was gonna happen. So the solution was easy till the homecoming dance. And there was not a homecoming dance between 1970 and 1980. During all of those years, there was never a school dance whatsoever until I got to be in the 10th grade and my brother was a senior. And we started calling BS on that and said, why is it we can’t have a, um, you know, a homecoming dance because of these old archaic rules and stupidity that was created many, many years ahead. Now, the school buses were still black and white, even all the way through high school. They had never changed. We had the first integrated homecoming dance in 1980. Now, interestingly, we actually had to have two because all the white kids wanted to dance to rock and roll, and all the black kids wanted to dance to soul music or R&B. So we had two, but all of the kids went back and forth between ’em. They weren’t very far apart. So they just kind of went back and forth depending on what kind of music you wanted to dance to. By the time I got to be a senior, even that was done. It was just one, and it played all kinds of music or whatever. And so, um, even that had had kind of died off at that point.

Q: So, it sounds like the fact that there were two homecoming queens, it was, it was sort of like the answer to the inequality and division was sort of more division because there was the black couple, the black homecoming king and queen, and then the white homecoming king and queen.

A: So it was kind of, that seems a little bit. Yeah, it was, uh, I don’t know what of a better solution for that time would’ve been. I mean, we can easily look back now and say, how stupid was that? But at that time, given emotions given everything else that was going on, I did think it mattered that the white kids voted for the black homecoming queen and the black kids voted for the white homecoming queen and student. There was one student body president who turned out black or white, and actually kind of flip-flopped back and forth. It never seemed to be a problem. And so it, when I got into my senior year, I had a friend, her name is Shelly, still a friend today. She’s white, happens to be. But I had a lot of black friends too, and her and a few of the other girls, the town girls, right? Not my rural farming community, but the town girls, their mothers got together and decided we’re gonna have a party for our girls or about five of ’em as I recall, roughly five. And we’ll invite all of their friends and we’ll have a pool party. And one of ’em had a swimming pool. And so they came to us, Shelly came to me and said, my mom and the other moms were having this party and want you to come. And I said, absolutely, you know, be there. And she also went to James Hill and Bessie Williams and Angela Middlebrook and Sonya Lewis and said, Hey, we’re having this party. We’d love to see you. You know, it’s on this day. You’ll get a formal invitation, whatever else. Well, those kids happen to be black. And then the moms found out that Shelly had talked to all of these black kids and said, well, we’re having a pool party. You know, however, they said it as politely as southern ladies can be polite, not necessarily nice, basically told Shelly, go back to school and tell ’em all they can’t come. And so Shelly came to me first and said, I, I just don’t know what to do. I, there’s no way I can tell Sonya and Bessie and these others, they can’t come to my party. There’s no way I’m gonna do that. I’m just going to tell ’em I’m not gonna be part of the party. And I said, you don’t do that. Let me do that. And so I’ll go to all the white kids, I’ll tell the black kids what’s going on. I didn’t hide it from ’em, but I told all of the other white kids we’re not going to their party. And it’s nothing to do with the daughters, it’s all to do with the mothers. And so we sent the message back, no we will not be there until finally they changed their rules. I think they were a little embarrassed about the whole effort, um, and changed the rules and said, no, everybody that Shelly and the others want to come will be there. And they were there. We’ve then sent the word out. No, they’ve, they’re contrite and they’ve apologized and so we’re all gonna be there. They changed that and uh, we were there. It was a great party. And I would guess, um, Lawrence County’s never had that problem again, ’cause I think the message got out-don’t be stupid about such things. It causes problems for people. We all got along and here intrusive mothers are driving wedges between us based upon rules that we didn’t have anything to do with creating, nor certainly any interest in propagating.

Q: Well, I mean, you’ve talked a lot about how you were on the football team and a bunch of your teammates were black and it just didn’t, like, it was just not a thought.

A: Generally not now on a serious level. Now on a joking level, that was constant teasing and whatever. My last name is Blackwell. So the black kids gave me a nickname and it’s “n-word”-well. And that was my nickname to the black kids. They called me that pretty much on the football field all the time as a joke, a friendly joke. The white kids picked up on it. Even a couple of teachers picked up on it. And they started calling me that too. I don’t think that would go today. But at the time it was kind of funny. And, um, I don’t know, we just all, I can’t say we always got along, uh, based upon, you know, racial issues. But there was a lot of joking around about it. There was a lot of things like we would tease them about their music and they would tease us about ours and, they would all, you know, accuse us of being rich cause we were white when it wasn’t really true. But more than likely, we were a lot richer than most of them, things like that. They had their own football teams. There are the black, traditionally black, colleges in Mississippi and the South, Alcorn and Jackson State and so forth. And the black kids, they all kind of followed those football teams. Whereas, you know, the white kids never followed those that closely, they do today actually. But, never followed them that closely, but followed Ole Miss, Mississippi State, those types of schools which have a lot of black kids, but are predominantly white schools. So anyway, there were differences between us all, but we just kind of found ways to work. I always thought this way as I got older, southern people generally preach a lot about religion, about friendliness, about hospitality. And they do that at home while they ignore these other historical divisions that have happened over the years. But when you do that at home and you tell a kid, you be respectful to your elders, you be nice to people, you be honest, you be friendly and hospitable, and then they go to school. Um, many of the things that come from others that create division pale in comparison to what was taught at home. And they, small kids won’t distinguish between black and white or any other kind of divisions that a society has to deal with. So to me, that is the key to everybody in the world kind of getting along, is teaching those basic principles at home. Unfortunately, sometimes parents are racist or bigoted, or otherwise biased, and it translates to their kids. If they inadvertently teach the principles that will overcome those biases in future generations, they will be much better off.

Q: So, how much did you learn about black history in school? Like, um, how much did you know about people like Martin Luther King, people like that?

A: We, every year first through 12th grade, we always had some form of a social studies or a history class, one or the other, sometimes maybe both, I’m not sure. Not once in first through 12th grade did we ever study Martin Luther King. Not once, never learned anything about him in school. I don’t know, for one thing, the school system was so bad that you’d get a book for American history that would start in, you know 1492. And the teacher or the school system was so bad you never got to the 1960s most of the time. You just never covered that far. You’re lucky to get to World War II, but then there’s probably some element of avoidance too. Just avoid the topic that has caused friction. Um, and, and, and there was friction, I didn’t necessarily see it, but many of the students in my grade, in the first grade, their parents took them out of the school system rather than send them to first grade with an integrated school system. And they created their own school systems in South Mississippi. Many of them are still there, but they were whites only and they were private. You had to pay to go there. And they over with a few notable exceptions, they were really bad school systems. They were underfunded and just full of people who had really no interest in education. They were all just about bigotry and segregation. So there was all of that friction over time. Most of those died and integrated back into the regular school system. A few of them that were very well known still exist today, but they’re integrated. One of them is Park Lane Academy. It’s where Britney Spears went to school, close by my house. But when she went there, it was segregated. It was all white. And today, it’s not. And I don’t think there’s a segregated school system in Mississippi by design. There might be some accounting that’s just like overwhelmingly black or overwhelmingly white. But, um, they would accept a black kid or a white kid in any school in Mississippi today, without a doubt. Those segregated school systems just died of their own stupidity over time. I can tell you one more story.

A: Go for it.

Q: So in high school, in the 10th grade or 11th grade, I think it was summer before the 11th grade, I got a, a job, summer job and a little, um, it’s a kind of like a general store, but it did sell a lot of auto parts and other kinds of stuff like that. It’s called Western Auto. It doesn’t exist anymore as far as I know. But it was a small country store in town and I, you know, worked at the counter and I would put together bicycles that we were gonna sell and change cars, tires and whatever else. So just kind of a general dude there. One day this grandmother, black grandmother comes into the store and with her grandson, who was, I would say probably about seven or eight. And it became clear as she talked to me that he had worked, it was a late part of summer. He had worked all summer long, saving money from cutting grass. So he run a lawn mower, get five bucks back then, and saved all this money. And he was coming in to buy a bicycle. And so as I was showing him the bicycles, he finally picked out one that he wanted. And then over on the side there were these racks of accessories for bicycles. There were reflectors and horns and flags and all this junk that you could attach to your bicycle. He picks out his bike and then he starts picking out all of the accessories that he was gonna put on this bicycle. And he had all of the flags and reflectors and everything, horns and I don’t know what all little signs and whatever. And so he piles them up on the counter and I start ringing it up. And as I suspected when he did, he didn’t have enough money to buy the bicycle and all of the accessories. So I started talking to him. He was like seven or eight years old, something like that. So I started telling him, well, you can’t get all of these accessories, but if you get the bike, you can get that flag and this reflector and this horn or whatever, and it’ll work. You’ll be able to buy it. And he started crying and he said, I just, I can’t do that. All the kids in my neighborhood have all kinds of reflectors and everything on their bicycles, so I need those first. So the kid bought all of the accessories and left the bicycle. Now I tell that story because I looked at it and I said, the likelihood of his grandmother, who in 1980 was probably 75 years old, the likelihood she had a real education to be able to kind of work and educate this kid on her own, was probably pretty low. And also the connotation among the black community at that time was that, as I put it, seeming to be rich or successful or wealthy, as in this kid’s mind reflected in reflectors and flags and horns and bells, uh, outpaced the actual bicycle itself, the ability to ride and go. And so it made an impression on me that what was the likelihood a white kid would come in and do the same thing. It was very low, but it wasn’t inherent to his race. It was inherent to the situation that he had to grow up in, in rural, poor Mississippi. I felt sorry for him, I actually started to give him the money, which I didn’t have a lot of money myself, but I thought, no, I would have probably insulted his grandmother if I did. But if, if I’d given him another $15, he probably could have gotten the bike. 

Further Research

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge: and Circuit Judge [70] PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM. “United States v. Lawrence County School Dist.” Legal research tools from Casetext, September 15, 1986. https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-lawrence-county-school-dist.

Bolton, Charles. “The Last Stand of Massive Resistance: Mississippi Public School Integration, 1970.” The Last Stand of Massive Resistance: Mississippi Public School Integration, 1970 – 2009-02, 2009. https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/the-last-stand-of-massive-resistance-1970.

Domonoske, Camila. “After 50-Year Legal Struggle, Mississippi School District Ordered to Desegregate.” NPR. NPR, May 17, 2016. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/17/478389720/after-50-year-legal-struggle-mississippi-school-district-ordered-to-desegregate.

Pittman, Ashton. “Hyde-Smith Attended All-White ‘SEG Academy’ to Avoid Integration.” Hyde-Smith Attended All-White ‘Seg Academy’ to Avoid Integration | Jackson Free Press | Jackson, MS, 2018. https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2018/nov/23/hyde-smith-attended-all-white-seg-academy-avoid-in/. 

The Summer of Love?

By Jack Hentschel

Berkeley protestors in 1965 (AP)

During a lunch break in the summer of 1967, a friend and coworker of Jack Hentschel suggested they visit his alma mater, the University of California, Berkeley. They left San Francisco’s Financial District and eventually arrived at the campus, where they made their way through a maze of card tables in front of Sproul Hall, protesting everything from the FBI to Christianity. Then they entered the friend’s former frat house. “There, in the lounge, at high noon, on a couch,” recalls Jack, “was a demonstration of what the Summer of Love was all about, as a couple of lovers were in the act of “how to do it,” without shame.” Though the lovers seemed to be having fun, Jack was not impressed.[1] Neither were many Americans in the summer of 1967—or, to the hippies of San Francisco, the “Summer of Love.” In the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of the city, young people engaged in casual sex, listened to psychedelic rock, recited avant-garde poetry, preached peace and love, and consumed all kinds of drugs, all summer long. But soon enough, the drugs became pricey, the camaraderie caused overcrowding, and peace and love turned to violence as dealers gunned each other down in the street. H.W. Brands, in his book American Dreams: The United States Since 1945, writes that the Summer of Love “proved to be a letdown, as was probably inevitable.”[2] Thanks to his experience in the Bay Area throughout the Sixties and Seventies, Jack Hentschel would tend to agree. Though it began as a genuine movement of nonviolence and self-expression, the Summer of Love quickly deteriorated into the very thing it preached against. 

Jack and Mary Hentschel in 1962 (Mary Hentschel)

Jack Hentschel first moved to San Francisco in 1961. There, he met Mary Muldoon, and during the couple’s brief stay back east, she became Mary Hentschel. In 1964, the Hentschels returned to the city with a baby boy. They bought a house in the suburb of Walnut Creek the following year, and another boy followed the year after that. Jack lived in the Bay Area and worked in San Francisco’s Financial District until 1979, when he and his family moved again to his home state of Connecticut. He saw the rise and fall of the hippies at their nexus.[3] When exactly they began to rise, though, is hard to determine. Jeremy Guida, in his article “The Summer of Love Wasn’t All Peace and Hippies,” claims that the idea of a hippie was “defined by the media more than anything else.”[4] The hippies evolved from a related, yet distinct group in San Francisco called the beatniks, who protested the social conformity of postwar America. Hippies originally consisted of artistic, younger adults more politically minded than the beatniks—and more interested in drugs and rock and roll.[5] Even in its early years, the subculture was not relegated to San Francisco—it popped up in parts of New York, Chicago, and Seattle—but that is where it flourished, especially in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Integral to its development was the January 1967 “Human Be-In” in Golden Gate Park, a combination of peace rally, music festival, and poetry recitation.[6] Thanks to the success of the event, the hippies declared the summer of 1967 to be the “Summer of Love.” When fall rolled around, the parks grew chilly, and the school-aged hippies returned to their studies. The subculture would continue to thrive in certain pockets of the country for the remainder of the decade, but it never again reached the heights of the summer of 1967. 

The Grateful Dead in Haight-Ashbury in 1965 (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

For Jack Hentschel, the story of the hippies starts with his move to San Francisco. Initially, they constituted only one part of the city’s general vibrancy. He recalls that “in the first apartment we had, not far from the Golden Gate Park and the H-A district, it was like living in a United Nations compound. English was not the first language for many.”[7] A few teenagers having sex and smoking pot, therefore, garnered neither a strong reaction nor any specific attention from him. “For the most part,” he says, “before hard drugs took control of the movement, I viewed them as harmless, entertaining and in many ways refreshing from the norm.”[8] Caught in the generational gap between the hippies and their frustrated parents, he could relate, and not relate, to both. He admired the hippie desire for freedom, independence, and self-expression. And thanks to his childhood, “molded by parents of the Depression and the WW2 experience, I had tremendous respect for authority and doing what was right.”[9] When he himself became a father, he found it easier to side for parental control. He especially disliked the drug use, even in the movement’s early stages, when it was relegated to marijuana: “I nearly got lung cancer from ingesting secondhand pot smoke from parties that we attended.”[10] Pot smoke was not the only thing in the air. In addition to new drugs, the hippie movement also introduced new forms of music to the American people—a lot of which, like psychedelic rock, was inspired by drugs. Of this, too, Jack was not a fan: “The noise from the Stones and the Dead never found a place on our tape recorder.” But it found a place on their sons’.[11]

The 1967 Human Be-In (Lonnie Robbins)

As the movement progressed and politicized, Jack’s disagreements with the hippies became more a matter of ideology than taste. Like the hippies, he loathed the Vietnam War, but he also “was not in favor of large-scale and anti-USA demonstrations,” which is how he viewed the peace rally aspect of the Human Be-In.[12] And though the Be-In sparked a Summer of Love for the hippies, to Jack, it was just another summer: “1967 was much like any other ‘60s year to us, and the Summer of Love had no particular impact on us.”[13] But the concept fueled itself, and by June, the brand-new Monterey International Pop Festival was netting an attendance of 75,000.[14] It launched the careers of unknowns like Janis Joplin and the (aptly named) Who and provided rockstars, like Jimi Hendrix, their biggest venue yet. Jack pitied those in the crowd: “My observation was that the movement was co-opted by the slick and greedy shysters in the music industry and that, in reality, the flower children became victims of those who were in it only to make a very large and easy payday.”[15] Pity turned to active dislike with the introduction of hard drugs like cocaine, methamphetamines, and LSD, which brought even more hippies to The Haight and increased gang violence: “As the movement advanced in numbers and notoriety and members of one protest group became commingled with others in parallel groups, overall chaos on the street became more apparent.”[16] And while the Summer of Love eventually ended, its effects reverberate today. In her article “The Long Summer of Love,” Zoë Corbyn argues that “because so many countercultural practices have become mainstream, they are difficult to see.”[17] The hippies not only popularized yoga, meditation, and vegetarianism, but also political movements like environmentalism and sexual liberation. Jack believes that many of the domestic issues America currently faces can “trace their roots to the permissiveness that led to the hippie movement and its egocentric mind set.”[18] So much for peace and love. 

H.W. Brands is right to call the Summer of Love a “letdown.”[19] Moderate Americans like Jack Hentschel, though they could sometimes find fault with the indulgences of the hippie lifestyle, were not its primary victims. The hippies themselves faced the consequences for their overlong party. They were the ones who lived in the crowded Haight, or who blew their money on thrills, or who became addicted to meth. Along the way, the hippies championed noble causes like anti-consumerism and protesting the Vietnam War. But any coherent message was lost as the protests turned into drug-fueled orgies, and the hippies’ insatiable appetites brought gun violence onto the streets. When Jack entered his friend’s old frat house at Berkeley, the lovers were not alone. At the base of the couch lay a large, sleeping dog. “The sleeping pooch could only have been symbolic of the general public,” Jack muses, “ourselves included, that ignored the raging chaos that was all around us.”[20]

[1] Email interview with John Hentschel, April 19, 2023.

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

[3] Hentschel.

[4] Jeremy Guida, “The Summer of Love Wasn’t All Peace and Hippies – JSTOR DAILY.” JSTOR, https://daily.jstor.org/the-summer-of-love-wasnt-all-peace-and-hippies/.

[5] Jill D’Alessandro et al., Summer of Love: Art, Fashion, and Rock and Roll (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2017), 20. [Google Books]

[6] Brands, 146-147.

[7] Hentschel.

[8] Hentschel.

[9] Hentschel.

[10] Hentschel.

[11] Hentschel.

[12] Hentschel.

[13] Hentschel.

[14] Russell Duncan, “The Summer of Love and Protest,” De Gruyter, https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/transcript.9783839422168.144/html. 

[15] Hentschel.

[16] Hentschel.

[17] Zoë Corbyn, “The Long Summer of Love,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-long-summer-of-love/.

[18] Hentschel.

[19] Brands, 148.

[20] Hentschel.

Appendix

“The summer of love that followed proved to be a letdown, as was probably inevitable.” (H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945, p. 148)

Interview Subject

John ‘Jack’ Hentschel, age 87, who lived in the Bay Area and worked in San Francisco from 1964 to 1979

Interviews

• Email, April 19, 2023

Selected Transcript

From email:

Q. When did you first become aware of the emerging “hippie” subculture? What were your initial thoughts on it?

A. San Francisco in the ’60s was a very vibrant and fun place to live and work. In many respects, counterculture was the culture, therefore there were many faces and identities, some welcoming, some not. I recall that in the first apartment we had, not far from Golden Gate Park and the H-A district, it was like living in a United Nations compound. English was not the first language for many. The way life was, it just seemed that the flower children were part of the fabric and that their “Thing” was just one of many different things that made up the City. Initial reaction therefore was “live and let live.” They were as much part of the landscape as the fog horns we heard daily.

Q. You became a father to two boys in the 1960s. Did you feel allegiance to any group in the “hippie debate”? Did you align more with the young people or their frustrated parents?

A. Generally speaking, I was a half-generation older than the average hippie and a half-generation younger than their parents, so I could relate to both in many ways. I found the hippie desire for freedom, self-expression and independence something I could embrace. However, being a child molded by parents of the Depression and the WW2 experience, I had tremendous respect for authority and doing what was “right.” Therefore, disappointing my parents was the last thing I could consciously do. Score one for parental control.

Q. San Francisco was seen as the “hippie Mecca.” How visible were hippies in your day-to-day life in San Francisco? Was there a marked difference between your experience in San Francisco and in other parts of the country?

A. Being centered in the Haight-Ashbury and the western part of town, the enclave was several miles from the Financial District where I spent eight hours a day. Occasionally we would see a few at a time on the streets, but as a group, we rarely encountered them. For the most part, before hard drugs took control of the movement, I viewed them as harmless, entertaining and in many ways refreshing from the norm.

Q. The hippie subculture was defined in large part by its association with illegal substances. Did you ever encounter drug use during your time in San Francisco? Did you ever partake? What were your thoughts on it?

A. Early on, smoking a little pot, 24-hour sex, protesting the war (draft), plucking a guitar, dressing in funny clothes and listening to heavy metal music defined the movement. As things developed, it was the open use of and effect of hard drugs (thank you Timothy Leary and LSD) that most people associated with the hippie lifestyle and which ultimately was the cause for its downfall. Grammy and I are probably the only two people of that era who, not once, experimented with any drug use. That is not to say that we weren’t aware of its existence. Pot was openly in use everywhere. I nearly got lung cancer from ingesting secondhand pot smoke from parties that we attended.

Q. The hippie movement brought new forms of music to the American people. What were your reactions to bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane? Did your children become fans?

A. Peter, Paul and Mary signing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” was as much as I could handle from the music world. The noise from the Stones and the Dead never found a place on our tape recorder. I know that your father and Uncle John were much bigger fans of rock than we were.

Q. In January 1967 the hippies moved from Haight-Ashbury to Golden Gate Park, where they staged “the first human be-in.” Do you recall this event, or the presence of hippies in San Francisco’s public parks? What were your thoughts on the Vietnam War, which the be-in protested?

A. I’m aware of the human be-in event and vaguely remember that it received a positive reaction in the mainstream press, as did much of the hippie movement. I thought the war was a monumental mistake and couldn’t understand why our government was supporting a nation and people who, for the most part, were not eager to defend themselves. Having said that, I was not in favor of large-scale and anti-USA demonstrations. Anything anti-USA was not and is not in my DNA.

Q. The hippies declared the summer of 1967 to be the “Summer of Love.” Did the hippie subculture in San Francisco become more visible to you that summer? How was the Haight affected? Did you notice an increase in visitors to the city?

A. I had a friend who was proud of his degree from Berkeley and suggested we visit the campus one day during our lunch break. After negotiating our way through a maze of card tables set up in front of Sproul Hall protesting everything from the FBI (J. Edgar Hoover “The PIG”) to “Christianity Is a Fraud,” we paid a visit to my friend’s frat house (I think SAE). There, in the lounge, at high noon, on a coach was a demonstration of what the Summer of Love was all about, as a couple of lovers were in the act of “how to do it,” without shame. My friend, who was straighter then straight, was not a happy camper. 1967 was much like any other ’60s year to us, and the Summer of Love had no particular impact on us. Our focus was on two infant sons, the Raiders’ new Oakland home and the move of the Kansas City A’s to Oakland. By 1967 the flower children were competing for “shelf space” in the press with a host of other protest movements that had emerged or were developing: civil rights, gay/lesbian, feminism (I liked the no-bra look), Free Speech (Mario Savio), Black Panthers (Huey Newton), Marxism at Cal Berkeley (Angela Davis), Québec libre (Charles de Gaulle), and the Alcatraz encampment (Indians).

Q. The Monterey International Pop Festival occurred in June of 1967. Do you recall this event, or was it localized to Monterey? Do you recall any other mass gatherings of hippies? Did you ever experience the emerging culture of music festivals in San Francisco?

A. I don’t have any recollection of this event. Like many in my generation, I enjoyed the early introduction of rock, but as the noise grew louder, together with the rapid use of harder drugs, I turned off the sound. My observation was that the movement was co-opted by the slick and greedy shysters in the music industry and that, in reality, the flower children became victims of those who were in it only to make a very large and easy payday. The Stones and the Dead were more capitalist pigs than they were bleeding heart idealists.

Q. Did you notice an uptick in crime in San Francisco during the Summer of Love? Did the incoming drugs spark visible conflict in the streets, or were you far enough removed from those substances and that world?

A. As the movement advanced in numbers and notoriety and members of one protest group became commingled with others in parallel groups, overall chaos on the streets became more apparent. My instinct is that serious crime became more of an issue, but that is only a guess. I’ll use your words to answer your question: yes “I was far enough removed from those substances and that world,” while paying close attention to raising a family, rooting for the Raiders and A’s and lobbying Grammy for a dog. Hardly anything has changed in sixty years.

Q. Did the hippie presence in San Francisco die down after the Summer of Love? Was your subsequent experience in the Bay Area affected by the hippies?

A. After the Summer of Love we had the assassinations of MLK and RFK. The 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago was the Mother of all nightmares. The rise of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Watts riot, anarchy in our major cities in subsequent years and even the divide that we as  a nation experience today can in many ways trace their roots to the permissiveness that led to the  hippie movement and its egocentric mind set. So yes, my experience in the Bay Area has been affected by the hippies.

by Henry Booth

When Don Bonsper arrived in Vietnam in 1967 with the United States Marine Corps, like others, the first thing he noticed was the heat. “It was very hot, very humid, lots of bugs, bugs at night, hard to sleep,” Don said, “and when the monsoon rains [came], it was just very heavy rains, flooding, mud, so you were living in a [different] environment.”[1] Boyce McDivitt, a dentist in the Navy and a lifelong friend to Don Bonsper, also had his own Vietnam War experience, but rather from stateside, in San Diego.[2] Many others, like Phil Caputo and Larry Heinemann, spoke about the conditions over in Vietnam during their various interviews, including Caputo’s experiences that he wrote in his memoir. H.W. Brands, author of the book American Dreams, uses Caputo’s memoir to bring in a brief overview of the life of a soldier fighting in Vietnam. Brands discusses the Vietnam War at length, although he does it more from a political level rather than discussing the conflict for the soldiers fighting on the ground, or those who were serving back stateside. While H.W. Brands discusses the Vietnam War at length, he doesn’t describe the story of the soldiers on the ground enough, leading to missing elements into why the war in Vietnam panned out in the way it did.

Phil Caputo landed at Da Nang, close to the divide between the Northern and Southern divide in Vietnam, in 1965 and was part of the escalation in Vietnam in 1965. He stayed over in Vietnam until 1966, where a patrol incident with civilians in the village of Giao Tri lead his men to kill an innocent civilian, leading him to go back stateside.[3] Heinemann and Bonsper both arrived during 1967 (Heinemann in March, Bonsper in June). Heinemann, after initially being stationed near Saigon, fought in one of the bloodiest fights of the war at Soui Cut, where afterwards, he was shipped back stateside that March.[4]

United States Soldiers landing in Vietnam via Helicopter, Military Blog

Bonsper served with the United States Marines until the end of October in 1967, where in November he became an advisor for the South Vietnamese Marine Corps and served with them through the Tet Offensive.[5] The Tet Offensive of 1968 was a decisive battle in the war, with the United States and South Vietnam repelling an assault by the North but was viewed by the public as a defeat due to the media’s affect. He was eventually shipped home in June of 1968. McDivitt worked at the San Diego naval base from 1967 to 1969, preparing many naval cadets for the war in Vietnam by cleaning and fixing

their teeth, hoping to get them battle ready.[6] Bonsper and McDivitt both grew up in the small town of Portville, New York, and both went to high school together at Portville Central School.

The fighting over in Vietnam was tough, especially with the conditions and the enemy they fought. Many soldiers over in Vietnam felt like they were stranded. “A feeling of abandonment came over us,” Caputo wrote, “The company seemed to be marching into a vacuum, haunted by a presence intangible yet real, a sense of being surrounded by something we could not see.”[7] Brands noted how the jungle made Marines like Caputo feel lost within the jungles of Vietnam, bringing a sense of anxiety over his men. And with Caputo being close to the border of North Vietnam with the war escalating in 1965 on the ground, it was a difficult experience to anticipate. Bonsper added onto this idea when he noted that “when they felt like they wanted to come out and engage, shoot some mortars, shoot some artillery, they could and then they could disappear back.”[8] The hit and run tactics by the North Vietnamese took a major toll on the Marines sanity, for they could face attacks at any time within the dense jungles and rice paddies over in Vietnam. With the war being full tilt in 1967, it was known that the United States had suffered significant losses.

American Soldiers showing off an enemy flag after a tough battle, Getty Images

The losses from the hit and run attacks also made a major dent in the Marines morale. “If you just walk around and patrol and look and nothing happens for a number of days and then on the next day there’s an ambush and two or three of your people are killed, and then the enemy just disappears,” Bonsper said, “it’s a real frustration on the part of the troops to feel like you’re constantly a target and that it’s so hard to get even, or to find, and get revenge on the actual enemies.”[9] Without being able to retaliate properly, many soldiers lashed out, which ultimately led to atrocities like Giao Tri in 1966, or My Lai in 1968, where US Soldiers took out Vietnamese civilians. Caputo mentions an instance where an officer in his group had to keep a lieutenant from shooting an elderly woman because she was sharpening stakes that could be used for the various traps the North Vietnamese devised.[10] The war was further complicated because of the Viet Cong, or Vietnamese civilians who were resistant to the South, leading to a further complicated war. Caputo was also involved in an incident at Giao Tri, where his patrol killed an innocent civilian, leading to a trial that eventually led him  to be dishonorably discharged in 1966 after a false statement.[11] In My Lai, a group of American soldiers ran roughshod over the small village of My Lai, and slaughtered approximately three hundred Vietnamese civilians, leading to immense backlash from the American public.[12] Because the American soldiers struggled to get revenge on their North Vietnamese enemies, the pent-up anger could lead to events like My Lai.

Bonsper also noted how he served with the Vietnamese Marines as an advisor after November of 1967. “The [Vietnamese] marines were terrific,” Bonsper said, “the Army, we operated with the Army a couple of times, the South Vietnamese Army, and they were not up to the standard of the marines.”[13] The lack of true support from the South Vietnamese Army could’ve affected the morale of many soldiers in the sense that they were fighting for a country that wasn’t adequately prepared to defend itself, making the Americans’ job a whole lot harder,  ultimately dragging American morale down. Brands discusses the war and conditions on the ground, but he doesn’t elaborate enough on how the soldiers’ morale was damaged by the hit and run tactics and conditions, which is a point that should be emphasized more, especially if it led to atrocities like Giao Tri or My Lai.

Soldiers helping a civilian across the battlefield, AP Photos

Confusion was a major aspect to the conflict. Caputo mentioned how his men were ultimately confused by the conflict. “There certainly were [discussions about our mission] because we were constantly getting these changing mission orders,” Caputo notes, “after the first couple of weeks, we weren’t sure what we were supposed to be doing over there.”[14] Many of the soldiers over in Vietnam had no idea what they were supposed to do, and with the lack of coordination between units, the battlefield was often a chaotic place. Many soldiers also had difficulty keeping up with the issues at home, however many had knowledge of the protests going on. Heinemann noted how they knew of the protests over in Vietnam, but never really cared much because of the difficult fighting.[15] Some soldiers also had difficulty keeping up with events at home. “There was a newspaper called Stars and Stripes and that would get distributed sometimes, [but] we had no way to communicate with the outside world,” Bonsper recalled, “it was just what we got, a little bit out of that newspaper and what people would tell us.”[16] McDivitt, still in San Diego, noted that he knew of the protests, but he never really kept up with them in depth due to the amount of work he had stateside.[17] Despite the soldiers knowing of the protests from 1967 through 1969, many members of the military had little reason to care about it because they weren’t super in touch with the protests like people are today, making it hard for the protests to truly impact them as much.

Marines fighting during the Tet Offensive, Flickr

Brands mentioned how many politicians during the war had a defeatist mentality. “We are alien to their culture,” said Senator William Fulbright, “where the French failed, we will fail.” [18] Despite many politicians thinking the war was going bad, there were mixed feelings on the ground and at home over whether everyone supported the war. Some like Bonsper thought the war was going well during his tours in 1967 and 1968. “I felt like we were doing what we were being asked to do, we were doing it well,” Bonsper said, “and I had no idea the political side and whether we were winning or losing, whatever.” [19] While Bonsper was confident in how the war was going, Heinemann was the opposite in his belief of how the war was turning out. Heinemann saw the war effort as a way of radicalizing more Vietnamese against the American cause, and with the destruction of Vietnamese farmland and resources, ultimately making the war effort a losing fight because of the damaged relationship.[20] While Brands discusses the political aspects in terms of supporting the war, he should have honed his focus on the soldiers’ perspectives, for they have a larger impact on the actual fighting and history of the war. In terms of supporting the war, Bonsper was a supporter of the war initially, but later lost his support of it. “I supported the war when I went to Vietnam,” Bonsper wrote, “My support never really changed until long after the war was over and many of the facts about the start of the war became public knowledge.”[21] His friend Boyce McDivitt also supported the war from home; however he didn’t want to fight in it because he didn’t want it to affect his relationship with his wife Kay.[22] However Heinemann was vehemently against it. “The war was [messed] up, that was clear,” Heinemann said, “We were not very sophisticated on the rightness and wrongness of the war, but everyone did know that it was [stupid].”[23] Both viewpoints show a significant difference even among the military, making Vietnam a tough conflict to win. If some parts of the United States military weren’t on board with the war, then it makes it difficult to win, especially against a fighting force that is stealthy, and knows their terrain well.

While Brands discussed the politics behind the Vietnam War well, he should have focused more on the soldiers and their perspectives while fighting the war. Brands does discuss the conditions of the war briefly by including Caputo’s experience, but he should have focused more on the soldiers’ experiences. Because Brands didn’t explain the human experience over in Vietnam enough, he didn’t discuss the communication issues, condition issues, and differing attitudes and support around the war, ultimately leading to the events that played out. Wars are won with the soldiers on the ground, so their experiences are the ones that need to be talked about, so not explaining it fully can lead to misinterpretations about the American experience over in Vietnam and allows people to forget the sacrifices soldiers made over in Vietnam.

[1] Interview with Don Bonsper April 25^th, 2022, via Zoom

[2] Interview with Boyce McDivitt April 21^st, 2022, via phone call (notes)

[3] Herzog, Tobey C.. 2008. Writing Vietnam, Writing Life : Caputo, Heinemann, O’Brien, Butler. Iowa: University of Iowa Press. Accessed May 11, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central. 192

[4] Herzog 197

[5] Interview with Don Bonsper on April 25^th, 2022, via Zoom (recorded and transcribed)

[6] Interview with Boyce McDivitt April 21^st, 2022, via phone call (notes)

[7] H.W. Brands, American Dreams (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2011). 144

[8] Interview with Don Bonsper on April 25^th, 2022, via Zoom (recorded and transcribed)

[9] Interview with Don Bonsper on April 25^th, 2022, via Zoom (recorded and transcribed)

[10] Brands 145

[11] Herzog 192

[12] “The My Lai Massacre,” PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), accessed May 10, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/vietnam-my-lai-massacre/.

[13] Interview with Don Bonsper on April 25^th, 2022, via Zoom (recorded and transcribed)

[14] Herzog 15-16

[15] Herzog 65

[16] Interview with Don Bonsper on April 25^th, 2022, via Zoom (recorded and transcribed)

[17] Interview with Boyce McDivitt April 21^st, 2022, via phone call (notes)

[18] Brands 153

[19] Interview with Don Bonsper on April 25^th, 2022, via Zoom (recorded and transcribed)

[20] Herzog 65-66

[21] Email from Don Bonsper May 2^nd, 2022 (quoted from Email)

[22] Interview with Boyce McDivitt April 21^st, 2022, via phone call (notes)

[23] Herzog 65

Transcript:

“‘Finally, in the latter half of the month, ‘ – April 1965 – ‘someone decided that since the Viet Cong would not come to us, we would go to them.'” – Philip Caputo quoted on page 143 in American Dreams by H.W. Brands

Interview Subject(s):

Boyce McDivitt, United States Navy Dentist from 1967 to 1969, who often fixed the teeth of many soldiers who went over to fight in Vietnam

Don Bonsper, United States Marine Corps from 1967 to 1968 who fought in Vietnam. Childhood friend of Boyce McDivitt

Interviews:

Boyce McDivitt: Phone Call (Notes) on April 21st, 2022

Don Bonsper: Zoom Call (recorded transcription) on April 25th, 2022

Email on May 2nd, 2022

From Boyce McDivitt’s phone call (notes):

When asked about what he did in the Navy:

• Naval Training Center from 1967-1969
  • Checked guys who were going into the Navy for dental issues
  • Worked his tail off, leading to a promotion to a Commanding Officer by his Executive Officer

When asked why he joined the Navy:

• Wanted to keep himself out of potential harm over in Vietnam
  • Knew of dentists who went over and were killed
  • Was married to his wife Kay at the time and didn’t want to lose that with the Vietnam War
  • Supported the war, but conscientiously knew that he could keep out of Vietnam if he was productive for the Navy Stateside

When asked about how in touch he was to the war’s protest efforts:

• Aware of it
  • Not super in touch due to lack of connectedness
    • Cited that work and other priorities kept him from watching news as much as he does now in his retirement years
  • Boyce supported war, but wasn’t willing to lose his life over it, especially with a wife and being able to help from the states

When asked about if he kept in touch with his friends (Dick Anderson [Uncle Hoke in interview] and Don Bonsper:

• Never kept up with them during the war
  • Didn’t have any letters unfortunately
  • Dick Anderson had diaries of what he and Boyce discussed, but was unable to access them
  • Don never got to discuss with Boyce the war
    • Don did write memoires about his time over in Vietnam

When asked whether any of his friend group (the Vikings) had any knowledge of the true status of the war during the war:

• All three friends had little knowledge during the war
  • All had no knowledge of the true extent of the war until years after
    • Had some general suspicions that it wasn’t going well, but all three had zero clue over true extent of the war

From the Zoom Interview with Don Bonsper (transcribed):

Q: One of the first questions I had is … first off, when did you start serving in Vietnam?

A: I got there in June of 1967…

Q: … What was the conflict like over [in Vietnam]?

A: … It was guerilla warfare, so there was fighting in jungles, rice paddies, and it was the enemy, the other side, had two major elements to their force and they had the Viet Cong, … and those were sort of people that were fighting, [and] then the North Vietnamese Army, the NVA, …which was more like a real army, not as informal as the Viet Cong.

Q: … What was the war like over there, like life when you weren’t fighting, … what [were] the tensions like in your camp? Was it pretty high morale [or] was it pretty low morale? Can you describe that a little?

A: [Yes] I think the morale was good, morale was fine. The conditions we were living under were pretty difficult. It was very hot, very humid, lots of bugs, bugs at night, hard to sleep, and when the monsoon rains would come, it was just very heavy rains, flooding, mud, so you were living in a [different] environment. The conditions were very very hard.

Q: … Did those conditions give the enemy more of an advantage or did you think it benefitted your troops better?

A: I think it gave them an advantage. For one, they knew the area much better, they knew the terrain and they could pick and choose when they engaged with us. Much of our activity was built around taking and holding various pieces of real-estate, pieces of ground, and then just moving on and giving it up so the enemy was able to just lay low, stay in the jungle, and when they felt like they wanted to come out and engage, shoot some mortars, shoot some artillery, they could and then they could disappear back, so I think they tough conditions one, they were used to it, they lived there, it was their home, their space, so I think they had the advantage.

Q: … Did any of the pick and choose attacks of the North Vietnamese, … did that ever chip away at the morale of your troops?

A: It certainly does, [because] if you just walk around and patrol and look and nothing happens for a number of days and then on the next day there’s an ambush and two or three of your people are killed, and then the enemy just disappears, it’s a real frustration on the part of the troops to feel like you’re constantly a target and that it’s so hard to get even, or to find, and get revenge on the actual enemies, so [yes], it does chip away.

Q: …were you able to stay connected to …the events back at home because I know there was a lot of protest of the war back at home, so were you able to stay connected with that, or not really?

A: Not really. I think we knew about it. There was a newspaper called Stars and Stripes and that would get distributed sometimes, [but] we had no way to communicate with the outside world, it was just what we got, a little bit out of that newspaper and what people would tell us, what we would hear so it wasn’t like something we were constantly being bombarded with, any protests or demonstrations.

Q: … Were you ever able to communicate with my Grandpa Boyce during the war, or not really?

A: No not really. I’m not sure exactly where he was. I think he was on a hospital ship as a dentist, and I was on land the whole time, so we never did communicate. There was no way to make physical contact, and we didn’t have any of the contact means that exist today… we could communicate with people back home by [writing] a letter so we could write a letter and put it in an envelope and give it to someone who was going back to some other place where it could be mailed. We could mail tapes, little cassette tapes, back and forth which is what my wife and I did… the turnaround time, the time it took to actually get to somebody and then if the person was going to answer anything in that letter, the time it took to get back, …were talking a couple of weeks.

Q: Towards the end of your time in Vietnam, could you sense whether the war was going well for your troops, or whether you guys were getting beaten, what was sort of the thought process of that?

A: My tour was different. It was divided into two parts. There was a first part where I was with the US Marines, and a second part where I was an advisor with the Vietnamese Marine Corps, so I had two different experiences of leaving. I left the US Marines to go to the other unit. Honestly in both cases I felt like we were doing what we were being asked to do, we were doing it well, and I had no idea the political side and whether we were winning or losing, whatever. I was in the Saigon area during the Tet Offensive, and that’s when the Vietnamese launched a major attack through the country, … and they really got hurt militarily. They took so many casualties, it was a big defeat for them militarily, but it turned out to be a big political victory because then the people back home felt like we were not really doing that well if they could attack all over the country in such massive numbers. But no, I never felt like we were really losing, I never felt, … I was just doing my job, … it’s kind of hard to say that, but I had a job to do, I think I did it well and my troops did it well at the same time.

Q: …What was your time as an advisor for the Vietnamese Army like?

A: Well it was really quite a good experience. There were two advisors with [the] marine battalion, so there were about eight hundred Vietnamese Marines, and two Americans, and that was it, and we each worked with a counterpart and advisor is kind of a bad word because, or lets say a misleading word because we really didn’t advise them because they knew more about what was going on than we did. They had been fighting for years, they were extremely good, these marines were an elite unit, and so my role was more to help with supporting arms, artillery, … all the aircraft which would support the battalion were US aircraft, and so I was on the ground [and] was controlling those aircraft. If the battalion commander needed something that would come from Americans, he would tell me, and I would get it, I would control it and I relied on them to protect me. I only carried a pistol, I never expected to actually be shooting when I was an advisor. My role was to make sure that I got to support the battalion leader, and they were good.

Q: … Were you relatively in tune with the … larger plan [in Vietnam]?

A: No. Not at all. I barely knew what was going on in my battalion [in] the US battalion. I was in tune with the Vietnamese marines better, but not the big picture. No. Never.

Q: …Could you actually tell me [about] the morale of the South Vietnamese Army?

A: Well I don’t really know about the army. I know about the marines. The marines were terrific. The army, we operated with the army a couple of times, the South Vietnamese Army, and they were not up to the standard of the marines.

Q: … And so they weren’t really concerned about  losing [the] war, they were pretty confident?

A: … That’s a really good question. I don’t know. I don’t know what they thought, but when the peace, when the war ended in [1973], and there was a two year period where nothing was going to happen I think the Vietnamese marines knew that they were going to be in serious trouble if North Vietnam attacked, and of course that’s what happened. They all did their very best, and they paid a very very heavy price for it. And the US didn’t do the things that it said it was going to do, in terms of providing equipment and support. Once the war ended officially, the US just kind of backed out of things that it agreed to.

Q: … So essentially the US left the South Vietnamese marines, and basically their entire military out to dry after leaving?

A: Yes.

Q: … So after the war, what were your discussions with my Grandpa Boyce like about the war.

A: … We never really talked about it. Never talked about it in any kind of detail. He’s read my books. I wrote a couple of books, so he read the books, he has an idea of what I went through.

Outside Resources:

Thayer, Carlyle A. 2019. “North Vietnamese Diplomatic Posture during the Vietnam War.” Asia Policy 14 (3): 184-187. [ProQuest]