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Copyright © 2016 by Clara Bingham
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Bingham, Clara, author.
Title: Witness to the revolution : radicals, resisters, vets, hippies, and the year America lost its mind and found its soul / Clara Bingham.
Description: New York : Random House, 2016. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015046134| ISBN 9780812993189 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780679644743 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: United States—Social conditions—1960–1980—Interviews. | Social movements—United States—History—20th century—Interviews. | Student movements—United States—History—20th century—Interviews. | Vietnam War, 1961–1975—Protest movements—United States—Interviews. | Radicalism—United States—History—20th century—Interviews. | Nineteen sixty-nine, A.D.—Interviews. | Nineteen seventy, A.D.—Interviews. | BISAC: HISTORY / United States / 20th Century. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture. | HISTORY / Military / Vietnam War.
Classification: LCC HN59 .B49 2016 | DDC 303.48/40973—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046134
randomhousebooks.com
eBook ISBN 9780679644743
Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Daniel Rembert
Cover images: © Wally McNamee/Corbis
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
POLITICAL TRIALS OF THE LATE SIXTIES
TIMELINE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
INTRODUCTION: THE AWAKENED GENERATION
1. The Draft (1964–1967)
2. Psychedelic Revolution (1960–1967)
3. Madison (1967–May 1969)
4. Radicals (1968–June 1969)
5. Resisters (1967–August 1969)
6. Woodstock (August 1969)
7. Weathermen (August–October 1969)
8. The Chicago Eight (September–November 1969)
9. Ellsberg (1967–October 1969)
10. Moratorium (June–October 1969)
11. Silent Majority (November 1969)
12. My Lai (October–November 1969)
13. Exile (November 1969–February 1970)
14. December (December 1–31, 1969)
15. War Crimes (January–April 1970)
16. Townhouse (January–April 1970)
17. Women’s Liberation (January-September 1970)
18. Cambodia (March–May 1970)
19. Kent State (April–May 1970)
20. Strike (May 1970)
21. Underground (May–July 1970)
22. Culture Wars (May 1970)
23. Coming Home (May–August 1970)
24. Army Math (May–September 1970)
25. Escape (September 1970)
26. Reckoning
EPILOGUE: TRANSFORMATION
VOICES
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PLAYLIST
WATCH LIST
READING LIST
PERMISSION CREDITS
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
By Clara Bingham
About the Author
POLITICAL TRIALS OF THE LATE SIXTIES
Baltimore 4
Beaver 55
Boston 5
Buffalo 9
Camden 28
Catonsville 9
Chicago 8/7
D.C. 9
Fort Hood 3
Fort Hood 46
Harrisburg 7
Intrepid 4
Kansas City 4
Kent 25
Milwaukee 14
Motor City 9
New Haven 9
Oakland 7
Panther 8
Panther 21
Pittsburgh 26
Presidio 27
Seattle 8/7
Silver Spring 3
Tucson 5
TIMELINE
AUGUST 1969
• August 15–18: Half a million people converge on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, for the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, where thirty-three bands play.
• August 19: The film Alice’s Restaurant is released, starring Arlo Guthrie. The film follows the travails of a hippie trying to avoid the draft.
• August 25–31: War Resisters’ International holds its 13th Triennial Conference at Haverford College, in Pennsylvania. Pacifist Randy Kehler delivers a speech on draft resistance that inspires Daniel Ellsberg to copy and release the Pentagon Papers.
• August 26: The film Medium Cool, directed by Haskell Wexler, opens in theaters, and critics praise it for capturing the political unrest of the times.
• August 29: Weathermen meet in Cleveland to plan for the Days of Rage protests, scheduled for October.
SEPTEMBER 1969
• September 1: President Nixon announces the withdrawal of 35,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam, for a total of 60,000.
• September 2: Ho Chi Minh dies.
• September 3: Women from the Weathermen stage a “jailbreak” demonstration at South Hills High School in Pittsburgh.
• September 17: The movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice opens.
• September 24: Chicago Eight trial begins.
• September 26: At a news conference, President Nixon acknowledges popular opposition to the war but declares that “under no circumstances will I be affected whatever by it.”
• September 29: Merle Haggard and the Strangers release the anti-hippie single “Okie from Muskogee.” By November the record reaches No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart.
OCTOBER 1969
• October 1: The Beatles release Abbey Road in the United States.
• October 1: Daniel Ellsberg, with the help of his former RAND Corporation colleague Anthony Russo, begins copying the Pentagon Papers in Santa Monica, California.
• October 3: The Selling of the President 1968 by Joe McGinniss appears on the New York Times bestseller list.
• October 5: The Weathermen bomb the Haymarket police statue in Chicago.
• October 8: Six RAND Corporation foreign policy experts, including Daniel Ellsberg, write an open letter to The New York Times calling for unilateral U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
• October 8–11: The Weathermen stage the Days of Rage riots in Chicago. Police arrest more than 120 protesters.
• October 9: The Illinois governor calls in the National Guard to control crowds protesting outside of the Chicago Eight trial.
• October 11–16: The New York Mets defeat the Baltimore Orioles to win the World Series. “If the Mets can win the World Series, the United States can get out of Vietnam,” says Mets pitcher Tom Seaver.
• October 15: The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam takes place across the country, and 2 million people peacefully participate in what is the largest protest against the war to date.
• October 24: Twentieth Century Fox releases Butch Cassidy and the Sunda
nce Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.
• October 29: Black Panther cofounder Bobby Seale is gagged and manacled to his chair at the Chicago Eight trial.
NOVEMBER 1969
• November 1: Jefferson Airplane releases the album Volunteers.
• November 3: Nixon delivers his Silent Majority speech to a television audience of 70 million people. Following the speech, the president’s approval ratings climb from 52 percent to 77 percent.
• November 12: Seymour Hersh breaks the My Lai massacre story.
• November 15: Half a million protesters gather for the Moratorium March on Washington.
• November: Jeremy Rifkin and Tod Ensign launch the Citizens’ Commission of Inquiry to publicize American war crimes in Indochina.
• November 24: Mike Wallace interviews Private Paul Meadlo on the CBS Evening News. Meadlo tells the story of the My Lai massacre in graphic detail to 30 million television viewers.
• November 30: Steppenwolf releases its most controversial and antiwar album, Monster.
DECEMBER 1969
• December 1: The first draft lottery takes place.
• December 1 and 19: A Cook County, Illinois, grand jury indicts sixty-four Weathermen on thirty-seven counts of aggravated battery, resisting arrest, mob action, and other offenses arising from the Days of Rage in October.
• December 4: Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are killed in their sleep by the Chicago police.
• December 5: The Rolling Stones release Let It Bleed.
• December 6: The Weathermen bomb several Chicago police cars, stating in a communiqué that it is in retaliation for the Hampton and Clark shootings.
• December 6: Altamont Free Concert is held at the Altamont Speedway, near Livermore, California. Three hundred thousand people attend “Woodstock West,” and four die.
• December 8: Hundreds of Los Angeles police officers wearing military gear, bearing M16 rifles, and driving armored cars raid the Black Panther office in South Central. The Panthers hold off the police in a five-hour shoot-out before surrendering.
• December 8: Charles Manson and four others are indicted for the murders of Sharon Tate and her friends. The grand jury goes on to indict the five plus Leslie Van Houten for the murders of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca.
• December 11: Thousands of Black Panther supporters rally in Los Angeles to protest the police raid on the Panther office.
• December 27: The ROTC building at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is firebombed in reaction to the My Lai massacre.
• December 27–31: The Weathermen meet in Flint, Michigan. “War Council” leaders refocus the group on covert strategies, with plans to attack institutions of the U.S. government. Taking their fight underground spurs the group to change its name to the Weather Underground Organization (WUO).
• December 31: Brothers Karl and Dwight Armstrong attempt unsuccessfully to bomb the Badger Army Ammunition Plant in Baraboo, Wisconsin.
• December 31: The total U.S. death toll in the Vietnam War reaches 43,021. For the calendar year 1969 11,363 American soldiers were killed, down from a peak in 1968 of 16,899.
JANUARY 1970
• January 1: The National Environmental Policy Act becomes law, leading the way to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
• January 1: Gil Scott-Heron releases his first record, A New Black Poet: Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. On it Scott-Heron introduces the black power song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
• January 3 and 4: The New Year’s Eve Gang, led by Karl and Dwight Armstrong, firebombs the University of Wisconsin–Madison Armory, Gymnasium, and Primate Lab.
• January 6: Simon & Garfunkel release the album Bridge Over Troubled Water.
• January 14: Felicia and Leonard Bernstein host ninety people at their Manhattan apartment to raise money for the Panther 21 defense fund.
• January 21: Timothy Leary receives a ten-year sentence for a 1968 Laguna Beach, California, arrest for possession of two marijuana “roaches.” While in custody Leary gets another ten years, for a 1965 drug bust at the Texas-Mexico border.
• January 22: President Nixon devotes much of his State of the Union speech to the environment: “Clean air, clean water, open spaces—these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now, they can be.”
• January 31: New Orleans police bust Grateful Dead soundman and legendary LSD manufacturer Augustus Owsley Stanley III, known as Bear. Stanley is charged with possession of narcotics, LSD, and barbiturates. He goes to jail for two years, where he takes up metalworking.
FEBRUARY 1970
• February 2: Pretrial hearings in the Panther 21 case begin in New York City.
• February 16: A pipe bomb explodes in the San Francisco Police Department Golden Gate Park station. Sergeant Brian McDonnell is killed by shrapnel. The case is never solved.
• February 18: Jury convicts five of the Chicago Seven for intent to riot, but acquits them of conspiracy charges. Judge Julius Hoffman sentences the defendants to five years in jail and fines each five thousand dollars. Militant protests erupt in response to the convictions, which are overturned in 1972.
• February 21: The Weather Underground bombs the home of Judge John Murtagh, Sr., a New York State Supreme Court justice presiding over the Panther 21 trial. No one is injured.
MARCH 1970
• March 2: The National Book Award for Arts and Letters goes to Lillian Hellman for her memoir An Unfinished Woman.
• March 6: Weather Underground members Theodore Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins die in a Greenwich Village townhouse when a bomb they were making accidentally detonates.
• March 9: Two officials of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Ralph Featherstone and William “Che” Payne, die when a bomb on the floor of their car explodes along U.S. Route 1, south of Bel Air, Maryland.
• March 11: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young release their debut album, Déjà Vu, featuring the counterculture anthems “Almost Cut My Hair” and “Teach Your Children.”
• March 11–12: In Annapolis, Maryland, the Citizens’ Commission of Inquiry holds its first hearing on Vietnam War atrocities. Veterans testify, giving their firsthand accounts. In April and May, CCI hosts more hearings in Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, and Buffalo.
• March 16: American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Eleanor Holmes Norton files a gender discrimination complaint on behalf of forty-six Newsweek women employees—the first of its kind.
• March 18: Approximately one hundred women take over the offices of the Ladies’ Home Journal, stay for eleven hours, and demand that the magazine hire a woman editor in chief.
• March 25: Jimi Hendrix’s new group, Band of Gypsys, releases the song “Machine Gun.”
• March 25: Jane Fonda embarks on a two-month cross-country road trip, visiting off-base GI coffeehouses to learn the extent of antiwar sentiment growing among servicemen.
• March 26: Woodstock, the three-hour documentary, is released in theaters nationwide. The film wins the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
• March 30: Chicago police and the FBI discover a sophisticated Weather Underground bomb factory on Chicago’s north side. No arrests are made.
APRIL 1970
• April 2: Federal indictments are leveled against twelve members of the Weather Underground for the Days of Rage demonstrations, to little avail. Eleven members are already in hiding.
• April 9: Brothers Philip and Daniel Berrigan, both Catholic priests, refuse to surrender to authorities to serve a three-year jail sentence for destroying draft files at the Catonsville, Maryland, Selective Service office. The brothers become fugitives.
• April 10: The Beatles break up.
• April 13: Nine women, including editor Robin Morgan, are arrested after a five-hour sit-in at Grove Press, protesting pay inequity.
• April 15: Linda Evans a
nd Dianne Donghi of the Weather Underground are arrested in New York City for Days of Rage indictments.
• April 20: Nixon announces the withdrawal of 150,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam.
• April 21: Fugitive priest Philip Berrigan is arrested by the FBI at Riverside Church in New York City and sent to jail.
• April 22: The first Earth Day—20 million people take to the streets all over the world in peaceful demonstrations urging environmental reform. It is the largest protest in history.
• April 22: Yale students strike for the first time in the university’s 268-year history, in support of the Black Panthers who are on trial in New Haven, Connecticut.
MAY 1970
• May 1: President Nixon announces a joint U.S. and Army of the Republic of Vietnam invasion of Cambodia combining ground forces and airpower. The invasion surprises the nation and sparks intense opposition.
• May 1: Fifteen thousand students and activists protest in a May Day rally at Yale to support Black Panthers Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, who are on trial in New Haven. President Nixon dispatches National Guard troops as jury selection begins.
• May 4: Thirteen students are shot and four killed by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University. Across the country, seven hundred university campuses shut down and more than two and a half million students strike.
• May 5: David Harris, Joan Baez, and their infant son, Gabriel, appear on the cover of Look magazine.
• May 6: The Grateful Dead play a free concert at Kresge Plaza on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to protest the Kent State killings.
• May 7: Lieutenant John Kerry is a guest on The Dick Cavett Show. Kerry speaks out in opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
• May 8: The Hard Hat Riot takes place in lower Manhattan—200 construction workers attack 1,000 people protesting the Kent State shootings and the Cambodian invasion. More than seventy people are injured.
• May 9: President Nixon talks to protesters at the Lincoln Memorial at dawn before one hundred thousand people rally on the Ellipse.
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