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4. “I can’t be calm, cool, and detached any longer”: The Beginnings of a Mass Movement
- University of Wisconsin Press
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110 4 “I can’t be calm, cool, and de tached any longer” The Be gin nings of a Mass Move ment At the end of the 1950s, Mad i son pos sessed a num ber of fac tors that would be cru cial to the de vel op ment of a pow er ful protest move ment in the next decade: a tra di tion of stu dent rad i cal ism; a rel a tively tol er ant ad min is tra tion; a num ber of char is matic and un or tho dox pro fes sors; a cri tique of American pol i tics and foreign pol icy; and a net work of crit i cal stu dent or gan iza tions. Still, as the 1960s dawned, there was lit tle in di ca tion that “the six ties,” in clud ing all that era has come to be known for, had started or was just around the cor ner. Civil rights were a reg u lar but minor po lit i cal issue, hints of what would be come known as the counter cul ture were rare, and American in volve ment in Viet nam, which would focus so much of six ties en ergy, was rel a tively minor. Sur vey ing the cam pus, keen ob serv ers might have dis cerned a slight in crease in the vi tal ity of stu dent pol i tics—the re cent es tab lish ment of Stud ies on the Left, for ex am ple—as well as the new di rec tions pi o neered by groups like the So cial ist Club and the Stu dent Peace Cen ter, but even for those who might have been look ing, a pow er ful “new left” still seemed far off. Just six years later, how ever, the sit u a tion had changed dras ti cally. By 1966, as stu dents oc cu pied the cam pus ad min is tra tion build ing to protest the university’s coop er a tion with the Se lec tive Ser vice System, dem on stra tions were a reg u lar part of cam pus and city life, and the sub dued pol i tics of the 1950s were lit tle more than a rumor to the vast ma jor ity of stu dents who had started col lege sev eral years later. The left had been a fringe ele ment of cam pus pol i tics for most of the post war years; now it oc cu pied a larger and more vital “I can’t be calm, cool, and detached any longer” E 111 place than ever be fore. The civil rights move ment, in par tic u lar, sparked the era of cam pus pro tests, be gin ning with the south ern sit-in move ment in the spring of 1960 and es pe cially the model of cou rage and de fi ance dis played by black youths. For those who par tic i pated in the move ment in Mad i son and es pe cially for the sev eral dozen Wis con sin stu dents who ex pe ri enced the south ern move ment di rectly, civil rights pro vided a pow er ful ex am ple and a com pel ling moral ideal ism that would come to rest near the core of the six ties. By the time of the draft sit-in, the New Left had be come a mass move ment in Mad i son and through out the na tion. With Viet nam sup plant ing civil rights as the key issue on cam pus, mir ror ing Pres i dent Johnson’s es ca la tion of the war in early 1965, hun dreds and some times even thou sands of Wis con sin stu dents par tic i pated in ral lies, marches, teach-ins, and other types of ac tion. Some were drawn into the move ment by fam ily or friends, some by the power of ideas found in the class room or in the pages of books and jour nals like Stud ies on the Left, and some by their fierce re ac tion to American pol icy on civil rights or Viet nam, but all of them were search ing for ways to re shape American pol i cies at home and abroad. The draft...