{"id":8973,"date":"2019-10-22T14:48:30","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T14:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/?p=8973"},"modified":"2019-10-22T14:53:50","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T14:53:50","slug":"dayglo-and-napalm-in-closing-the-making-of-a-dissident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/2019\/10\/22\/dayglo-and-napalm-in-closing-the-making-of-a-dissident\/","title":{"rendered":"DAYGLO AND NAPALM – In Closing: The Making of a Dissident"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Peace March, New York City, April 15,1967. <\/a>
Howard S. Goldbaum Collection of Connecticut Daily Campus Negatives. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The following essay is an extended closing remark to the exhibition Day-Glo and Napalm: UConn from 1967-1971, by guest curator and contributor, George Jacobi (\u201971).The exhibition runs until Friday, October 25th, 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the GI Bill, the Fifties are a favorable time for most Americans home from the war to build a career and raise a family. Powered by Unions as well, the rise of the largest middle class in history finally includes some Black and Latino citizens. Suburbia is invented. The 1964 World\u2019s Fair in New York promises we\u2019ll all be working far fewer hours and getting there in a flying car, asserting that technology<\/strong> only benefits mankind. Robots will do the tough jobs. The future seems so far away that this is almost believable. Are white kids in New England spoiled? Compared with previous generations, sure we are, and so has each generation since. Growing up then is generally benign, and the result is a chance to examine ourselves and America with less national responsibility than our parents. Our patriotism thus leans toward social betterment, not defense or personal economic progress.                                                               <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the veneer of white middle-class American life rumblings of unrest have begun. Academics are suggesting that modern society is unfulfilling. Rachel Carson has shown America that it is in the process of killing nature with chemicals. Kerouac has been \u201cOn the Road\u201d and Jackson Pollock has blown up the art world. Jazz has turned from big band dance music into individual expression. Ginsburg writes \u201cHowl\u201d and thus comes out as a gay man; the book is immediately banned. Yet in Greenwich Village people are \u201csuddenly free of the shackles, the baggage of tradition<\/em>\u201d: Liam Clancy. Nevertheless, beatniks are portrayed as a joke on TV.                                                                                                                                                  The political and cultural events that took place at UConn during the years 1967 to 1971 of course reflect wider American historical forces. For simplicity, label these Politics, Spirituality, Culture, and the Arts. In reality, they are jumbled together; breaking them down in order to clarify each is a rare side benefit of the passage of time.                                                                                                                                         <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following account lists this history, phenomena that took place or began prior to 1967. By that year, society is increasingly seen by an influential youth minority as hypocritical or empty of value. It has become apparent that the norms are mythological and serve only the powerful. Alienation results with what is initially a quiet insurrection against uncritical acceptance of the status quo. While most of the country isn\u2019t paying attention, there is a cultural shift; all of a sudden something changes. Several small groups at first, an anti-establishment minority slowly appears. Most folks in America and at UConn in the mid-1960s go about their own lives whether they are sympathetic to this rebellion or not. A majority of UConn students, including us, will spend most of our hours being students.                                                                                                                                                                                                                       <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

How does a profound upheaval begin from such a minor movement? A fifth and crucial factor in the creation of this distinct period is newly powerful television. Starting with the Kennedy assassination coverage, it brings the vivid truth about punji sticks in Vietnam, police fire hoses and German Shepherds in Alabama, to all of America as it happens. It will do the same for college unrest. The Baby Boom generation is at its largest and most potent point in these few years. We don\u2019t invent most of these ideas, but we are poised to take them and run.                                                                                                                                                              <\/p>\n\n\n\n

POLITICS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE KOREAN WAR: It shocks America by ending as a\ndisappointing stalemate, stoking fears that Vietnam may turn out the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE COLD WAR: Remnants of McCarthyism, fear of\nCommunism, continue to hold America in a tight grip. Nuclear War is a genuine\nthreat. The Cold War includes the Space Race, and the USSR has a head start. In\n1959 Cuba, 90 short miles away, becomes Communist. The negative aspects of\nCapitalism are kept hidden in order to compare favorably with Socialism. This\nis deliberate, a relaxing of the right-wing attack on the New Deal. Corporate\nImperialism is disguised by support for military dictatorships around the world,\na bulwark against leftist revolution. Propaganda touts American industrial modernization\nas the future for the world; the average American\u2019s life improves at the same\nrate as the rich elite for a change. The older generation appears to accept\nconformity as the price of comfort, security, and growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION in 1963: Almost immediately\nfollowing the release of the Warren Report, it becomes obvious there is some\nkind of cover-up going on. Heavy media coverage helps fuel distrust of the\nGovernment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA: Also in 1963 \u2013 Reverend Martin Luther King\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech during a March on Washington. The struggle for racial justice in the face of hate is visible to all on the evening news. Cities continue to burn with anger from coast to coast. J. Edgar Hoover\u2019s FBI is investigating King as anti-American, and will do the same to Attorney General Bobby Kennedy! Astonishing to us now, there is a third party candidate in 1968, George Wallace, whose Presidential platform actually rests on continuing segregation. He WINS five states. But calling it state\u2019s rights or the rule of law and order cannot disguise the vicious repression of peaceful protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT 1964: An attempt by Berkeley students to have the concerns of the Cold War and Civil Rights penetrate their \u201civory tower\u201d, to make college relevant to the real world, leads to an immediate backlash, including arrests. It\u2019s another early warning that those in power don\u2019t like to be questioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE VIETNAM WAR: President Johnson continues the war,\nin spite of making no progress, because he refuses to have America lose. Through\nthe press, official reports of military success are discovered to be lies;\nlater Nixon\u2019s secret bombing of Cambodia will become known. Various reasons\npeople oppose the war include that it is imperialism disguised as fear of the\ndomino effect, that it is butting into a civil war on the corrupt side, that it\nis immoral, and that it is unwinnable (or all of the above). In 1966 the Senate\nitself has hearings about whether to get the troops out of Vietnam. By \u201868 Eugene\nMcCarthy runs for the Democratic Presidential nomination on a \u2018Get out of Vietnam\u2019\nplatform. High School classmates continue dying because of: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE DRAFT: This previously accepted fixture of life\nbecomes political. The government, by failing to protect Civil Rights marchers\nand lying about the war, as well as music, drugs, car safety, cigarettes, pollution,\nand anything else you can name, has lost the faith of young people. They decide\nagainst taking part in such a mistake. It is obvious that kids with pull are escaping\nthe draft while poor kids are \u201ccannon fodder\u201d. Draft cards are being burned. In\n1969 the Draft Lottery is instituted. When peaceful protests are made, the\nreaction is not just arrests but violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SPIRITUALITY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christianity and Judaism fail to rise to the challenge\nof the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, on the heels of an inability\nto respond to the emptiness and materialism of the \u201850s. Individual religious\nfigures act, larger organizations are silent. Thomas Merton, William Sloane\nCoffin, Daniel Berrigan, and others cry out unheard in the wilderness. How does\na Christian believe the commandment \u201cThou Shalt Not Kill\u201d doesn\u2019t apply to war \u2013\nwhen Jesus refused to defend himself? Once people question standards and\nbeliefs and find them wanting, they look for meaning elsewhere. The stage is\nset for Alan Watts and Gary Snyder to introduce seekers to Zen Buddhism, and\nfor LSD to introduce hippies to the idea of expanding their own minds enough to\ndiscover God \u2013 WITHOUT organized religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CULTURE<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

REBELS: James Dean in the movie \u201cRebel Without a\nCause\u201d and Bill Haley\u2019s song \u201cRock Around the Clock\u201d signal in popular culture even\nback in the mid-50s that an undercurrent of unhappiness and a search for\nmeaning exists in post-war America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MAD MAGAZINE: It’s satire exposes the absurdity of the American Dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE PILL: the first oral contraceptive is released in\n1960. The Kinsey Report, followed by Masters and Johnson\u2019s research, shocks\nprudish Middle America by actually discussing sex, and women gain the freedom, the\npower, and the understanding to control their own sexuality and pregnancy. These\nare no small things; they are a critical key to a changing society and lead to\nthe 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision. In 1953 Playboy magazine has added to the \u201cdecline\nof morality\u201d with the first legally published breasts outside of National\nGeographic Magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MUHAMMED ALI: Heavyweight Boxing Champ, the most well-known person in the world, sacrifices his career (temporarily) by refusing to go to Vietnam when drafted. An attempted boycott of the 1968 Olympics by black athletes fails, but the BLACK POWER salute on the medal stand by Tommy Smith and John Carlos is seen around the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HIPPIES\/DRUGS: In San Francisco and elsewhere, a small group of avant-garde folks smoke marijuana, having discovered that it\u2019s no more harmful than alcohol, and ingest Psilocybin mushrooms and LSD in a serious attempt to expand their consciousness. They piggyback on a decade of scientific research, much of it sponsored by the CIA. Though their use becomes \u201crecreational\u201d (and then abused) in a few short years, some of us are introduced to psychedelic drugs as a potential spiritual path. Add live rock and roll and sexual freedom to this pot (pun intended) and you have an alarming-looking curveball thrown at society, which the excitable media runs with. This confluence of events colors every bit of the following years of politics, arts, and life in general. By 1967, even as the hippie dream dies in San Francisco, its light spreads to the rest of America; the Monterey Pop Festival brings it into the mainstream. \u201cA noble experiment<\/em>\u201d, recalls Ed Sanders. (In an amusing coincidence, that year the US, USSR, and others sign the \u201cOuter Space Treaty\u201d, barring ownership of celestial bodies.) Radical politics is separate from counter-culture, which follows the lead of \u2018peace and love\u2019. There is no cocaine or heroin in this world; that appears later. In Haight\/Asbury, the Diggers have raised some issues. At their Free Store, \u201ceverything is free\u201d is not about self-gratification, but about consciousness. Is it time for a step forward in human civilization in which food, shelter, and health care are basic human rights? Fifty years later we\u2019re still asking ourselves this question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FM RADIO: This garden of musical freedom on the\nairwaves, until now ignored by commercial interests, is planted (and grows,\nespecially at colleges) with the following-        <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ROCK-AND-ROLL: Rock is biracial. Musically simple,\nfounded on the emotional and sexual energy of Blues, rock is instantly frowned\non. Alarmed by \u2018devil\u2019 music, the older white generation cannot relate. The\ndominant society reacts with racism and fear, stoking teen enthusiasm; the more\nadult America lies about music and dance (just as it is lying about drugs) the\nmore popular Rock gets. A message that \u201cthings don\u2019t have to be this way\u201d, it\ntalks to the young; it becomes an actual barrier between old and new. Pop music\nis created to appeal to the masses; Rock and Roll is created to appeal to an\n\u201cin\u201d group. And if others don\u2019t like it, that is just further incentive to push\nthe boundaries. Youthful rebellion is in rock\u2019s DNA, and THAT is a new frontier\nin popular music. By \u201867, psychedelic songs from the hippie culture dominate\nthe airwaves, expanding the Generation Gap. As \u2018leaders\u2019 of this movement,\nmusicians embrace its ethic: most of them act normal instead of being stars. No\ntheatrics, no egos. The Beatles alternately scorn and hate their own fame and\ntry Transcendental Meditation when being brilliant, famous, and rich turns out\nto be not enough. Bob Dylan gets tired of being our social conscience and\nexplores his own. The Grateful Dead play for free to support myriad good\ncauses. Neil Young still refuses to let any of his songs be used for commercial\npurposes. All this crashes and burns later in a media storm of cocaine,\nelitism, and cynical marketing, but will not change the lives and beliefs of\nthose of us on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE GENERATION GAP: A clich\u00e9, usually explained by stating\nthat my generation reacted to our parent\u2019s lives of denial and service with a\ndesire for instant self-indulgence. This is a simplification which inaccurately\nportrays Baby Boomers as well as 1950s society. The \u201cBaby Boom Generation\u201d\nrefers to an eighteen year period on which has been heaped negative trends that\ntook place long after the shorter Vietnam Era. There WAS a Generation Gap, and\nit began with music (see above). My research suggests that each of us, while rebelling\nagainst previous mores, do so for personal reasons that are all different, but\nwhen united are a backlash against the older generation\u2019s acceptance of the obviously\n(to us) unsatisfactory status quo. At this point the World War II Generation has\nhad enough struggling; they relax. Early Baby Boomers are without an externally\nimposed purpose but desire a meaningful life. It is later Baby Boomers who are\ncalled the \u201cMe\u201d generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOVEMENTS: The hippie motto \u201cDo Your Own Thing\u201d has\nramifications for the Women\u2019s movement, Gay Pride movement, etc. \u2013 If Black\npeople should be able to live free from oppression, so should everybody else. And\nright now. The Stonewall Riot takes place in 1969, alongside continuous Red\nPower and Chicano activity. The Environmental movement, Health Food, and\nBack-to-the-Land movements come from mounting evidence that the dominant\nculture is run by businesses for profit without regard for the safety of\nhumanity or the planet. My generation is unhappy with the glacial speed of\npositive change and the negativity toward it. Once the backlash occurs, you can\ncall us furious. In short, the struggle for dignity, justice, and freedom\nincludes all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARTS<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE BEATS created a new climate of freedom in\nliterature. The boldness of Be-Bop did the same for music. Abstract\nExpressionism followed by Pop Art confused most of America, but not all.\nBoundaries of what is acceptable were pushed past the limits most average\npeople can relate to. Beatniks dressed in black radiated gloominess, though, which\nmade their ideas less attractive. Those ideas will catch on with a newer, more\ncolorful generation. It is rarely commented on, but most of the cultural,\nartistic, and psychological changes associated with the Sixties began with the\nBeats. In addition, most of the \u2018leaders\u2019 (Kesey, Leary, Cleaver, Rubin and\nHoffman, for example) were of that age, a few years older than Sixties hippies\nand students and thus able and willing to exercise personal power more\neffectively.                                      <\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE BEATLES: That they deserve their own category is\nitself significant. Just months after the JFK assassination, the Beatles show\nup in time to renew hope among America\u2019s youth. They create joyful invigorating\nmusic, the opposite of much Beat art. Already the biggest news on Earth, the\nBeatles meet Bob Dylan, then combine that joie de vivre with drugs and a new\nmindfulness. The no-longer three minute single Pop song, simple and made for radio,\nnow borrows from folk and country, classical, world music, and more \u2013 and the\nBeatles make it into Art before our eyes. Indeed, it is rock music that pulls\ntogether all the other elements; it is rock that creates a community out of\nyoung people that don\u2019t have all or most of these concepts in common.<\/em><\/strong> Somehow\nthe Beatles give us permission to be ourselves, even if normal or nerdy. They\nreplace traditional rules of behavior. There is no precedent for this. They survive\na self-created group mind thing (7000 girls rushing a stage), the scary force\nthat looks like Nazism. What\u2019s different is that the Beatles blow it off \u2013 make\nfun of the fanaticism as it is happening. Lennon: \u201cWe were a ship at sea, not just the Beatles, but all of us\u2026and we went\nsomewhere<\/em>.\u201d Of course despite (or because of) the innocent \u2018cosmic\u2019 part of\nit, the ship later sinks anyway, for them and for us. Listen again \u2013 electric 60s\nrock music not only encapsulates the peace and love ideal, but also manifests\nthe dramatic sounds of combat, that of actual war. The reason the music is so\ninfluential was that it reflects the beauty and horror of the times \u2013 the same\nway Elgar captured the heartbreak of WW1 in his Cello Concerto, the same way\nPicasso captured Spanish Civil War terror in \u201cGuernica\u201d. Rock\u2019s anti-establishment\npower is enforced by the raw sound of the electric guitar. By the mid-Sixties,\nthe sense of freedom and creativity expressed by psychedelic music captures the\nhearts of many. Jimi Hendrix, Country Joe and the Fish, the Small Faces, the\nDead, and of course the Beatles during their Sergeant Pepper\/Strawberry Fields\nphase are playing directly to us freaks. At some point it becomes clear that\nthe music is transcendent and has been since \u201cShe Loves You\u201d. It\u2019s greater than\nthe four guys doing it, greater than the notes and rhythms; it expresses the\nspirit of humanity. Try this on: the elder generation\u2019s rejection of the\nBeatles \u2013 their music, attitude, and even hair \u2013 and the music\u2019s own response, was\nas significant a reason as Civil Rights and Vietnam in my generation\u2019s\nequivalent rejection of previous values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I was in the middle of all this, both culturally and politically. Not as hippie-dippy as some, not as aggressively anti-American as some, but thoroughly a part of that brief left turn. In 1967 I found my tribe, the people who contributed to this exhibit and then showed up at a 50 year reunion this summer from all over the country. The exhibit and all these words are merely my personal view, yet I have been assured that they also are very close to the attitude of most of those who were around me. Almost every one of us still believes that the human world needs taming, not the natural world. As Edwin Way Teale (another writer and nature lover whose work is proudly housed in this building) said once \u201cThe long fight to save wild beauty represents democracy at its best. It requires citizens to practice the hardest of virtues–self-restraint<\/em>.\u201d                                                                                                                                                    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My hope is that this small effort helps today\u2019s University of Connecticut take the lead in human rights and earth-centered sustainability. Thanks to UConn, the Dodd Center, Archives and Special Collections, and in particular Human Rights Archivist and now friend Graham Stinnett. It has been a privilege and an honor to be part of this conversation about UConn history in the context of American history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

George Jacobi (’71), 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The following essay is an extended closing remark to the exhibition Day-Glo and Napalm: UConn from 1967-1971, by guest curator and contributor, George Jacobi (\u201971).The exhibition runs until Friday, October 25th, 2019. Thanks to the GI Bill, the Fifties are … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[351,255,379],"tags":[479,446,477],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NKyO-2kJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8973"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8973"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8983,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8973\/revisions\/8983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}