Continuing through 2018, we mark the 50th anniversary of americas war in vietnam. In 1960 seven, hundreds of thousands of troops were on the ground in vietnam, while at home voices became more vocal. There was a large cohort of the baby boomer generation that the culture during the summer of love. To learn about these events, we now turn to to todays guest, book 1967,ks and his the year of fire and ice. Mr. Brooks is an internationally recognized author with 14 books on history. s passion for these areas of research and dates back to his childhood when the Brooks Family visited gettysburg in europe. In addition, dr. Brooks is a professor and received an undergraduate degree in history from Lasalle University and earned his masters and doctors of education degree from the university of pennsylvania. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome victor brooks. [applause] victor thank you so much for coming today. I am very honored that all of you could take from your schedules to listen to me. A little bit of the background for this book, i was 19 years was inn 1967 started and and therefore i was old enough to know what was going on in the world, but not old enough to know too much about the economy or the stock market. Is the newestat rock band, what was on tv, how i was going to get along with my parents, and so on, so this book is a combination of several things. Today from be doing my book is basically three things that are heavily related to one another. One is the Popular Culture of the time, which is undergoing an enormous change in 1967. The second is the impact of the baby boom, what is starting to be called the generation cap that is developing at this time. And finally fitting well with the exhibit here is the vietnam war, and some of the research i did on the war in 1960 seven and how it set up many of the major changes right after the end of 1967, including the tet offensive, which changed the entire course of the war. So i would like to share with you some of the Research Findings i discovered. Much of my research was done using a lot of the magazines and time, life,the newsweek, even tv guide magazine. I discovered all kinds of interesting things. I probably made a huge profit for ebay sending away for some of these things. 17 magazine and things like that. Varied group of sources i have been able to find. First of all, i want to talk about the Popular Culture of the time and how 1960 seven is such a major watershed in the 1960s. Happened is in 1967, first of all on television , is a huge technological breakthrough had just occurred. 20 years effectively after Network Television started in ofghly 1947, in the fall 1966, all three of the major networks, abc, nbc, and went over entirely to Color Television. Before this, the majority of programming was in black and white and americans were loath to buy a Color Television just to see a few programs. It cost about three to four times what a blackandwhite set cost. They thought it was not worth it. 1966, all three entirelyagreed to go to color. The only exception for a few weeks was a show called i dream andeannie, english american astronaut finds a jeannie on a bottle on the beach. In a bottle on the beach. When she comes out of the bottle, the special effects were so advanced they did not know how to put it in color yet. It was the last blackandwhite holdout, which i found interesting, so they could figure out how to get it right. The television at this time, some of the research i came up with is very interesting. First of all, how in 1959, life magazine ran a cover story in september about the new television season, in 1959. In that year, they mentioned there were a record 30 westerns as regular series, gunsmoke, bonanza and so on. I checked tv guide from that time. If you only wanted to watch westerns, if you were willing to flip channels come you could watch a western virtually the entire week. 1967, the western was becoming somewhat of a dinosaur. By 1967 is the spy concept. There is an enormous switch, partially caused by the influence of james bond movies and similar events. By 1967, the westerns are getting slowly pushed to the edge while the new shows are some of the ones you may remember if you are old enough, things like mission impossible, i spy. Another was a parity called a parody called get smart. All of these shows and many like them traded a cowboy for a glamorous spy, sometimes in Foreign Countries or in the case of the man from uncle, shot in hollywood location in which they would show Stock Footage and what have a thing with somewhere in south america and it was actually a back lot. These became the new superheroes of television. They had the characters on the man from uncle. Also, bill cosby shared top spy, which was a breakthrough at the time. The second thing is the emergence of Science Fiction for the first time as a major portion of television programming. Basically the most famous of these come because there have been so many followup movies and remakes of movies after that, is the show star trek. It started on a thursday night in the fall of 1966 and almost immediately gained quite a bit of attention. They had this fabulous pairing of mr. Spock and captain kirk, one of very emotional and the other unemotional. In essence this was almost like wagon train, except in space. Theead of moving across frontier, they were moving across the galaxy. That did well enough the other networks quickly jumped in in the head shows such as lost in space and some of the other ones that came up at that time, one was called the time tunnel, an interesting concept in which too young professors are experimenting with a time machine that throws them in the past with no way to get back to 1966 or 1967. Using Stock Footage, the First Episode they land on the titanic on its voyage. The scientists are trying to tell the captain, watch out for the iceberg, and it doesnt work. Also, the young, sexy professor falls in love with a young lady who has terminal brain cancer, so she doesnt care either way. And so on. These are the other kinds of shows that were very big. Basically, these are the two major terror Major Television formats in the new color genre at this time. In movies at the same time, amusingly, the Motion Picture industry, which at one point that was very worried when television started that no one would go to the movies anymore, by 1967, they found that had not happened. Screens, more big adult plots, more challenging plots than the television could provide food in 1967 could provide. In 1967, they were also into spy movies. Latestding one was the james bond saga, you only live twice. This particular movie was a very thing, it was made almost entirely in japan and filmed there with an almost entirely japanese cast other than sean connery. Most of the earlier bond movies had relatively wellknown actors and actresses from britain, the United States or europe. For the first time, this had all japanese actors plus james bond. It was very successful, very good special effects and so on. Yet that was not the only spy movie of 1967. There are a number of almost parodies of spy movies. For example, one of them is flint, a sequel to our man flint, which takes an american version of james bond and does it with a light touch. Whatever gadgets james bond had, flint had it times 100 or something. The plot lines are very twodimensional. Also, james coburn the same year in 1967 start in another spy movie called the president s analyst, when he had where he had the interesting job of being an analyst for the president of the United States. The plot of the movie is that every countrys secret agents want to capture him to get the information that the president has told him. It is kind of a dark comedy, but a very successful movie. Had aurn has a very very good 1967. At the same time, there is a very significant change in film to traditional areas were more movies and westerns. There is a significant change in what we might call action movies in 1967. This is that a lot of the unwritten rules of how much of violence or sexual content a movie could have started to get stretched quite a bit in 1967 in those two genres. Is a veryc example profitable movie called the dirty dozen. On the interesting concept that right before dday, 12 convicted military felons who all faced death penalties were told their sentence would be commuted if they would volunteer for a semisuicide mission to go into normandy the night before dday and go into basically a kind of camp for highranking german generals and simply go in and shoot as many generals as they can. Life magazine did a very interesting critique of the movie, and the film critic said that the movie itself was quite exciting, but he said that when you really think about it, this order to go in and simply shoot every general when they are unarmed would essentially break the geneva convention. They wondered about the morality of the order. In another sense, a number of the other movies had thatthey w, very violent thing. Some of the thrillers at this time include in cold blood, wait in till dark, how i won the war. They all had a dark side that had not been seen before 1967. One includes what we would call a serial killer. Another includes essentially a psychopath zoning in on one unprotected young lady. How i won the war was a british film in which john lennon of the beatles had a decent sized role and dies a horrifying death in the movie, slowly bleeding to death. The camera panning in on him gradually losing life. These are things that had not been done as explicitly before 1967. I found that very interesting. The other part of the Film Industry in 1967 that is fairly new is what they are starting to call the antihero. This is a hero who has a very definite dark or negative side to the individual. Bonnie andample is 1930s in which two bank robbers who killed quite a few people as Collateral Damage in the robberies, are portrayed who laugh, joke and talk their way through robberies as they shoot down officials and so on. A lot of so critics wondered if it was a good message to give, especially to young americans. It just seems too easy to do these things, and her seems to be no repercussions until the in one of the most graphic film moments to this point, they show them being shot to pieces by a fairly large number of federal agents. It was done in stop action slowmotion with blood all over. It produced an interesting response from a lot of some critics and moviegoers at the time. Another example of the antihero was cool hand luke, where paul newman plays a convict constantly trying to escape from essentially a work gang and by the end, they keep putting him in a sweat box as punishment and he keeps defying authority until he dies at the end. Another lighter look at an antihero is in the graduate, where Dustin Hoffman plays a new College Graduate who has no clue what he wants to do with his life. It is certainly fascinating how you see shot after shot where he is basically on a pool raft swimming around, lying around the Swimming Pool and he doesnt know what he wants to do. One of his neighbors and a parting keeps coming up and whispering in his air, plastics, thats the place you want to go. There is a very controversial situation where he is having an affair with his neighbors wife, who is roughly twice his age, mrs. Robinson, and it also produced two songs for some and garfunkel that year. This was the new frontier. It pushed the envelope quite a bit compared to earlier years. I found that interesting. As a something brandnew in america. As sports in Popular Culture, 1967 is a very iconic sports year. The first big reason is in july of 1966, the two arch enemies of professional football, the American Football League and national Football League essentially called a truce to their war and merged with one another into one gigantic league including both subsets. They decided the biggest part of the was that at the end of 1966 season, and early 1967, the afl and nfl champions would play each other in a bowl game. And went to madison avenue asks what would be a good name, they already had the rose bowl, sugar bowl and so on. Lets make itd the super bowl. Its incredible to see how much of a run up there was to that event. It was an unusual situation because cbs and nbc had contracts with the two leagues and it was the only time at the super bowl was on both stations. Every cbsup, in regular show, they are doing the super bowl on our channel set of the other networks, as if there would be a difference. Buildup seen as a huge was a less than spectacular ending. First of all, they put it in the los angeles coliseum, which at that time sat 90,000 people. Very difficult to sell out. Also, there was no Los Angeles Team in the super bowl. Only about 60,000 people showed up, so the cameramen were explicitly told, dont go very high with your shots, there was a lot of empty seats they did not want to show off. While it seemed to be a super challenge between the two leagues, the nfl at this point still had more talent. When the Kansas City Chiefs went out on the field against the green bay packers, they were hitting one of the most iconic football teams in history, kush by since lombardi. Coached by vince lombardi. Apparently somewhere between the end of the First Quarter and halftime, lombardi said we need to get serious and ended up a 3510 game. Not the most artistic version of the super bowl, yet it was a super bowl. It eventually went into sports history as the first one. Things would never be the same again. The nfl just got bigger and bigger and bigger in its new form of a unified league with Gigantic Television contracts, etc. Another huge event in the early part of 1967 is another dynasty like the packers. This is in westwood, california on ucla. Wooden, a presbyterian deacon, he did not drink, smoke or curse, never lost his temper, and was also rather old at this time, well in his 60s, basically directed a group of super stalls superstars to a phenomenal season. His biggest piece on the chessboard was a person called luau thunder a person eventually called Kareem Abduljabbar. He had been recruited from high school and was considered the Number One High School sensation. He was also over seven feet tall, which at that time was very, very tall. He came to ucla, and in the arcane rules of those days, he had to sit out his freshman year, he played for a Freshman Team and then started his three years of eligibility as a sophomore. 19661967 basketball season, no one came close to ucla. They won every nonleague game, every link game by huge margins. Once the ncaa tournament started, unlike most of the tournaments where they have the picks you, all of the have an office pools and everything, they couldnt do it because everybody knew who was going to win the championship, more than most years. Basically opportunity to play for the championship came to a relatively littleknown team called the university of dayton, a Catholic School in the income of ohio, which happened to have struck lightning and put together five very good basketball players. During the regular season they were quite good. On the night before easter, 1967, interestingly enough not on a network televised thing, they had to syndicate the championship. March madness was not his biggest today. Most cities carried it but it was an outside feed. The game itself was mainly watching Kareem Abduljabbar take on dayton singlehandedly if he needed to. Not a very close game. By the last few minutes, ucla is playing with dayton and not even trying to hit their shots. A remarkable championship game, but very interesting how the ucla brand becomes imprinted on College Basketball in the 1960s. This is the beginning of the error that begins that continues for the next three years. Time in professional basketball, interestingly enough, the nba has over 30 teams right now. Only 101967, there were franchises. Most cities do not have a professional basketball team. The playoffs, now they go about two months, they were much more brief. In the end, the two best teams basically pretty much met, even though the biggest rivalry in the nba at this time was a transplanted team that at one point was the syracuse nationals, amazing that in a small city like syracuse they had an nba franchise. They moved to philadelphia and became the 76ers. Their opponent was the team that had representative had untilented philadelphia three years before. To San Francisco and became the golden state warriors. The 76ers were led by will chamberlain, wilt one of the tallest players of his time, who the previous season had averaged 50 points per game. As a sideline, during his time as a warrior, he came back to philadelphia as a 76 or, and his time as a warrior, at hersheypark arena, he scored 60 points in a single game. Two weeks after that, i had become a basketball fan, i was about 13 or 14 years old, and i told my nonbeth i talked my nonbasketball fan father to go to the civic center in philadelphia, this is where the warriors played. Wilt scored 73 points. I still have the program. It was pretty impressive. The warriors have probably a deeper team, the 76ers have a superstar. It is an exciting series, it is the only time the 76ers were pushed for the whole season, and in a long playoff, going at 76ersto a sixth game, the managed to win it. , as an end to the winterspring period, the National Hockey league in 1967 had an interesting situation because it was the last year they only had six teams in the entire nhl. They are called the original six, there is now 31 teams. , basically six teams huge numbers of large cities were not represented. There were two canadian teams, the maple leafs and the canadiennes. Leafs7, the toronto maple , who also ran for who were an also ran for years, caught magic, won the stanley cup and have not won since. It was there one win. Fromext you, the nhl went 16 to 12. It created a new concept for hockey. Eventggest single sports other than the super bowl for sheer excitement was the 1967 world series. This is considered one of the greatest in history. It matches a powerful, powerful st. Louis Cardinals Team loaded with players like arlene dose rogera bash roger marist. I got a hold of a 1967 baseball preview magazine and the red sox were picked for 10th place and the Sports Writers said if the red sox, better luck next decade basically. Yet the red sox, by a huge surprise, won the American League championship and went into one of the greatest world series in history. Each game, inning by inning, back and forth. Roger marist said basically, if i live to be 100 years old, and will never see a greater sports event them this than this. No one knew who was going to win into the seventh game. Each team had sensational starting pitchers, each team had sensational home run hitters. Runs thed hit 61 home year earlier. Two sets of crazed fans hanging on every page. 1967, theof this in weekday games were literally that. Weekday games. They did not play night World Series Games yet. If you want to watch the world series, you have to sneak a television into your office or place cookie from school or hope play hooky from school or hope your teacher brought in a television or radio or Something Like that. What i find fascinating is you have walltowall coverage of the playoffs today, and in those days, future numbers huge numbers of people would only hear what happened after they got off work. Can you imagine a World Series Game today at noon on a wednesday afternoon . I cant see this anymore. Yet this huge change, is an iconic world series that a lot of people never saw, what to think is fascinating, the difference in the last 50 years. Ok . The next thing i want to look at basically is the idea of the generation gap. This has a big time in to vietnam in many respects and it ties into the sensational assemblage of artifacts we have here outside the door right now. Lot of writers and psychologists and other commentators were starting to talk about something called a generation gap developing in 1967. The single the simple thing was demographics. Since the baby boom, virtually half of all americans were teenagers or children. There were as many children as adults. This is a time in which the average American Family is having four children. It is a very normal number. That was my family, we were an average family with four children. Children everywhere. Those that grew up during this time i think will agree with me, the overcrowded school was a fact of life. Teachers were brought in the day before the school year started because they were so short of teachers. If a teacher quit, they had no idea how to replace the teacher and so on. Class sizes often went to 50 or more. , they went schools more like 60 or 70. Also during this. In, i did my student teaching, i was in college at that time, i taught at a Junior High School in north philadelphia. It was designed for a thousand students and we had 2000 students. They were on the split shift and i did not have to get there until 10 30, but i had to teach until 4 00, we went very late. Because they could not fit everybody in the school at the same time. Turnedeteria had been into a classroom. Instead of a lunch period in the cafeteria, they had lunch and snacks in their room. Now you have 15 minutes to eat. There were never enough school buses or teachers or anything like that. The baby boom was having a huge impact by this time. Sociologists, historians and young people were wondering where it was going to lead. In this period of time, basically there is a soundtrack developing, soundtrack for the baby boom and the generation gap. What had been called rock n roll in the 1950s is now something called rock music. One of the big changes at this time is that a littleknown event happened. Passed a law,cc an edict that any Radio Station owners who owned an a. M. Station , they wouldon usually simulcast on both. You got the same thing whether it was a. M. Or fm. The fcc said you had to have separate programming for each of the two stations. What happened, while the am stations played what was called singles,ck music, fmeeminute 45 records, the stations started playing album oriented rock, in which an entire album instead of the single was played. Youre getting two forms of rock music, one is very short, usually very bouncy, not particular controversial, a threeminute song. And then at night you could tune in and hear a group like the doors do light my fire close fire in theht my long version. Yet these two forms of rock music are somehow coexisting at the same time. Most critics of music and life in general usually only talk about the more edgy side of rock music at this time. And there is an edgy side. They really do have a situation where basically the doors go on the Ed Sullivan Show, sullivan literally did tell them, you cannot use the stanza you cant go no higher, because it meant drug use. So they go out and blatantly sing the phrase. Up to them came after the show and screamed at them that they would never be on the and on the Ed Sullivan Show again. And jim morrison said, we just did the Ed Television show the Ed Sullivan Show. A band called Jefferson Airplane from San Francisco did very suggestive songs, white rabbit, which was basically alice in wonderland with the use. Nal drug i need somebody to love, exclamation point after exclamation point. Grace slick comes out looking so 1967. Us on interview i saw an interview with her on american bandstand or dick clark is trying to figure out how to have a conversation with these hippie musicians. This is basically a new sound. Much of it came out of california. And jeffersonead airplane out of San Francisco. The doors from los angeles. We also have one of the first of the true predecessors to woodstock, called monterey. In monterey, california, near the waves and serve in the late spring of 67 1967, they have a really heavily publicized rock concert that goals multiple days. What is interesting, to show the issues at that time, the Rolling Stones were billed to appear. They never showed up. Two of the Rolling Stones were under indictment in england for drug charges and had to surrender their passports. They could not leave the u. K. , that was the end of them coming. Boys, two of the five were essentially dodging the draft and afraid if they showed up too much publicity, the draft board would find them. They had sydney semi disappeared. Rock musicians were indisposed and never showed. Are ravi shankar did about a twohour solo. A lot of people were entranced by this. He was so exotic. Interestingly enough, this is where janis joplin becomes a superstar, because the big stars have not shown up. Another interesting thing, a much more mellow pop singer, dion warwick, was supposed to come, and apparently had a really bad cold and they still debate how much she wanted to come or did not want to come or whatever, but this is the forefront of the super rock. Estival, the multiday monterey is basically the beginning of the spirit beginning of this. One band about to break up is the animals. One of their members fell in love with San Francisco. They came out with a song called san franciscan nights. In the lyrics he says, i wasnt may diere, but i here, there is no place else to go. Another singer called Scott Mckenzie had a song called San Francisco, where some flowers in your hair. This was an invitation for america and the world to come to the action in San Francisco. The san franciscans knew they had educated tourist thing here. Interestingly enough, along with the socalled hippies, they had visitors like George Harrison and his wife and simply wandered around the hippie center of hate erry height haightashbury. I found out that about every two blocks was an Emergency Health center because hepatitis and maladies wereof breaking out so fast because of the drug use, they were really worried they would have a giant death toll by the end of the summer. At the same time, Senior Citizens are literally doing bus ashburyf the haight area, showing off the new animal, the hippie. Some of these hippies were charging for photos and perfectly willing to accept money. This was the summer of love and it becomes the epicenter for the generation of 1967. San francisco was apparently the place to be at this time. I found it pretty interesting as far as that goes. On the other hand, regular rock n roll music still had a much softer side. This is a period in which you have the emergence, for example, of neil diamond. And our gameky with a song called sunday will never be the same. A mellow song. Nancy sinatra with a very mellow, retro song called sugar town. Interestingly enough, a lot of ask music is not as divisive you might say, a lot of historians i think of cherry onesd and only look at the that seemed to divide rather than unified. That is one of the things i came out with the research. I got a hold of billboard magazine, it has a compilation can send away for it, every top 100 song every week of the entire 1960s, and i went down all of the charts to see what was at the top. There are very mellow songs like song. Th street bridge another song called snoopy versus the red baron. Hardly the stuff of drug use. One of the things i am intimating here is it is a much more complex scene than you would think. , there is on the other hand, a generation gap, no doubt about it. One of the big issues among students, especially in high schools and middle schools is long hair is starting to take over. And yet principals, teachers and some parents are not amused by that. This has been going on since when the beatles started to take the fore. As all of these events are happening in the United States, the beatles are making an enormous change in their entire existence. In 1966, they do their last concert. Several of them at american baseball parks. 1967, they decide to retreat strictly to the studio. I managed to get hold of a number of firsthand accounts of the knights they did everything at night, by the way. The night in which they put together the sergeant pepper album. It is interesting seeing the snippets of the beatles as they are dressing. Reporters mentioning that ringo starr had spent a lot of money on a collection of antique swords. In turn, George Harrison was alternating between thinking of new songs and eating huge amounts of pasta nonstop. Each beatle was becoming different from the next. , Courtney Paul mccartney was talking about how it was maybe time to get married. Coming out with extremely new versions of their songs. This is when you get lucy in the sky with diamonds, and it really stands for lsd, no one was really sure. Sergeant pepper was the most controversial album at this time, that was all people would talk about, what do the lyrics really mean . It was the first fullscale experimental album. Cover, the suits and ties are long gone. These are the new beatles, they dont leave the studio. Now, with the socalled kids, there is a sense of rebellion here. There are so many of them, they start to realize their parents might be afraid of them. The faculty might be afraid of them. There are just so many of them. Schools start to make compromises. Example, students, for you dont have to have supershort hair for boys, but it cant be longer than below your years for sidebar and for sideburns and so on. You can have longer hair but there is a limit. Young ladies can have miniskirts, but not too mini. There is a certain number of inches above the knee. Theyre all of these restrictions. Theres also a new concept called teen discos, called discotheques. They had teen discotheques, there was one about four miles from my house, i did not know it existed. They had rock groups and latin music but no alcoholic drinks for anyone over 21. 90 of theout that students smoked instead. This leads to the confrontation over vietnam. We are becoming a divided country. Basically, i did quite a bit of original research about the vietnam war, and 1967 is often passed over because 1968 and the tet offensive takes much more time and, press time. Was967, west moreland overseeing a u. S. Army that was reinforcements almost every month. By the end of the year, it had gone up to 20,000 reinforcements every month. At the beginning of 1967, the whole u. S. Forces vietnam is between 200000 and 300,000. 1967, it is over 500,000, near its peak. To the mythology, there was in place a strategy to try to win the war. The big thing that happened in commandthe american wanted to keep the viet cong out of the cities. They wanted to protect these Food Supplies for the cities. Many of the battles in 1967 occur around rivers. The rivers that lead into the major cities, where all of the barges are coming in with the food. Interestingly enough, in many respects, there is a retro concept back to the civil war. Much of 1967, there is what is called the river read more riverine war. Troops on both in small ships going up and down the different rivers. Many magazines picked up on this and talked about how this was a retro back to the civil war. They started using both called monitors, gunboats and things like that. In those cases, the viet cong and North Vietnamese regulars were often caught by surprise with the firepower, that the boats could go anywhere. This is also where they used a lot of air cavalry. People coming out of nowhere on helicopters. Much of the press at this time says this is the fastest moving force since the seventh calvary in the world west. Theyinterestingly enough, had some of the biggest parachute landings of the war in 1967. Entire armored divisions, airborne divisions coming out of nowhere in hitting the viet cong when they were not ready for them. The other side of the coin is that at the same time, the high command of the viet cong and north yet mom North Vietnam are coming up with the idea of drawing the American Forces away from the population areas to the borders of the vietnam. This is gradually called the order war. The border war. Much of the fighting was on the border with cambodia and the dmz. Americans are winning these battles. One of these battles i found was in a provincial capital and which an entire vietnam force took over the city for about one day. Interestingly enough, their headquarters were in the local country club, and the vietcong soldiers were washing their uniforms in the Swimming Pool. They thought they were perfectly safe. What happened was an American Airborne force came on top of them and they were fighting through the town, through the streets come into the country club and out onto a rubber plantation. It reminded me very much of civil war battles, where they are going through the trees, fighting firing at each other. These are not wants or jungles, it is closer to what you might see in an american work, in the United States. One of the myths is that the vietnam of 1967 is not a war that has no strategy whatsoever. They do have a strategy. What they dont fully realize is, interestingly enough, the communists are losing so many men they decided on a giant roll of the dice. This leads eventually to the tet offensive. The americans had pulled most of the forces out of the cities and the viacom going to go into those cities, and this becomes the seminal thing of 1968. I also find it interesting difference, in 1967, William Westmoreland was called back by president johnson to get a speech to a joint session of congress. Virtually everyone in congress rose up and gave him a standing ovation. They saw him as a true leader. At the same time, his daughter was going to school at radcliffe was ready to take the train down to have dinner with her father in washington. As she was leaving, she saw a huge bonfire being lit on harvard yard. She walked over to see what was in it was her father being burned in effigy. It mustve been a very strange experience for her. You see this interesting thing, congress is saying you are doing a great job, yet at the schools you start to see a massive antivietnam thing happen. Conclusion, in october 1967, a massive march on washington. Various number switch would 20000 and 200,000 are given. The average seems to be 70,000. These people come to protest the war, to toss in their draft cards and basically show they are upset about the war. Thatost humorous part is Abbie Hoffman actually attempted levitate theare to pentagon, which is interesting. The other part is that a number of young ladies dropped flowers down the barrels of the soldiers. Both sides were very polite. What you are seeing in 1967 is th offense that the of events that turned the country into a battlefield the next year are building up. Are going into this year, very few of us know what 2018 will be. Same thing in 1967. I want to open it up to any questions anyone would have. [applause] to questions, the first one is about simulcasting a. M. And fm. Radios later on had both options. What is the purpose . Very interesting. What happened is officials and a broadcasting license was a very important commodity, there were a finite number given out. They felt the owners of these stations were essentially cheating by basically having one set of programming. Again, and a lot of the owners were kind of upset, and then their best plan was we will switch this, they were upset because they had to hire more disc jockeys. What happened is they gained because the audiences were huge. A lot of young people said i would rather listen to the album. Also, they had far fewer commercials. Technology, just content changes from that perspective . Victor the technology itself, what happened was the transistor radio by this time had become almost like the iphone today for most people. You did not go anywhere without a transistor radio. It allowed you to have more of a choice of music. When i see my students almost surgically attached to iphones, i think back a little bit and i was a surgically attached to a transistor radio much of the time. For many young people, it was a way of showing older people, we have a soundtrack. When talking about glenn miller, we have something better. Second question. You talked about the broadcasters. Is there more to it then lets all get together, since we are competing, and switch to color . It seems more of a consolidation effort from a competitive aspect when they switch to color from black and white. Victor i think it was kind of a chicken versus the egg thing. For example, nbc also had tieins with rca, making television sets. What happened is the Color Television sets were very expensive. Basically, a lot of americans were complaining, why should i buy one of these i can only watch maybe one Color Program tonight at most . On the other hand, filming in color was far more expensive. I think they must have done a costbenefit analysis. A never seen the exact figures, but i think they decided to bite the bullet. It and itt want to do one point they said, we are going to say black and white, and at the last minute, just as they were starting to get the programs together, they broke and said youre going to go with you. My interestingly note, sister and i, we remember the 1966,ery near the end of we had a Color Television set as a Christmas Present in our house, and we saw hollywood ;s ands, and solve the x;s os were yellow. We watched star trek and saw the colors of the uniforms. It was like when dorothy goes to all, it was a whole other dimension. I guess this is a process question. 70s classes in the in the 1970s to adults. One of the reasons i do that is because i think the 1970s dont get the respect they deserve. A lot of classes on the 1960s and a lot on the 1980s. At the same time, you know not of attention is given to 1968. Victor thats why would this book. You just asked and answered my question. Victor a little secret, i probably read every 1968 in 1969 book that came out. I kept thinking, and in one of my previous books is about teenagers from the 1960s. There were all of these cool things happening in 1967 when i was doing my Research Good i wanted to steal some ideas from someone who had written in 1967 book and they did not exist. I talked to my publishers and they looked around and said, go ahead. Ng aspect. Marketi victor i am no marketing genius that i said, i think any year in the 1960s and by the way, hint, there is not much on 1963. There are so many events and theres not much on 1964 and 1963. Those of us that teach about decades, we start to think about when the decade begins, people say that the 50s ended in november of 1963, there are a lot of discussions. I wonder if you think that the 60s ended in 1967. Victor i think they ended somewhere in the 1970s. In many respects, i see the 1960s going from about 1959 until about watergate, Something Like that. Have a fairly extended version of it. There is an awful lot that happens in the early 1970s that is amazingly similar to a lot of 1960s. Tudes of the even with this book, i start on halloween of 1966 and go to the first a of the tet offensive 1968. I always go for a long one. If i do a 1963 book, i will start with the cuban missile crisis in 1962 and and with the beatles in 1964. Nuts over students this. I have a course in the 1960s, and they ask what i have books from 1959 or 1971. Because i see it as more extended. Thank you very much. Victor sure. I enjoyed your talk immensely. Two short questions. The first is you mentioned at hoffmanman and abbie and the levitation of the pentagon. Also onelen ginsberg of the key people . There. Yes, ginsburg is a lot of the counterculture is there. Ofre is an iconic photo Abbie Hoffman trying to levitate it, everyone carries that as memory. I talk in the book about a lot more going on. The biggest thing is they never come up with a good number how many showed up. I like the 70,000 they have in the exhibit, its a good middle ground. I am being honest, is trying to find a good number and i saw everything from 20,000 to 200,000. Never once thought the count. No one thought to count. Norman mailer is wandering around, high half the time and a drop cap the time, he is talking to these hippies and start writing a book called armies of the night, and he with the pullets are winds the pulitzer prize. He came out better than anybody. He was kind of cynical about the whole thing, almost using people as a backdrop for a bestseller. Hes probably the most famous person wandering around, and yet you can get a lot of pictures of him. He was drifting so fast. He was trying to get a feel for what he wanted for his book. Second question, you mentioned sciencefiction tv shows, and star trek becoming big in 1967. Wasnt there also the Twilight Zone in the 1950s . Victor i was a big fan of the Twilight Zone, a came on in the fall of 1959. Most pop culture or tv history writers are never sure whether to put it in fantasy, horror or sciencefiction. It was an ontology and anthology. One of the a consequence is the monsters on one of the iconic ones is the monsters on maple street. They turn off the power in a town and everybody starts killing each other because each person thinks they are an alien. That is definitely sciencefiction, that there are others that are ghost stories, people coming back from the dead. Some are fantasy, a Guardian Angel appears to a person down on their luck. Also, it is gone and then reemerges later in the 1970s and 1980s, but at the moment, rod serling is in retirement. If i do the 1963 book, thats probably what i would talk about. In 1963, they did hourlong episodes. Thank you, i look forward to your 1963 book. Victor thank you also much for coming, by the way. I have twin sisters who are also authors, they started doing book talks before i ever did and they have been gracious to come down with me. We all teach, interestingly. One of my sisters is in the business school. I am a historian but im in the education department, i essentially do history of education. I am so gratified to come to this in a lot to thank them so much. I never know whether people know who i am or not. A great opportunity to talk to all of you today, i hope hopenjoyed yourself and you are careful of the snow. I can sign any books if anybody wants any signed. Thank you very much. [applause] tweet from mad men across the water asking about an issue that still resounds today. This question is about how many people were fathered by u. S. Gis in vietnam . How are they treated for 45 years after the u. S. Departure . You could see be seen during our next live program. Join the conversation at race history, and on twitter at cspan history. The 2018 Winter Olympics are in pound chain, south korea, which is 100 miles east of the capital city of seoul. Film coversur army major events of the korean war and shoals how and shows houseful soul was heavily damaged by the fighting. Returning to the city after the end of the war in 1953 and how, with the help of the u. S. Army, were again to provide the basic needs of life. Health care, food, water, shelter, transportation. In the first of decades, the face of disaster reflecting tragedy and despair has become a familiar portrait in other every corner of the world
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