Tag: vietnam war

Class at a Historic Site: The Glassboro Summit of 1967

Jonathan Wilson
History, the Past, and Public Culture

Last year, the American Historical Association released the results of a detailed survey about how Americans interact with history. One finding caught my attention.

Nine in ten respondents indicated they trusted museums (90%) or historic sites (88%) either “some” or “a great deal” to convey “an accurate account of history”—compared with only three in four who said the same about college professors (76%) or high school teachers (70%). The intensity of their trust was striking, too: Respondents were three times as likely to trust museums or historic sites a great deal as to say the same about high school teachers.

Looking closer, I found something especially interesting. Historic sites, even more than museums, enjoy a distinctive level of trust among Americans who tend to be skeptical of other information sources.

For example, only 18% of Republican respondents said they placed a great deal of faith in college professors, whom they were just as likely not to trust at all. But 57% of Republicans said they trusted historic sites a great deal. Except for religious texts, in fact, historic sites were the only sources of historical information that Republicans were more likely to trust strongly than Democrats were.

A chart showing that 57 percent of Republicans, 47 percent of Democrats, 48 percent of independents, and 42 percent of people with no preference said they had "a great deal" of trust in historic sites.
Trust in historic sites as sources for “an accurate account of history,” by political party.
Fig. 45 in “History, the Past, and Public Culture,” 2021

These results suggest to me that historic sites may be uniquely important tools for engaging skeptical audiences—including, perhaps, earning the trust of students in high school and college.

Mulling this over, it occurred to me that skeptical Americans probably think of historic sites as primary sources. They may place greater faith in them because they sense that historic sites give them more immediate access to the past. (Of course, there are several other important factors in play, too, but let’s not overcomplicate the blogpost.)

This immediately focused my attention on a teaching idea I’d already had. And it brought together different aspects of my idea, which I now saw with new clarity. I suddenly got more serious about making a plan.

This autumn, I’m scheduled to teach a modern U.S. history survey course at Rowan University in southern New Jersey. As it happens, Rowan’s campus was the site of a high-level Cold War diplomatic meeting in 1967.

Press conference in front of Hollybush, from Rowan’s Glassboro Summit Collection

That summer, President Lyndon Johnson invited the Soviet premier, Alexei Kosygin, to speak with him at Hollybush, also known as the Whitney Mansion. That was the home of the president of what was then called Glassboro State College.

As you may already have guessed, this building still exists on campus.

A newspaper front page in Rowan’s Glassboro Summit Collection

Usefully for my teaching purposes, the Glassboro Summit was not only local. It also involved several distinct topics of interest in this course, including nuclear disarmament, the Vietnam War, and the Six-Day War. Although Rowan’s summit was less immediately consequential than some others, therefore, it’s actually a pretty good window into the Cold War.

Today, the restored Hollybush mansion is maintained by Rowan University as a space for special events. So I’ve requested permission to hold class there one day this semester. And it now looks like I’ll be allowed to do it.

If my plan works, we’ll have an on-site discussion of primary sources related to the event. I’ll ask my students to read, view, or listen to those sources beforehand; furthermore, I’ll allow the students themselves to select some of the sources they’ll examine.

These primary sources may include:

Many of these sources are available through the Glassboro Summit Collection, a project hosted by the Rowan University Libraries Digital Scholarship Center. Before my class heads to Hollybush, therefore, I’m asking a DSC representative to come speak with us in our regular classroom about that collection.

If everything works, we’ll devote most of one class period to getting to know our digitized primary source collections, with help from a curator; then I’ll give students a few days to explore those collections on their own; and then we’ll convene in Hollybush to discuss what students have discovered—speaking together in the actual rooms where the summit took place.

I am pretty excited about this plan.

“There Was a Shining Moment”

Jonathan Wilson

A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle [I and others have been waging in America]. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything on a society gone mad on war. …

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, ‘What about Vietnam?’ They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. …

Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read ‘Vietnam.’ It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that ‘America will be’ are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. …

If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

—Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam,” April 4, 1967

For context, see Christina Knight, “Martin Luther King’s Most Controversial Speech.” A recording of the address, which was given at Riverside Church in New York, may be heard here:

“What Will the Class of 1971 Do?”

Jonathan Wilson

Almost half a century ago, an apparent graduating senior at La Salle College in Philadelphia, who had been there for seven years, wrote an unsigned editorial for La Salle’s 1971 yearbook, the Explorer. The text is now in the public domain. I wish I could figure out who wrote it. (It’s not clear whether the photograph is his portrait.)

Here’s the whole thing:

Maybe the ivy has grown a bit more dense and the bricks slightly more weatherbeaten. There might be a little more grass in McCarthy Stadium, and there’s a lot less room to park in the morning. The hamburgers still taste raunchy, and the steaks are still more gristle than meat. But have the students changed from 1964 when I started here?

Page 43 from the La Salle College yearbook, 1971The graduates of the class of 1964 put on their Ivy suits, went for job interviews and were hired, and happily led meaningful existences ever after selling insurance, cars, and real estate. Some went to war and were killed; some went to graduate and professional schools. Most got married and had children. Some joined the alumni association, and some go to the meetings.

What will the graduates of the class of 1971 do? Many will shave their beards, cut their hair, put on brand new 1971 suits and be interviewed for 1971 jobs to put 1971 dollars into their 1971 pockets, and will happily lead 1971 existences ever after selling 1971 insurance, 1971 cars, or 1971 real estate. Some will go into the service to protect the 1971 country from the 1971 menace, and some will go to professional schools. Some will join the alumni association, and some will go to the meetings to spice them with 1971 things.

Where is the difference? People spoke against the president way back in 1964, but not as frequently (but then, Richard Nixon wasn’t president in 1964). There was organized protest in 1964, but organized protest wasn’t “in” back in ’64 as it is today. In 1964 drivers snarled at you when they cut you out on the road; today, they give you the Peace Sign while they still cut you out.

Which of the 1971 graduates will protest against sins against the ecology when these same people now work for the very companies polluting the air and streams, and dollars spent for ecology will mean less profit-sharing or perhaps the loss of a job?

Will the graduates of the class of 1971 grumble against intellectuals causing unrest when today’s graduates are running the country? Are the graduates of the class of 1971 a bunch of phonies who wear long hair and beards because this signifies a cause which they believe in, or because it’s “hip”? Will the graduates of the class of 1971 follow the example of their predecessors and lead meaningless existences in a dehumanizing society, or will they remember some of the causes they led protests for, remember that they are members of the Love Generation and the Woodstock Nation, and be genuine, feeling people, or will their humanity and sincerity sink into the corporate image?

Until now, no class graduating from La Salle has been different. The class of 1971 has yet been untested, but from all indication it will follow the way of the others, but damn, I hope not.

I almost don’t want to spoil that with my own commentary. But let me add some context.

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