Transcript of Oral History Interview with Bill Tilton

Oral history interviews of the Vietnam Era Oral History Project Copyright Notice: © 2019 Minnesota Historical Society Researchers are liable for any infringement. For more information, visit www.mnhs.org/copyright. Version 3 August 20, 2018 William Leo “Bill” Tilton Narrator Kim Heikkila Interviewer February 10, 2018 William Leo “Bill” Tilton -BT Kim Heikkila -KH KH: This is an interview for the Minnesota Historical Society’s Minnesota in the Vietnam War Era Oral History Project. It is Saturday, February 10, 2018, and I’m here with Bill Tilton. My name is Kim Heikkila. Today I’ll be talking to Bill about his role and experiences in the antiwar and draft resistance movement in Minnesota, and especially his experiences at the University of Minnesota and as one of the Minnesota 8. So, thanks so much, Bill, for agreeing to participate in this project BT: I’m happy and proud to be part of it. KH: So I’m going to—again, as I said, I’ll just start with some real basic questions, biographical questions and then we’ll sit back and start at the beginning and get the full story. So can you please start by stating and spelling your name? BT: Bill or William Tilton, T-i-l-t-o-n; William Leo Tilton. KH: Okay. BT: I was a “Junior” and then Dad died, so I’m not a “Junior” any longer. KH: And when and where were you born? BT: I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, here, seventy years ago, or a little over seventy years ago on October 16, 1947. KH: And how do you identify yourself racially and/or ethnically? BT: Oh, I’m European, quite Caucasian, totally, you know. I was raised to think I was Irish and then I believe I have a lot of, a ton of, French blood and I’ve done 23andMe [23andMe: DNA Genetic Testing & Analysis] —it’s Northern Europe, Northern Europe. KH: Okay. 38 BT: Yeah, I’d hoped to have some native blood because family members generations ago had intermarried [with natives], but as it turned out, not my wing of the family. KH: Okay, so I know this is a big question for you, and we’ll talk about all of these things in turn, but if you could just kind of briefly identify or state the kind of anti-Vietnam War activities you were involved in, that would be helpful. BT: I was lucky to be at the University of Minnesota from 1965 to 1970, during some of the peak efforts of the antiwar movement. I sat at literature tables for Gene McCarthy when he was the peace candidate for the presidency. That era—it was not just the Vietnam War. There were intense civil rights things that were going on that I was involved in, the Liberation Coalition, the Urban Coalition, Legal Justice Task Force. There were—Earth Day was starting around then. First Earth Day I guess wasn’t until 1970, so that was kind of Johnny-come-lately. As far as the antiwar movement goes, I’d been involved in student government at the University of Minnesota, Minnesota Student Association, and so became its representative to the antiwar movement because many of the other people involved in the MSA were working on student power issues. We were getting students admitted to the—all the university governing bodies at the same time. That was one of the other things going on—gay rights, women’s lib, the sexual revolution, birth control—had come along. And so I quickly rose to a position of some responsibility with the state antiwar movement. As the student government representative, I had a privileged position. In other words, I could get free rooms in Coffman Union with no trouble for meetings and stuff and did that. And I apparently was unthreatening enough that I was then put in a position of running meetings. I ran many microphones at rallies, speeches and stuff. People remember me giving great speeches. I didn’t give so many speeches. I was there to introduce other people who gave speeches or I’d give very short speeches, you know. Get in, get out, make them laugh once, make them feel heartfelt once and then quit. Then they remember you well. Anyway, so I very quickly became what was called the co-chairman of the Minnesota New Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, called the New MOBE for short. And this would have been ’69 I believe, because probably a couple years earlier there had been the MOBE and the MOBE was heartfelt and somewhat successful but hadn’t ended the war so this was the New MOBE. And all of a sudden this kid from St. Paul, who’d never been on a plane before, was going to Milwaukee as Minnesota’s representative to national antiwar meetings. I hadn’t a clue what I was doing, right? And also, in that case, you just shut up and listen, right? And the first flight I ever took was to Philadelphia for some national organizing meeting. Sixty-nine was a heady time. I went to Woodstock in 1969. We had campus turmoil over the arrest of the leaders of the Afro-American Action Committee [AAAC] when they took over the bursar’s office at Morrill Hall. I have two boxes of materials on that for the historical society. It’s great stuff. That was the Liberation Coalition. The arrests of the black student leaders was the best thing in the world for white students to realize there weren’t any black students at the University of 39 Minnesota. In 1969, there were eighty some black students on a campus of forty some thousand students. We had the largest single campus in the country. There’s other bigger systems—New York, California, Texas—there was no bigger campus and we had eighty some black students counting the athletes. Anyway, so all of a sudden those arrests got white kids on campus to realize there were practically no black kids on campus and to get to know a few of them. Some of them are still dear, dear friends. And for us to get to know people in North Minneapolis, Spike Moss [Harry “Spike” Moss] and other people. So these were heady times. So the antiwar movement was just part of it. But I became a leader in the antiwar movement just by happenstance because of coming out of student government and so—what did I do in the antiwar movement? I gave speeches; I organized things; I chaired a lot of meetings, as I was saying earlier. The meetings would be, sort of, the SDS—some of them crazy—on one side of the room and the Quakers and Fellowship of Reconciliation, gentle church folk on the other and the Black Panther wannabees in the middle and, you know, ten other interest groups. We would have big meetings with twenty-five people that would go on for hours, just about what was going to happen at a rally. Where was I going with all of this? One of the best things I did was when we went on the student strike in May of 1970 after Nixon invaded Cambodia, I knew where all the parking lots were, having commuted for years and so we very successfully had people [with leaflets ready for Monday morning student arrivals] at all of the proper places for the commuter campus students to come to campus. We had a huge rally on just very short notice in front of Coffman that Monday. So the antiwar movement was pretty much my life, with this in mind—the movement included the Liberation Coalition, you know, it included that thing, United Progress I was showing you that was just some people from St. Paul that were going to change the world. And I actually registered for a second major. I stayed for a fifth year on campus. I was going to major in African-American studies. I was reminded of that in these boxes; and I never did do that second major. I pretty much majored in the revolution during my fifth year in college. That was 1969. We had—there were profound national events that happened. October of ’69—October 15 was moratorium marches and teach-ins and stuff all over the country at separate locations. Then November 15, 1969, was a national demonstration in Washington, D.C., and it was profound. It was successful on the one hand insofar as how many people were mobilized. It didn’t end the war. In any case, we had to take our victories where we could. So your question had to do with an outline of the antiwar movement; I’m trying to stick to the subject. I actually—I gave the going away speech [for buses leaving Minnesota for the November 15 Moratorium], two of my proudest moments— If I can come back to the October thing—my favorite story ever about myself in the newspaper appeared on October 16, 1969, about things I’d done the day before and it was the best birthday present because that was my birthday—and somewhere I have that [news clipping about it]. And on the way to D.C. in November, I gave one of the speeches, not the only speech, but one of the 40 speeches for the going away rally. We actually left from the Armory in downtown Minneapolis and I got to be the guy—I was the guy who collected two or three dozen draft cards from Minnesota people at that rally at the Armory who were turning them in, because the plan was to put a bunch of draft cards in a coffin that was being carried symbolically at the demonstration in Washington.

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