The Children's Crusade: Creating the Student Voting Bloc Through
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HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES The Children’s Crusade: Creating the Student Voting Bloc Through McCarthy’s 1968 Campaign Ashley Byrd College of Arts and Science, Vanderbilt University The paper seeks to document the role of student campaigners in Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presi- dential campaign through the use of newspaper coverage and memoirs. In so doing it seeks to de- velop a moment in which the student voting bloc became a powerful force in American politics. The year 1968 was a tumultuous turning point The Vietnam War was instrumental both in ending the in American history: while college campuses and black liberal consensus and in galvanizing the younger gen- neighborhoods alike convulsed with violent protests, the eration. The war deeply divided society on almost all country lost two of its great leaders to assassin’s bul- levels, but its effect on the Democratic Party helped seal lets and the Democratic Party splintered over American their loss of the 1968 election and paved the way for a involvement in Vietnam. Through the deep divisions of conservative resurgence to begin under Richard Nixon. the Democratic Party and the presidential election that Senator Eugene McCarthy from Minnesota decided to ultimately brought Richard Nixon to power, many his- challenge President Johnson as an antiwar candidate, torians have argued that the liberal consensus that was hoping to show enough support for an antiwar stance reached after the Second World War was destroyed.1 No to encourage the President to change his policies in longer was Washington infected with the optimism that Vietnam. Instead, his success in the primaries helped government could create social justice if it only enacted convince Johnson not to seek a second term and threw the right policies, the way it was under President Ken- the Party into indecision and near-chaos as they tried to nedy and during the early years of the Johnson admin- choose a nominee. The Democrats were torn between istration. People became mistrustful of the government, the grassroots movement of McCarthy and the back- especially after its actions in Vietnam.2 1968 was not, room machines that helped nominate Hubert Humphrey. however, the end of all things good in American poli- In the end, the machines prevailed, but they left in their tics. Many groups became involved in politics who had wake a deeply divided party in serious need of reform. previously been apathetic, especially the young. College Given their increasing frustration with the cur- campuses became hotspots of political activity, espe- rent system, many groups took the opportunity to ex- cially antiwar protests. However, the popular image of press their discontent through popular protest. College the longhaired, pot-smoking anarchist was not the only students in particular sought empowerment by protest- kind of student active during this year. Senator Eugene ing the issues that took autonomy away from them: McCarthy’s presidential campaign allowed many more although these students could not vote, they were still moderate students to become politically active. Examin- subject to being drafted to fight in what many saw as ing the role these students played in McCarthy’s cam- an unjust war.3 Because of this disenfranchisement, not paign will provide a more complete view of the political all students were pleased with McCarthy’s campaign. spectrum of student activism during this time. Thanks Many student radicals actually resented McCarthy for to outlets like the McCarthy campaign, student activ- stealing students that might have otherwise populated ism was not just a broadening of extreme factions but their protests when these students decided to campaign instead took hold all along the political spectrum. Im- for McCarthy instead. Radicals also saw McCarthy as a portantly, examining McCarthy’s campaign shows that naïve Cold War reformer who did not share their fervent 1968 was not an exception to the rule of student apathy belief in the necessity of a completely new political and but instead marked a qualitative shift toward a more ac- societal system.4 Thus, as a counterpoint to more radi- tive younger generation. cal student beliefs and forms of protest, McCarthy’s 3 M.J. Heale, The Sixties in America: History, Politics and 1 G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot, The Liberal Protest (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2001), 19. Hour: Washington and the Politics and Change in the 1960s (New 4 Kenneth J. Heineman, Put Your Bodies Upon the Wheels: York: the Penguin Press, 2008), 327. Student Revolt in the 1960s (Chicago, Ivan R. Dee Publishers, 2 Ibid, 328. 2001), 137. Spring 2012 | Volume 8 | © 2012 • Vanderbilt University Board of Trust 1 VANDERBILT UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL campaign and his student workers were able to expand the the best way to work against the war in Vietnam.8 political spectrum of student activists and provide another Mary McCarthy was not the only student in the important outlet for antiwar expression. Their difference McCarthy campaign willing to stand up for the Senator. from student radicals was especially prominent when the Other students with far fewer personal ties to the candi- two groups were both present in Chicago for the Demo- date also believed that working within the political system cratic National Convention, but by that time the McCarthy would be more effective than a popular protest or rally. campaign was almost over, given that the primaries had Ben Stavis was a graduate student in Chinese politics at ended. For this reason, looking at the Children’s Crusade Columbia when he took time away from his studies to during its formative times, specifically the New Hamp- work for McCarthy. In his memoirs, Stavis wrote that he shire and Wisconsin primaries, is more effective in illus- and his wife, Rosann, went to New Hampshire because trating the McCarthy student activists’ differences from they did not see any other way to help end the war.9 student radicals. Unlike Mary McCarthy, the Stavises did not give much The New Hampshire effort showed the campaign thought to a more radical method of protest at all; a very at its most purely antiwar moment; McCarthy hoped basi- institutionalized approach was required to get them in- cally to challenge President Johnson enough to spark a volved in politics. Stavis explains that he was aware of the reconsideration of the nation’s policies in Vietnam. Some more radical protests but did not consider them sufficient- students did not even think that McCarthy was a truly ly politically relevant for him to involve himself- instead, electable candidate and were similarly hoping only to he would work only for a campaign for the highest office prove that dissent could attract voters so that other more in the land.10 This methodical institutionalization is also attractive candidates would jump into the fray.5 However, reflected in the sorts of jobs that Stavis took on during the most of the students who came to work for McCarthy New Hampshire campaign: he made maps of towns and originally felt that even working for a potentially hopeless districts for the students to use as they went door-to-door candidate was still a better option as a form of protest than soliciting votes. While many student radicals sought atten- other more radical actions.6 Mary McCarthy, the Senator’s tion-grabbing “impact” protests to draw media attention to daughter, for example, had signed up to participate in a their discontent over the war, Stavis was willing to work hunger strike against the war at Radcliffe College before in a dark basement doing private work to advance the she decided to take a semester off to campaign for her fa- greater cause of the campaign. He believed that playing a ther. In justifying this decision, McCarthy called working smaller role in a larger, more institutionalized campaign for her father “a more meaningful protest” than the hunger would be more effective than playing a similarly-sized strike would have been.7 After weighing the options, she role in a popular protest, or even than leading a mass rally. decided that the more radical course of action would not However, the McCarthy campaign was not the have had the outcome that she desired, which was ending first time that Stavis had been involved in politics.11 He the war. However, her decision was not based on any fear had participated briefly in a campaign for a New York of punishment or a lack of strong antiwar sentiment. She politician a few years earlier, and this experience had weighed the options carefully and chose the more insti- helped him shift toward a more politically active lifestyle. tutionalized option because she believed it to be the most His thoughts about this early experience reflected many effective. Her choice was different from that of the student common sentiments among McCarthy’s campaigners that radicals who felt that the political system was preventing are indicative of a quantitative shift in student activism. the country from doing the right thing in Vietnam and con- Prior to this experience, Stavis knew that students had sequently that working within this system would ultimate- been thought of as an “indifferent, incapable, and inef- ly be unsuccessful. Mary McCarthy, by contrast, spoke for fective [group] in ‘constructive’ politics.”12 Most people a segment of her generation that believed that working for someone who could directly affect national policies was 8 Ibid. 9 Stavis, We Were the Campaign, 1. 5 For example, some student protestors and older activists 10 Ibid. hoped that Robert Kennedy would see McCarthy’s success and launch 11 It is important to note that both of Ben Stavis’s forays into a more politically savvy and viable antiwar campaign.