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Recounting the Past a Student Journal of Historical Studies Recounting the Past A Student Journal of Historical Studies Department of History At Illinois State University Number 18 • Spring 2017 Recounting the Past Editors Linda Clemmons Patrice Olsen Editorial Board Kyle Ciani Andrew Hartman Alan Lessoff Sudipa Topdar Christine Varga-Harris Note from the Editor The History Department is honored to recognize graduate and undergraduate student research through the journal Recounting the Past, as well as the faculty who mentored these emerging scholars. Alongside these students and faculty, many thanks also go out to individuals who invested their time and effort at various stages of the production process. These include Dr. Patrice Olsen who contributed much to compiling and editing this issue; the team at University Marketing and Communication that guided the journal through publication; and Linda Spencer, Administrative Aide in the History Department, who served as the liaison with Marketing and Communication, as well as provided her organizational expertise to keep the project moving forward. Cover photograph: “Pre-election parade for suffrage in NYC, Oct. 23, 1915, in which 20,000 women marched,” National Archives, Washington D.C., image LC-USZ-62-50393. Recounting the Past Table of Contents Melissa Frederick Atomic Pasts, Presents, and Futures: History and Identity in Oak Ridge, Tennessee ....................................................p. 1 Kerry Garvey Building the “New Soviet Citizen” from the Ground Up: Primary and Secondary Educational Reform in the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1965........ p. 35 Julius Pascual Helen Keller: Blind, Deaf, and Radical Activist.............................................. p. 61 Tyler Petersen End of an ERA in Illinois: Schlafly and the Power of Anti-ERA Activism, 1972-82 .............................................................................................................. p. 87 Chris Ruud The Diet of Nonviolence: Fasting and the Meaning of Masculinity in Gandhian Philosophy.................................................................................. p. 107 Kelly Schrems Suffrage Battles: Militant Tactics of the National Woman’s Party from 1913 to 1920............................................................................................ p. 124 Atomic Pasts, Presents, and Futures: History and Identity in Oak Ridge, Tennessee Atomic Pasts, Presents, and Futures: History and Identity in Oak Ridge, Tennessee By Melissa Frederick The past is a vital component of the identity of a community. In creating factories and hiring a labor force to produce fissionable uranium for atomic weapons in these factories during WWII, the federal government also created a community of “atomic citizens” in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The men and women who made up this community continue to influence how the city is remembered and, in the process, develop and contest the city’s identity. This study examines how these citizens, as well as the federal government, local media, and academics, have portrayed the history of Oak Ridge from its development and establishment in 1942 to its opening to the rest of the world in 1949. Such research reveals several common themes in each group’s understanding of the town’s atomic history and illustrates how in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, history, memory, myth, and nostalgia combine to tell the story of America and the atom. Historic Background of Oak Ridge In 1939, scientists at Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute succeeded in splitting atoms of uranium by bombarding them with neutrons, making it clear atomic fission was possible and also demonstrating this new energy source could be used to produce bombs more powerful and terrifying in magnitude than the world had ever imagined.1 Many physicists in America and England, some having been forced into exile by Nazi and Fascist oppression, soon developed a deep concern that Hitler’s regime could produce such a weapon and so joined to urge President Franklin D. Roosevelt to initiate an American nuclear research program.2 With this urging and the realization American science was lagging behind that of Germany, Roosevelt established the National Defense Research Council and the Office of Scientific Research and Development to investigate the feasibility of developing a nuclear weapon.3 By the summer of 1942, the representatives of the federal government, universities, and private industries who made up these organizations determined a full-scale bomb development 1 Charles W. Johnson and Charles O. Jackson, City Behind a Fence: Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 1942- 1946 (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1981), xvii. 2 Johnson and Jackson, City Behind a Fence, xviii. 3 Johnson and Jackson, City Behind a Fence, xix. 1 Atomic Pasts, Presents, and Futures: History and Identity in Oak Ridge, Tennessee program was achievable and advisable. Thus, President Roosevelt authorized the establishment of the Manhattan Engineer District (a.k.a. the Manhattan Project) within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.4 Commanded by Colonel, and later Major General, Leslie R. Groves, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers selected a 59,000-acre area of land between Black Oak Ridge to the north and the Clinch River to the south as the site of uranium separation for the proposed atom bomb in early 1942.5 The Manhattan District authorized the construction of the city of Oak Ridge on that sparsely populated farmland later that year, court ordering those who were currently residents to vacate their homes.6 Within the next three years, the city ballooned to 75,000 residents and became the most populated atomic production site in the world.7 Composed of men and women from all kinds of backgrounds working in jobs ranging from laundry worker to physicist, the town of Oak Ridge and its true purpose remained a heavily guarded secret from most of the world and the majority of the residents. This changed when Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at approximately 6:15 in the evening on August 5, 1945.8 Since then, Oak Ridge has experienced a gradual population decline as many residents left for new jobs. It reestablished itself, however, as an important war industry site (this time for the Cold War) and opened the first museum of atomic energy in the world. The city today remains at heart a major scientific center with strong ties to the government as the site of a national lab (the Oak Ridge National Lab), the Y-12 National Security Complex, and one of the world’s fastest computers.9 It also continues to generate tourism with bus tours, festivals, and new museum exhibits focusing on its atomic past, present, and future. The study of these tourist activities and other avenues through which the city’s past has been remembered will help to contribute to a greater understanding of the identity of the Oak Ridge community throughout time and reflect on how the rest of the nation has remembered its atomic history. 4 Johnson and Jackson, City Behind a Fence, xix. 5 Johnson and Jackson, City Behind a Fence, xix, Leland Johnson and Daniel Schaffer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory: The First Fifty Years (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 2. 6 Johnson and Schaffer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 2. 7 Ed Westcot, Images of America: Oak Ridge (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2005), 7. 8 Johnson and Jackson, City Behind a Fence, 160. 9 John Huotari, “Alexander: World’s Fastest Supercomputer Will Again be at ORNL,” Oak Ridge Today, November 14, 2014, accessed November 28, 2014, http://oakridgetoday.com/2014/11/14/worlds-fastest-supercomputer-will-ornl/. 2 Atomic Pasts, Presents, and Futures: History and Identity in Oak Ridge, Tennessee Oak Ridge as a Frontier One of the first myths used in the discussion of Oak Ridge’s history is that of Oak Ridge as a frontier. Jackson Turner in “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” argued America’s collective identity was wrapped in the collective imagination of the frontier, a moving line that brought new experiences and challenges to a growing nation.10 He worried that when the frontier disappeared, part of America’s intrinsic character would be lost. Similarly, Groves once wrote after listening to the stories of the pioneers who had moved toward the American West, “I grew somewhat dismayed, wondering what was left for me to do now that the West was won.”11 He went on to say the dawn of the Atomic Age proved to him and others of his generation who shared his doubts that such fears were unwarranted.12 However, Turner had linked the frontier to “that dominant individualism” and freedom characteristic of the nation, whereas Groves linked it to secret war projects where citizens lived compartmentalized lives under military hegemonic power.13 Many Oak Ridgers have expressed a view of the nuclear city in the same way as Groves. Once previous residents of the area had been removed, the new residents described themselves as modern pioneers and leaders in the future of science.14 Yet, established communities had already existed in the area they “settled” for hundreds of years. Thus, Oak Ridgers have instead stressed a tradition of pioneering in which the “Atomic City” was but the latest manifestation.15 They recreated the ideal of the frontier to favor the reinvention of existing areas rather than the discovery of new ones. It became something that occurred in the distant past but also became part of modern experience, a 10 Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1893). 11 Leslie Groves,
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