WHAT’S THAT SOUND? POLITICAL ACTION AND THE NEW LEFT AT PURDUE UNIVERSITY 1968 - 1970 Elizabeth A. Belser Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in the Department of History, Indiana University August 2017 Accepted by the Faculty of Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master’s of Arts. Master’s Thesis Committee _______________________________________ John R. Kaufman-McKivigan, Ph.D., Chair ________________________________________ Jennifer Guiliano, Ph. D. ________________________________________ Robert W. White, Ph.D. ii Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my thesis chair Dr. Jack Kaufman-McKivigan. Dr. McKivigan helped me define and refine my topic and offered many valuable suggestions and advice about sources and strategies. He consistently supported this project and patiently offered ideas and suggestions, meeting with me during the summer and fitting me into his busy schedule. I am very fortunate to have the support of two other committee members who unfailingly supported this research and lent their expertise and enthusiasm to the project. Both Dr. Robert White and Dr. Jennifer Guiliano read and critiqued many drafts of the paper. Each opened their office doors to me, giving me their time and sharing their expertise. I also want to thank Dr. Nancy Robertson who patiently directed me toward completion. Her support in H750 helped me persevere and to trust in the final outcome. Her many e-mail correspondences guided me along the way, and they were much appreciated. Dr. Elizabeth Monroe gave me the idea for this project and supported me in H650 and beyond. I thank her for cheering me on to finalizing this project long after the conclusion of that class. I also want to thank the students of H500, H650, and H750 who read drafts and made invaluable comments and recommendations. I am also grateful to the professors at IUPUI who make it an inspiring place to learn and discover. I spent several summers at the Purdue University Library archives and wish to thank the staff who went out of their way to find materials for me. Ms. Stephanie Schmitz consistently found the elusive document or reference often looking for sources that I had not considered. The entire staff of the Purdue library archives is outstanding, and their pleasant attitudes made the library a very welcoming place on hot summer days. I would iii be remiss in not recognizing the staff at the IUPUI University library whose hard work and dedication support students every day. Finally, I wish to thank my family who showed consistent support and interest throughout this long process. My husband Rick encouraged me to persevere and read many drafts of this thesis. He painstakingly proofread and offered comments and ideas that are a big part of the final outcome. I also thank my sons and daughters-in-law who gave me advice and never seemed to tire when I asked them for suggestions. Before I undertook this project, I was unaware of the 1960s activism at Purdue. I discovered that Purdue was similar to many other institutions where students tried to make sense of a contentious time, and I used their activism to examine the heart and soul of the New Left. In so doing, I was inspired by the tenacity and dreams of students who sought to break through American complacency and work for what they termed authenticity. I hope their story can give the present the perspective that only the past can give. Finally, I wish to acknowledge my use of a line from Stephen Stills’s song, “For What It’s Worth,” as the source of my title.1 __________________________ 1 Stills, Stephen, Neil Young, Richie Furay, Dewey Martin, Bruce Palmer, and Jim Messina. The Best of Buffalo Springfield Retrospective. Atco, 1969. CD. iv Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Purdue Student Unrest in 1968: A Call for Civil Rights ................................ 31 Chapter 2: Black Power and Purdue ............................................................................... 61 Chapter 3: Nineteen Sixty-Nine and the Centennial Year .............................................. 81 Chapter 4: The ROTC and the Military Industrial Complex ........................................ 114 Conclusion: The Legacy of Purdue Activism, 1968–1970 ............................... 128 Appendix: Purdue University Timeline of Student Unrest, 1968–1970 ........... 139 Bibliography .................................................................................................... 144 Curriculum Vitae v Introduction In 1968, New Left notions resonated throughout America, Canada, and Europe as new ideas and dreams transcended national borders in a synthesis of “cultural and social themes” set in unique historical traditions.2 This global movement led by students and academicians searched for far-reaching social, political, and economic change. It deviated from the “Old Left” by its non- doctrinal, non-establishment approach that searched for justice and focus on human rights and morality. In 1917, leftist intellectual Randolph Bourne cautioned against crushing the “only genuinely precious thing in a nation, the hope and ardent idealism of its youth.”3 This thesis will demonstrate how the New Left preserved that idealism as it made important changes in the American social landscape and more locally at Purdue University.4 Throughout this thesis, I use the term, “New Left,” to describe Purdue activism. Who was the Purdue activist? My research revealed individuals who responded to what they saw wrong in their personal lives, at Purdue, and in society. They saw themselves as part of a revolution, joining a collective effort, changing themselves as they changed America and the world. I found little self-identification of Purdue activists as New Leftists. I have presumed to call them the New Left because they typify what many called “the __________________________ 2 Katherina Haris, “The Legacy and Lessons of the 1960s,” in The New Left: Legacy and Continuity, ed. Dimitrios Roussopoulos (New York: Black Rose Books, 2007), 87. 3 Haris. 4 Haris, 185. 1 movement,” building on ideals, not establishments and dogmas.5 United by problems rather than solutions, this burgeoning organization focused on social and political problems; specific goals and identity were in flux and of secondary importance. Sociologist C. Wright Mills and the Students for a Democratic Society made early references to the “New Left.” Mills writes that the Left, as contrasted with the Right, connoted politically-oriented criticism and demands for programs “guided morally by humanist and secular ideals of Western civilisation - above all, reason and freedom and justice.” 6 The SDS’s Port Huron Statement described the university as the ideal place for New Left, an atmosphere of academia, controversy, and change.7 Purdue students added to the existing argumentation about this historical period. They saw their university as the perfect place for the dissemination of ideas and calls for change. This thesis argues that Purdue, a socially and politically conservative institution in an equally conservative state, provides an ideal atmosphere in which to study the inception of the New Left. The insular nature of the campus and its relative isolation from outside groups provides an opportunity to study the genesis of the movement as it progressed from local concerns to a broader focus on national and international topics. Described by historian Robbie Lieberman as __________________________ 5 Jean Molvin, “Underground Newspapers: Their purpose, people,” The Purdue Exponent, May 20, 1969. 6 C. Wright Mills 1960, Letter to the New Left https://www.marxists.org/subject/humanism/mills- c-wright/letter-new-left.htm (accessed February 15, 2017). Mills wrote about a non-violent “moral upsurge” to describe the New Left. 7 Tom Hayden, Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society, 1962, Courtesy Office of Sen. Tom Hayden http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/huron.html (accessed February 15, 2017). 2 “prairie power,” student mobilization moved from local to larger struggles for power.8 This thesis also argues that student unrest at Purdue validates the portrayal of the New Left in America as a non-violent, moralistic movement that expanded from local concerns to broad concerns of national and foreign policy. I will show how the actions of Purdue students support the writings of scholars such as James P. O’Brien, Kenneth Keniston, Michael Lerner, and others. The Port Huron Statement challenged the post-war generation to dare the present, a time “of supposed prosperity, moral complacency and political manipulation,” to bring about social reform and alternatives.9 Some members of the American “establishment” and the mainstream media, from Governor Ronald Reagan to President Richard Nixon, fostered a stereotypical portrayal of the student activist as communist sympathizer or dangerous agitator.10 My research refutes that stereotypical characterization of student protesters as drug-abusing, violent youth who used civil rights and foreign issues as a pretext for anarchistic, lawless behavior. Purdue activists were less militant than those at other universities such as Kent State, Columbia, and Miami of Ohio that exhibited similar demographics. This thesis examines how Purdue activism differed from that of these other