also this weekend, "america the beautiful" director of pediatric neurosurgery at john's hopkins ben carson compares the declines of empires of the past with america. sunday at 3:30 p.m. book tv every weekend on c-span2. history book shelf features popular american history writers of the past decade and airs on american history tv every saturday at noon eastern. this weekend on history bookshelf, kenneth heineman discusses his book "put your bodies upon the wheels: student revolt in the 1960s." in the book he explores the social, cultural and economic forces that became a catalyst for college campus protests in the '60s. this is an hour. don't cut the air conditioning.

good afternoon, everyone. as associate dean of the ohio university of lancaster campus, and as a fellow historian, it truly is an honor and a privilege to introduce dr. kenneth heineman this afternoon. while earning his ph.d. at the university of pittsburgh, ken, like so many historians over the last few decades, ken looked for different visiting positions along the way and did take positions at penn state's new kensington campus at iowa state university, and also at the university of toledo. then in 1991 he founded home here at the lancaster campus of ohio university.

he not only found a home, but established himself very quickly as ta scholar with 13 published essays and 18 reviews of books. and he also established himself as an excellent teacher offering special courses in america in the 1960s, the vietnam war, and one of my favorites he would offer during the summer sessions, american history in film. now, on top of all that, ken published four books and with that accomplishment and the other accomplishments in teaching and scholarship, ken was awarded a full professorship at ohio university. couple of years ago a colleague of ken's said to me when you hire a new assistant professor,

don't tell them about ken heineman because you will discourage them right from the beginning. but i have mentioned ken as an excellent model, person to whom they should continuously look up to. ohio university, as most of you know, has a contemporary history institute. and ken, with his four books and all of his scholarly accomplishments, is an excellent representative of that department. his first book "campus wars: the peace movement at american state universities during the vietnam era" published by new york university press was chosen by the "new york times" as a notable paperback. now, ken and i over the years

have mined the rich veins of pennsylvania history. of course ken with his excellent record, ken's third book which was a catholic new deal, religion and reform in depression pittsburgh, that was published by penn state press, that book earned ken the phillip s. klein award as best book of the year by the pennsylvania historical association. so i can't top ken. i can tell you that this achievement, the phillip s. klein award, that achievement puts ken in league with some of the finest historians in america. today ken will talk about and lecture to us on his fourth book, "put your bodies upon the wheels: student revolt in the 1960s." now, after his remarks he will

more than be willing to answer questions, particularly from the students that are with us today. and we're very pleased to see them. and i think you have to make sure that you get to the microphone so that your questions can be heard. and finally, ken's book is on sale and we're doing this to provide something for teresa and the girls. it's a privilege now to introduce ken heineman. ken? >> thank you very much. >> good afternoon. thank you for that wonderful introduction. on these occasions, it's usually considered appropriate to lead off with a personal 1960s story, which is a little bit difficult in my case since i was born in 1962. therefore my '60s story took

place actually in 1984. as a senior at michigan state university. my roommate, wes and i, had set up a landscaping business. and we came across a client a little old gentleman named ralph. and ralph wanted us to work on the big house. so ralph would ride around the property on a motorized lawnmower, have a cigar clamped between his teeth and say we have to move those railroad ties over there. of course wes and i in the prime of life at 22, both of us together groaning and straining to lift these ties up, one tie. like, gee, ralph, how did you get these down here? oh, i just threw them over my shoulders, two at a time, plopped them down. my friend wes said this guy is a gorilla. i was noticing the big house on the property and i noticed his gardens were landscaped as one would see in asia. it turns out that ralph was dr.

ralph turner, director of the school of police administration at michigan state university. ralph, ralph turner, was intimately involved with the project called the michigan state university vietnam protect. michigan state university created the south vietnamese government. the department of economics at michigan state set up the tax structure, the whole treasury, economic bureaus. and the msu school of police administration created south vietnam security forces and dr. turner as director of the police apparatus helped train personal bodyguards. the msu vietnam project was the largest technical assistance program up to that point undertaken by an american university. indeed, before the project,

president deun had been enrolled at michigan state as a graduate student. well, i just had to talk to ralph about this. he invites us up to the big house. we go in. there are knickknacks in that house like you wouldn't believe. ivory, jade, silks from every place around the planet where michigan state university trains security forces. i will not go into the politics of some of those countries where he helped train security. well, he was holding forth and a very entertaining gentleman. i finally had to ask the question that had been burning in my mind. 22-year-olds lack a lot of sense. so i had to ask, dr. turner -- he's doctor turner now to me -- you know the body guards you trained for president deun? they killed him. my roommate, wes, my partner wes was falling into the floor at that point. ralph just gave him a look and

said, well, those people do the damnedest things. on the drive home that evening, wes was unusually quiet until we pulled into the driveway of our house. he looked at me and said, ken -- i was like, yeah? i'm one of those people that can make us disappear. so, that is my 1960s story. there are a number of mythologies about the 1960s. i would say mainly because of the power, the images of protest, and indeed these images of berkeley 1964, students marching for free speech, the anti war protests are so compelling that in the current round of protest at berkeley and the university of michigan, the playbook has already been written down to a replication of the 1964 march, this current picture being replicated among

those students protesting israel and current american foreign policy. so, we do have a playbook, and much of it is built on the images and indeed what i say the mythologies of the 1960s. my question is when is a picture or for that matter many pictures not really worth the preverbal thousand words? and allow me to give you two examples from my book, issues which i try to dissect. one is the 1968 democratic national convention in chicago. which, of course, even at that time riveted viewer attention as chicago police rumbled with anti-war protesters, protesting the nomination of vice president hubert humphrey, compelling images of violence and bloodshed. which largely gave the

neglected -- always showed the police clubbing the students, but the film at the time from nbc, abc, cbs, never -- seldom ever showed the students -- protesters actually throwing the rocks or throwing things and assaulting the police. the media only showed generally the reaction of the police rather than the provocation. and that spin, that take on events, that historical record from that photo documentary was further reinforced by a 1995 pbs documentary "chicago 1968." where, indeed, we show -- we have a few talking heads from the side of law and order disputing what is being seen, but the film images themselves is one of almost unrelenting, unjustified and apparently unprovoked violence on the part of the police forces. one of the other things the chicago '68 documentary really

did not show or rather how they spun was the role abby hoffman, the leader youth international party, one of the organizers of the chicago protests. in the documentary, abby hoffman is kind of a happy go-lucky figure. a figure of fun who wants to drop lsd in the reservoir of chicago and get everybody high. and, indeed, a benign figure and someone who one historian simply called a character. of course in the documentary, one never sees abby hoffman denouncing the chicago police as fascists or being no better than southern rednecks. one does not see the chicago police actually rescuing abby hoffman who was being hunted down by a deranged gunman and abby hoffman owed his life to the chicago police department, those very people he denounced as southern rednecks transplanted to the north. the documentary shows tom

hayden, founder of the students for democratic society, the chief organization of the new left, sds. shows him becoming radicalized after one of his allies and co-sds founder the, renny davis is assaulted by the police. this shows him being totally radicalized by this event. the documentary does not show tom hayden before the convention traveling to czechoslovakia where he and other members of the new left met with the delegation from north vietnam and discussed ways in which to up the level of violence and protests in the united states in order to make the continuation of the war impossible and politically unattainable. there's none of that context. instead we have hayden being radicalized at chicago, and none

of the earlier events which took place before then. strangely enough, the documentary does show mayor richard d. daley in a constantly negative light, usually black and white photographs selected, ominous background music, almost a kind of tribute to darth vader is heard daily as a bloated party boss, obviously a figure of evil because he mainly only appears in black and white, whereas everyone else is in living color. another example is the 1986 pbs documentary on the 1960s which focused on the university of wisconsin. "the war at home." the documentary neglected to point out something, this objective history of the 1960s which is used in many classrooms, courses on the '60s,

had its origins as a fund-raiser, a political fund-raiser for carl armstrong. carl armstrong had been in and out of the university of wisconsin in the 1960s and founded the new years game. armstrong in august of 1970 was responsible for the worst -- what was then the worst terrorist attack on american soil, when armstrong and his comrades with over 1,800 pounds of ammonia nitrate and fuel oil, shades of timothy mcveigh, set off a bomb in the campus of the university of wisconsin that had the fire power of 3,400 sticks of dynamite. armstrong's bomb killed a

student and damaged 26 buildi s buildings. the kchemistry building was lifted off its foundation and shifted over six inches that little detail in the documentary is not mentioned. in a scene at the university of wisconsin depicting the october 1967 protest, over the issue of admitting recruiters, corporate recruiters from dow chemical, dow manufacturers napalm and seran wrap, as i recall. what we see in the documentary from the film footage is students, peaceful members of sds, non-violent, staging a peaceful sit-in, being savagely beaten by city police officers. and this radicalized the campus. this set off a three-year period, a fuse that ultimately exploded in 1970 with carl

armstrong. what we do not see from those pictures is that the campus police had actually disarmed themselves prior to the sit-in. they removed all weapons, anything that could be interpreted as a weapon, since they did not want to provoke violence. what the film does not show is the sds members assaulting students and campus police officers and beating them up as they tried to gain entry to interview with the dow corporate recruiters. instead, we see provocation and from the part of the police, the city police, then the violence. now, i lead off with these examples not to bring up issues of bias. though those issues could certainly be brought up. or the limits of visual media, which entire dissertations in libraries have certainly dealt with that aspect. i am mainly concerned about how

important the context is in establishing -- especially content in creating myths or why we need to pay attention to context at all. "put your bodies upon the wheels: student revolt in the 1960s" draws upon the sociological and historical literature of the past four decades, including my first book n order to frame this narrative context and try to get at a number of issues and myths of the 1960s. what were the dimensions of 1960 student protest? well, everyone protested. no, actually very few people actively engaged in any form of protest in the 1960s. at best, an estimate from various reports, analyses, media accounts, you are actually looking at about 6 million americans actively engaged in protests, whether these are sit-ins, demonstrations, walking

picket lines. roughly 2 million blacks, about 4 million whites. roughly 3% of the u.s. population. even at college campuses, which will become the locust of protests in the 1960s providing the organization basis of the new left, providing sanctuary and nurturing the new left in the 1960s, even at campuses that were known for their radicalism, that had a media image such as bern berkeley, if you were to add up all the berkeley students in 1964 who participated in protests on behalf of the right to engage in protests, the free speech movement and add them to all the students active in 1965 with the vietnam day committee organizing the first anti-war protest, large anti-war protest on the west coast to take all that together you are up to 11%

of the student body in 1964 and 1965 at berkeley. by the late 1960s, after several years of radicalization, es calization of the vietnam war, the assassination of robert kennedy, after the campus burn, after several years of radicalization, at berkeley you are up to one-third of students engaged in protests. we can go to columbia university, most noted for the 1968 takeover by sds, campus buildings by the afro student sewed, here we find a few interesting things. roughly 500 students, actively involved in any type of sit-in or engagement. most of the other people were not students. they were people from outside

the community. i will not use the word outside agitators, since that was the word of the forces of law and order, but suffice to say you are really only looking at about 500 actually paying tuition. that represented about one-sixth of the undergraduate student body. two-thirds of columbia university students in 1968 actively opposed the building sit-ins, and actually offered to lend assistance to the new york police department to clean the students out of the buildings. which would, of coursekourcours created an incredibly bloody riot. the new york city police decided they could be less brutal than what the students wanted to do. in most academic accounts, these students, these law and order students are depicted as a minority, the two-thirds. or as a minority of jocks.

as a graduate of the big ten, i can assure you that columbia university is not an athletic powerhouse. one more example. the university of california at los angeles, ucla. 1967, okay? student referendum is held. the majority of students at ucla in 1967 voted to decriminalize marijuana usage. so the majority of students are in favor of the legalization of marijuana. only a minority at ucla called for the u.s. to withdraw from vietnam. and only a minority of students at ucla argued that the university should ban military recruiters or corporate, you know, companies such as dow from

test. within the ranks of the protest movement. really that's not surprising given how small of a working class pool there is attending college in 1960s.

>> in 1960, college student enrollment was 3 million, 1970, 10 million. so you are seeing a three times increase in the number of students in college, number of youths in college, but it's mainly a fact that the middle class simply had more children during the early years of what we call the baby boom, especially in the cohart from about 1946 to 1955. it is to keep in mind a couple of little facts. in the 1960s, only 6% of all americans ever set foot on a college campus. college -- going to college is not norm, it is the exception.

of all college students in the 1960s, just 17% on average come from working class and lower middle class backgrounds to give a generous definitions, the sons of mechanics, the sons of high school-educated accountants, holding white level positions, 17%. this by the way, helps to explain the way college student draft deferments worked. at least up to richard nixon set the lottery into place after 1969. 80% of the soldiers serving in vietnam came from blue collar families. only 20% from the middle or upper middle classes. attending college in the 1960s is mainly, though there are notable exceptions, like my brother, colleges maincollege's

middle class entitlement. now, there is a division over the war. there is a generation gap of sorts. and it's mainly among the elite. while lyndon johnson secretary of defense mac that mara is responsible for increasing troop calls, coordinating our war in vietnam, mcthat mara's son is an anti-war protester at stanford, smashing windows and waving the vietcong banner. and melvin laird, his son was also an anti-war protester. it's going to be difficult for foreign policymakers in the 1960s and early '70s to justify intervention in indo china when their own children are not going and are protesting

well, given the facts, you know, it's like, wow, the '60s is all myth. why are we even bothering? why are student protests remembered or for that matter even exaggerated? and there's a variety of reasons. i'd say first it's precisely because of the demographics of protests. think of protests as -- well, politics and porotests are like selling a product and think of how networks operate. beginning in the '60s and now to today, the media went from broadcasting to what we now call narrow casting or segmentation of the market. the trick in broadcasting or what we now call narrow casting is not the size of the audience but the composition, the

demographics of the audience. and protest movements work much the same way. one son of a secretary of defense as an anti-war activist is, i would have to say, probably worth more than 100 pittsburgh steel workers prot t protesting or sons of steel workers. their voices, the voices of those in the upper middle class, those of the elite are just going to be heard more loudly. they have microphones permanently taped to their mouths. th they -- their voices are being heard, and it is demoralizing to foreign policy leaders. robert mcthat mara and those folks are human, they get tired or broken down by arguments and scream fests at the dinner table just like anyone else who has children can well speak to that point. so there was a