at the university of kansas." kelly? >> thank you, barbara, and thank you all for coming and being here so early on a friday morning. we appreciate it. the work i'm presenting today comes from my dissertation, so i'm going to follow my text pretty closely, because if i don't, i could talk for 5 hours and not 20 minutes. so thank you. today i'd like to talk about the long '60s as they appeared on the university of kansas. and then contemplate what this one campus might tell us about history and memory of the '60s. and the women's movement in particular. our common memory of the '60s tends to center on the late 1960s and the early 1970s. imagery of the time period on college campuses includes the vietnam war protests, drug culture, violence, black power and women's liberation as students were pictured as pushing unwilling campus administrators to release

traditional cultural norms that governed student lives. the stories which i'm sharing today will show some of the impulses for student activism at university of kansas were being fostered intergenerationally through the university administration dean of women's office. these administrative activities began almost a decade before the campus unrest unfolded nationally. in the case of ku, the liberal feminist platform built by the dean of women would reach into civil rights and student protest agendas as well as into women's liberation. christine stansell in "the feminine promise" notes in the second wave of the women's movement that there was a longer, quieter route to the new feminism, one that is often overlooked when historians are too quick to fasten on to the combustion of the late 1960s. for ku it has been easy to focus on the time period of the late 1960s and early 1970s when chaos erupted on campus.

national guard troops marched near campus and the student union burned. however, a closer look at the activities at the university of kansas and in the dean of women's office will show that there was a longer, quieter route to student activism at ku and women and feminist activity intertwined in the heart of it. i will be making three major points today in the ku events which i share. first, the early involvement of the dean of women's office with women students intentionally fostered feminist attitudes and created an intergenerational dialogue regarding social change. second, this administrator specifically sought to shift gender roles and foster integration of blacks and whites on the campus. third, the administrator built an intergenerational feminist network which resulted in the dean of women's office becoming very involved in stemming the 1970 violence at ku. overall, the events i will review show administrative

involvement in core areas of student activism. all areas were scholarship and historiography has often assumed that students initiated change. before we move into the specific events on the ku campus, i want to make a few comments about why the long '60s has been overlooked in the history of the women's movement at ku and i believe likely on other college campuses as well. first dean of women's offices remained largely outside of most historical inquiry as student affairs is not commonly covered in histories of higher education. in fact, it's kind of the red-headed stepchild of higher education in general. and there are a few that even know that a dean of women once existed on college campuses. secondly, and most importantly for this conference, the events i will share today are not obvious without oral history. the ku dean destroyed her records. so little exists outside form letters and newspaper clips in

the university archives for her office. for eight years i conducted interviews with her. while much of what i share has vestiges in the university archives, it required oral history to provide a map for me to find these activities within the traditional historical resources. as you see from the list of records i reviewed, this was not a simple process to cross-reference memories from historical interviews with the traditional primary references. that's a list of all the different places i had to go to map this together. now, let me set the stage at the university of kansas for the long '60s during a time we decidedly do not link with social upheaval, the 1950s. in 1956 ku's chancellor hired a new dean of women, emily taylor. taylor was young for her position at a large

co-educational school, only 40, taylor trained with one of the most well respected scholars in student affairs, kate hevner mueller, who comes from your school, indiana university, where she served as dean of women. she authored a very progressive text, educating women for a changing world. some have said of mueller's book that it anticipated the values of the second wave of the women's movement. it's my contention these deans of women did not anticipate the values of the second wave, instead they intentionally fostered these precepts among women students on their campuses. under mueller's tutelage, taylor believed women student potential should be maximized through a rigorous higher education, and taylor arrived at ku interested in using student government to help women move past traditional gender roles and the perception that marriage and career were mutually exclusive choices. this was progressive for the time as much of the popular discussion during the 1950s was actually working toward domesticating women's education

so it could reflect women's roles in the home. deans of women arose in the late 1800s out of the believed need of a chaperone for women students on traditionally male campuses. for decades women and men were divided on college campuses in terms of activities and living arrangements. stereotypes of deans of women often depicted her as a disciplinarian. this eclipsed her role in advising women students regarding their academic paths, career choices and leadership development. in reality, the dean of women was often the highest ranking woman on a co-educational campus. many like taylor had direct lines to the president for chancellor of the university. all women student needs were considered the dean of women's responsibility, and in many co-educational campuses, deans of women created what might now be referred to as a women's college within a college.

campuses in the mid 20th century were thick with parietal rules for women students, largely regulating their interactions with men. minor infractions of these rules often led to significant disciplinary action, and no woman had a key to her dormitory or residence. a woman returning late to her campus housing found herself locked out and having to either alert administrators to her plight or find a willing friend to help her sneak back into her room. by the way, if you let someone sneak back in you were in as big of trouble as the person who was late. the system purported to prevent pre marital sex and codified women's lives with webs of regulations. at ku the parietals worked similarly with all women undergraduates belonging the the ku chapter of the intercollegiate associated women students, a student government group overseen by the dean of women. as on many campuses, the aws at ku functioned as a legislature, they handled all the women's activities and the programming

and this also included the parietal regulations. when taylor arrived in 1956 she worked closely with the leaders of the aws and began shifting the programming. it went away from things like fashion shows and best dressed women contests, and, for instance, in the 1956-'57 school year, her first year at ku, she hosted a program on the legal discrimination of women in the united states and she began to suggest career options for women to consider. she created a committee of undergraduate women to research ku alumni who established careers outside of the home. as she worked with aws she became frustrated as the women spent the majority of their time and their energy administering and creating the parietal rules. taylor felt this took the students' attention away from their academic pursuits and resulted at fencing at windmills because the women who didn't want to follow the rules found ways around them.

so taylor set out to dismantle the regulation apparatus at ku. history has recognized the dissolution of parietals, but they've been recognized as a student driven phenomenon in the '60s mostly because historians have focused on the chaos of the mid to late portion of the decade. indeed by looking at news reports this seems like a very reasonable explanation. in 1966 when the aws passed a motion to allow all but freshmen women to have keys to their residence, the vote produced a storm of protests from parents and citizens across the state. historian beth bailey has taken a close look at the chancellor's correspondence, whereby parent after parent wrote criticizing the women's desires to have keys to their residents because of course keys would allow them to avoid curfews which meant they could stay out late with boys. without oral history, the interpretation that women students drove the resistance to parietals seems reasonable. however, by using oral history

interviews as a map through the ku archives, a different set of facts emerged. by tracing taylor's advising of the aws since 1956, it becomes apparent that this administrator actually drove the dissolution of curfews at ku against student preferences. in 1958 taylor began to disassemble the parietals. she suggested renovating all of the rules and providing keys to senior women. this was in 1958. copious aws minutes reveal the women resisted the ideas of relaxing curfews or eliminating the closing hours even for senior women. in fact, when the residences voted on the topic, the archival records show that only a third of the houses approved seniors having keys. so the women themselves had bought into this structure. in the 1966 aws vote cataloged as a student driven effort to remove parietals was actually the culmination of taylor's efforts to unravel what she considered to be rules that did not allow women to learn to make

their own decisions regarding their actions, and the main point i would like to reinforce here is this is an add straiter pushing students to dissolve parietals in order to dissolve the institutional support of gender roles which she felt limited women's potential to move into careers and roles outside the home. the second set of events that i would like to share revolves around what has often been seen as the purview of women's liberation, women's reproductive rights, access to birth control, abortion and understanding women's bodies and women's health. this is an area that no one thinks of the dean of women being involved in. at ku, advocacy for these advanced initially within the dean of women's office as well. taylor was able to work in these areas because she had an extensive staff that wound through the various women's housing groups. taylor used these staff to communicate with students and the network provided taylor with information about women's daily lives including the reality of

premarital sex. as the head counselor for women, deans of women had always confronted unplanned pregnancies among undergraduate women's students. after witnessing detrimental results of students seeking back alley abortions in the early 1960s, taylor began quietly referring young women who desired an abortion to a kansas psychiatrist who made recommendations for termination of pregnancies based on mental health needs. in 1960 when the pill became available an assistant dean of women recalled students began quietly asking questions within the residence halls about access to the pill. she responded by providing informal informational pieces to circulate among women students. not long after women students and staff in the dean of women's office began calling for access to contraceptive prescriptions in the student health center. they were refused. next the office hosted a 1966 panel on birth control access to pressure the student health center to respond and change its

stance. when the student health center continued to say no, we are not doing this, taylor's staff began organizing sex education seminars with the aws specifically in 1968. these drew large numbers of students as taylor and her staff suggested the women bring their boyfriends. they ended up hosting them at hoch auditorium which is the largest auditorium on that particular campus. it's important to note here most histories of the women's movement trace women's liberation as rising as young women began to resent their relegation to support roles in these types of groups. while this was undoubtedly one path, at ku feminist awareness developed in the dean of women's office as well. taylor's liberal feminist activism overlapped with the radical feminist agendas of younger new left women. for instance, taylor actually

assigned one of her staff members, an assistant dean of women, to staff the women's liberation groups on campus. when these radical groups met, often they would assemble in the dean of women's office. mind you this is a few feet down the hall from the chancellor's office. the combination of more radical and mainstream liberal feminisms in taylor's office was clear in the library house there. she had this large room on women's resources which was rare to find various texts regarding women in the late '60s. her text ranged from career and graduate school guides to the now statement of purpose. she had pat manardy's politics of housework, and beverly jones and judith brown's tour of female liberation movement in the actual library. the thing i thought was so interesting was it was not uncommon to find in the campus mail such publications as the bitch manifesto and foundations for social change.

201 strong hall. the point i want to emphasize here is that this administrator extended her umbrella of programming to include radical feminists and their agenda and the students involved in those areas. now that we've considered the growth of feminism at ku, i'd like to share a few stories regarding how this interactive, intergenerational women's network also extended into other areas of social activism. first i will consider civil rights and second i will discuss ku student protests in 1970. ku saw a large civil rights sit-in at the university administration building strong hall in 1965 on the day after bloody sunday in selma, alabama. taylor knew about the protest before it occurred through her network of staff and students. because the chancellor perceived her as credible to both administrators and black students, he chose taylor to head some of the negotiations that followed the sit-in. taylor clearly preferred university accommodation of

black student concerns as she did not expel the women students involved in the sit-in, despite the chancellor's directive to do so. this calls the dean of men, very quick to act on the chancellor's request, to have to rescind the expulsions he enforced on the male protesters. in addition, two days after the sit-in, a few african-american women living in lewis hall working with assistant dean donna shavlik began integrating the approved women's housing list. what is an approved women's housing list, you might ask? at the time university parietals stated women students were only allowed to live in a residence hall, sorority or approved housing in the community that was on a list in the the dean of women's office. the dean of women's office actually provided training to these african-american women who then would go to homes listed on the approved list, and they would present this letter of identification signed by taylor

that showed that these women were knowingly coming to represent the university and try to rent the apartment. if they were refused, taylor and her staff would remove the landlord from the approved list. by the late 1960s, the aws chapter taylor advised began offering programming on white racism and institutional racism. so, again, this is the aws group that are offering these programs. also in the late 1960s taylor championed black students call for black cheerleaders which may not sound that radical today. the alumni association at ku just about thought the world was coming to an end to add black cheerleaders to the process. these examples regarding civil rights illustrate the dean of women using her office to foster social change in areas not normally attributed to campus administrations or deans of women. i think it's important to note here that most majority white professional women of the time had an inconsistent history of

dealing with racial prejudice. taylor was no different in this respect and some aspects of structural racism took longer for her to recognize. finally, i'd like to move to discussing student unrest at ku, particularly as it manifested over anti-war sentiments. there's not time today to catalog the events that led up to the level of protests shown in my initial slides. however, i want to note that ku was not a latecomer to student unrest. ku sits on i-70 and was often used as a stop-over point for students going from the east coast to the west coast. it was certainly in the midsts of the protests and all of their activities happened at the same time that activities were happening on the coasts. in may 1965 many acts of violence began against rotc and anti-war protest was a regular feature on the campus. by may of 1969 the chancellor called in the national guard concerned about the potential for violence and in the spring of 1970 that violence erupted. a bomb was discovered on campus outside the administration

building. arsonists set fire to the student union. destroying the building. this is the union burning that night. snipers actively took shots as various protest factions threatened to strike to force the university to close after the kent state tragedy. the governor of kansas declared the university would remain open. parents and quite frankly many students panicked, and as one integral staffer recalled, the top administration seemed to freeze. into this void stepped the network of women that taylor and her staff had developed. a female graduate student suggested to taylor they initiate an information hotline for students, faculty and parents. taylor agreed to set up the 24-hour phone line in her office using her phone number so students and faculty could report incidents and also test and find out about the veracity of rumors. as a result, the staff could also find out about potential unrest and try to defuse it before it happened. for instance, when 300 students

tee descended on the military science building, rocks in hand, a number of taylor's young staffers were there. the staffers wound through and calmly asked the protesters for rocks which they actually would give to them. we ended up with enough rocks for a small doghouse remembered an assistant dean of women. eventually one of these women spoke to the group encouraging calm and diffusing the protest. soon after this potential riot, taylor agreed to allow one of the key student protest groups to set up operations in her office using all of her facilities, phone lines, everything. mimeographs -- remember it was the mimeographs at that point to help diffuse the violence on campus. taylor and her staff's work to lessen tensions has been absent in every count of the student protests. two factors produced this result. first, scholars have not thought to look at an office organized for women's affairs as a venue to consider coordination with new left activities.

second, the intergenerational organizing within the office meant the activities were low profile because they were coordinated with students. the examples of taylor's involvement in civil rights and the student protests illustrate that the dean of women and her staff played a role in facilitating racial access and new left ideals from within the new organizational structure of the intuition. taylor's actions arose from her desire to reduce the likelihood of violence on campus and the network taylor developed through women's residences and women's organizations enabled her office to tap into the communities of black students and the new left working with both men and women from their vantage point within the ku structure. i'd like to return to the initial question i asked, what do the activities in the dean of women's office at ku tell us about history and memory of the '60s and the women's movement in particular? the story of dean emily taylor illustrates stansell's point is

correct, when historians lock on to the chaos of a narrowly defined 60s, the more complicated nuances regarding activism go unnoticed regarding '60s activism. in addition, at least at the ku campus, the development of feminism did not simply follow the commonly understood trajectory of new left women becoming fed up with support roles in radical organizations. while this was undoubtedly one path to feminist awareness, at ku the ground for feminist consciousness began to be sewed in the late 1950s through the direct action of one university administrator. to close, none of these stories would have been possible to trace as a pattern without the extended interviewing i conducted with taylor and a number of women affiliated with her office. this project began in 1997 and i made a choice to interview taylor until her death in 2004. slowly we built a trusting relationship in what i would call a series of concentric circles which started very formally and ended with her sharing stories which i think

she initially planned to keep private. by following her most prevalent topic, aws which quite frankly bored me to tears when she would tell me about it, i backtracked through the ku archives looking for vestiges of the various meetings, interactions and topics she recalled almost 25 years later. without oral history there would be little chance to piece this together. obviously no one writes down they're referring a woman to a psychiatrist to consider the option of abortion. this oral history was absolutely integral to putting together the pattern that i've talked about today. and it's certainly a pleasure to get to share my research with you. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you. our next speaker is two presenters, craig simpson is the lilly library archivists at

indiana university where he's responsible for the arrangement and descriptions of the manuscript collections. pryer to iu he was special collections librarian at kent state university where he headed the kent state shootings oral history project and did approximately 40 interviews on the events pertaining to may 4th, 1970. craig is a member of the academy of certified archivists and twice a member of faculty at the oral history training institute held annually at kenyon college. gregory wilson is associate professor in the department of history at the university of akron. his research and teaching interests include 20th century united states political economy, public and environmental history, ohio history and the scholarship of teaching and learning. he is the author of "communities left behind: the area redevelopment administration

1945 to 1965" as well as the co-author on an upcoming state history of ohio. his oral history project done with ua students, "the times they were a-changing, akron remembers 1968, won the ohio academy of history, public history award in 2010. their paper is entitled "above the shots, the kent state shootings and the politics of truth, trauma and reconciliation." craig? >> okay. thank you, barbara. the shootings of may 4, 1970, lasting all of 13 seconds have reverberated for approximately

40 years. in purely factual terms, they were the culmination of a clash at kent state university between student protesters and members of the ohio national guard. in the lingering debate over historical memory the shots have been regarded, depending upon one's point of view, as the responsibility of either left wing radicals or a right wing government. as a symbol of younger or older generation malfeasance, as the end of the 1960s protest movement or the beginning of a new protest movement entirely. to understand the memory of the kent state shootings it's essential to first become familiar with the events immediately preceding them. on friday, may 1st, 1970, the day following president nixon's announcement of the invasion at

cambodia, student protesters, as you can see in this photo gathered on the kent campus and symbolically buried the constitution. that evening at kent riots broke out in town and resulted in many stones being thrown at local properties of business establishments and resulting in a lot of property damage. the following day on saturday, may 2nd, fulfilling a rumor heard throughout the whole day, the rotc building was set on fire by arsonists, and the national guard was called in. they arrived, i think, around after midnight or thereabouts. the next day on sunday, initial calm was interrupted by an inflammatory speech by governor james rhodes echoing governor reagan's sentiments in california. rhodes, it should be mentioned, was in the middle of a hotly contested primary race. the primary, which was held, i think, that tuesday, the day after may 4th. and that evening there was a lot of tension between the guard and students, all throughout campus and the town.

and then, of course, on monday, may 4, midterm classes and exams were held during the morning. at the noon hour the victory bell was rung and about 2,000 active protesters and a few more thousand curious onlookers gathered on the campus. the national guard threw teargas canisters, they fixed their bayonets and marched toward the crowd dispersing it. at the top of the hill known as the pagoda as things appeared to be over and were calling down, some members of the guard suddenly wielded around and fired killing four students and wounding nine others. the formal may 4 oral history project first began around 1990, long before i was ever at kent. it was actually started by a member of the kent community in conjunction with the ksu special collections in archives who received all of the interviews.

approximately 69 interviews were collected. it was based almost entirely around the big commemoration. so the 20th commemoration in 1990, the 25th in '95 and then the 30th in 2000 were where most of these were actually collected. in 2005, after the project had been dormant for a few years, the special collections librarian, which was me, took over and managed the project until about 2010 when i left ksu and went to indiana university. we collected approximately 40 interviews, we being myself and then a few students that i supervised. and we wanted this new part of the project to reflect some new goals and one of these goals was to have more variety of narrators.