but it broke the rules for such a grander good. so i don't think reasonable people objected. >> thank you for your comments. >> thank you. >> well i want to thank all you for joining us today and join me in thanking jeffrey kluger for joining us. [ applause ] >> you're watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span 3. follow us on twitter @ c-span history on information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. we're on the campus of ku in lawrence kansas, up next we take you inside of the wilcox collection of political contemporary movements, the largest movements of left and right wing literature in the country. >> the wilcox collection is a celebration of free speech.

it is one of the largest collections of its kind in the world. it represents both left and right-wing collections on the political spectrum. the wilcox collection was acquired by the university of kansas libraries in 1965. and so we just celebrated our 50th anniversary. it was established by laird wilcox who at the time was a slightly older than usual student here at the university. laird became interested in the left and right wing materials when he was very young actually. his grandparents, his aunts and uncles were all very politically intense. and they would have long discussions at the dinner table. some of them were right wingers, some of them were on the left. and unbeknownst to his parents,

he set up a post office box and began writing to these organizations and asking them for materials. and they sent them to him. when he arrived at the university of kansas, he had about four filing cabinets full of material. and he was politically active here on campus, he was a member of the student for democratic society, but decided that he was interested in selling his collection and the university library purchased it. the collection is always for free speech and whenever i am asked to describe the collection i stress that we collect both the left and right wing and so we try to present both sides of issues and that is actually one of the strengths of the will -- the will come collection is that someone can come here and do

research and actually look at materials from both sides. this is a selection of books that -- whose authors used the wilcox collection for their research. and we have researchers from all over the world come to use the wilcox collection. this book, american extremists, is a book that laird wrote himself. it came out actually just in the mid-90s before the oklahoma city bombing and after that terrible event occurred his publishers wanted them to republish the book and there is a photo from the bombing site. these other materials that i've laid out on the tables are materials from the collection itself. and the first grouping represents hispanics and their

interest in american farm workers. la rossa served as the voice from americans since the late 1960s. this item, this book is actually a cook book called cesar salads. you could see the play on caesar salads and this came out in support of the american farm worker's strikes in the '70s. so at that time lettuce was being boycotted and so the cook book on salads does not include lettuce. cesar chavez wrote the foreword himself for this book. this represents the wilcox collection and these collections are made up of materials that are usually thrown away. they're mailings and flyers you pick up on the street and that is one of the values of the

collections is that they represent things that are oftentimes not kept. a lot of that work was done by laird himself. you can see that on some of the items there is the wilcox collection stamp with the date. this was received in july of 1986. and so laird acquired this probably through writing to the organization and requesting their materials. because the wilcox collection has been around for 50 years, it really can -- does document a long span of time. the whole of the latter part of the 20th century. and so you can see that some of the issues like gun control and immigration control are still issues that are being debated today, but they have been around for sometimes 20 and 30 years. these are all materials that

represent the things that were found to be blamed on communism. even the weather, disastrous weather was blamed on communism by william mcbernie. then the other books are more anti-communist materials, what was behind lee harvey oswald after he assassinated president kennedy and even fluoridation as an additive to drinking water became an if issue associated with communists. i haven't read it but i think they thought that it was somehow a communist plot that would ruin us all. this grouping represents the environmental movement. and this is rachel carsons ground breaking book "silent

spring" and her research on the effect of chemicals on the earth helped to launch the environmental movement. and then these bumper stickers and buttons are parts of the collection and they are actually part that i -- that i really enjoy working with. i love the fact that with just a few words you could get a message across that really says it all. like for instance, this little tiny sticker here flush rush from now, the national organization for women. they're talking about rush limbaugh of course. we have almost the complete run of the black panther newspaper. we also have a very large gathering of afem ora from the black panthers where they --

they talk about their mission, what the issues were, what they were trying to create and then we also have other materials relating to civil rights. so there is this small pamphlet here produced by the student nonviolent coordinating committee, snic. and these black panthers are from the 60s and go up into the early 70s. this is a manuscript collection that we acquired from a woman named phyllis johnson. she was a very conservative person who lived in california. she was a member of the minute women of the united states. the minute women called themselves a nonpartisan organization united to combat communism, socialism, fascism or

collectiveism in america. this is one of the newer parts of the wilcox collection that we've acquired. these are zenes which are do it yourself publications that people create around a issue or a part of their lives. they might talk about their feeling about different issues like bullying. the advantage of a zene is you can produce one yourself just by cutting and pasting images and then xeroxing the sheets, stapling them together. you could do ten or 20, pass them around among your friends. we have probably about 1500. sometimes we face criticism for collecting the materials that we

do, the more extreme materials because people feel that we're giving these organizations a platform. and we have to keep in mind that this is a collection that is based on free speech. and a university campus is really the ideal space to be gathering materials that represent a lot of different ideas and document historically just what is happening in the world. if you don't have materials that represent both sides, then you really can't get a clear impression of what the issues are. >> our city staff recently travelled to lawrence kansas to learn about the rich history.

learn more about lawrence and other stops on our tour at c-span.org/cities tour. you're watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend, on c-span 3. american history tv is on c-span 3 every weekend featuring museum tours, archival films an programs on the presidency, the civil war and more. here is a clip from a recent program. >> so on april 15th, 1961, two days before the invasion, the first wave of air attacks by six b-26s, fewer than planned for, damaged many cuban planes on the ground but failed to destroy them all. the attacks alerted the cubans that it is coming. got the attention of the united nations where the u.n. ambassador adler stevenson found himself to be lying about u.s.

noninvolvement in this operation. kennedy, president kennedy had ordered the first air strike to be smaller than planned for and then he canceled the second planned air strike. cia was afraid to recommend at that point that the invasion be canceled. even though everyone knew, at least on cia side, that without command of the air, the invasion was doomed. they're afraid to give that kind of bad news. which is -- if you think about it, it is uncharacteristic. intelligence is in the bad news business but this is a case where they call it falling in love with your operation. they'd all fallen in love with it and not willing to end it at that point. >> you could watch this and other american history programs on our website where all our video is archived. that is c-span.org/history.

former nasa astronaut walter schirra talked about his life and career. he is one of the original seven astronauts that flew with the mercury and gemini and commander of apollo 7 which launched in october 1968. this 75-minute interview is from nasa oral history program at the johnson space center. >> well, i think we're rolling now and if we're not we should be, i want to say you essentially came from a flying family. flying was in your blood from the beginning, wasn't it. >> in this museum we had an old kn-4, kurtis jenning and dad convinced mother to got on a wing and act like a wing walker and her great story is she started wing walking when i was in the hangar. >> and so as time went on, you eventually wound up in the