archives' youtube channel. >> today's guest, sarah milov, explores the connections between cigarettes and american political institutions throughout the 20th century and describes the shift in attitudes toward tobacco use. sarah milov is assistant professor at the university of virginia, former fellow at the university foundation of humanities. she has written on the tobacco industry, the rise of e-cigarettes, and the grassroots fight to battle climate change. her research describes how organized interest groups and everyday americans influence government policy. today is day two of the publication of "the cigarette." please welcome sarah milov. [applause] dr. milov: thank you so much. it is such a privilege to come

and speak at the national archives. the other day, i saw a tweet about today's event, and as a historian, it's kind of like having yourself name checked by beyonce. this is the mothership. thank you so much for coming. my book, "the cigarette: a political history," seeks to understand tobacco in modern america, not through the lens of big tobacco in the machinations of industry, but through the efforts of everyday americans to get the government to intervene on their behalf. big tobacco is still an important part of the story, but by focusing on other actors, farmers, government officials, politicians, activists, workers and labor unions, the story of tobacco in the 20th century begins to look a lot different than if we were to understand it through the actions of tobacco alone.

by taking a wide angled approach, my book suggests that far from being the product of corporate deception that was ultimately exposed by science, the cigarette was a product of government intervention. what ultimately reduced tobacco's grip on american society was not the discovery that smoking causes cancer and, of course, the surgeon general's warning to that effect, but the invention by activists of non-smokers' rights, the idea that people who do not smoke were entitled and able to achieve unpolluted air and shared public spaces. this idea that non-smokers' rights, so natural to us today that we don't even consider it really to rise to the level of a political claim, that this idea had to be invented and then had to be vindicated by decision-making bodies. most frequently, these bodies were businesses and local governments.

in the rise of the cigarette, we can see a product made by the federal government acting on behalf of of privileged constituencies, and in its unmaking, we can see a critique not only of cigarette consumption, but in a way of doing government. the smoke-filled room, as it were, that gave rise to the cigarette in the first place. today, i'm going to talk about one non-smokers' rights activist, a woman who had a big hand in the kind of smoke-free world we live in today. her story, i think, eliminates the surprising mix of social movement activism, legal innovation, and hard-nosed business calculation that remade public space. in 1975, donna's morning routine looked rather unusual. the 42-year-old customer service representative talked -- popped an antiemetic pill and drove from her home to the office of the bell telephone company.

depending how things looked inside, she might put on a gas mask, which she would lower when she had to speak by phone or in person with customers. her model was made by the mine safety appliances company by pittsburgh. it was designed to be used by miners. they were gas masks to protect them selves against toxic airborne pollutants they encounter on the dot -- on the job, and that is what donna did as well. more than half of her coworkers smoked and there were no prohibitions on smoking by customers who came into the office. the environment was crippling. tobacco smoke nauseated her. hence the daily antiemetic. it caused constant headaches and rashes on her face.

caused tearing and eye irritation that left her with corneal abrasions that would were not healed. and her office like in most american workplaces in the 1970's, there were no rules separating smokers from non-smokers. the company reasoned that rearranging the layout of the office to separate smokers from non-smokers would disrupt workflow, and the union, the communication workers of america, agreed smoking was a workplace right. the gas mask was not the first remedy that donna turned to for relief. earlier that year, she had seen a company doctor who had told her it was a disgrace for any employee to have to work in such a smoky space. on his orders, she was not to return to work until her supervisors could find a way to ensure a smoke-free environment. donna thought she would be home for a few days as supervisors rearranged desks at work. the days turned into weeks, which turned into months. her sabbatical extended the

depth of bell's unwillingness. donna got to work. she was no anti-tobacco activist, but she soon became one. she made contact with the two primary antismoking groups of the era -- ash, action on smoking and health, and gas, group against smoke inhalation. she wrote to the new jersey department of health and labor, the environmental protection agency and all the major health voluntary associations. from her research, she learned she was in uncharted territory. in the 1970's, there were no laws governing workplace smoking on behalf of non-smokers. despite the fact the epa and osha had authority over air quality and workplace conditions respectively, no regulatory agency was authorized to police workplace conditions affected by

tobacco smoke. for -- for other issues, she could expect the support of her union as unions across the country in the 1970's were beginning to venture jan wages and hours to address the health and quality and life concerns of members, but the communication workers of america was adamant that it would not support her in her quest for a smoke-free work environment. in fact, her union steward smoked throughout the meeting as she discussed her need for smoke-free air. the antipathy at work was palpable -- or, rather, inhalable. finding no allies in government or labor, she tried to take her case directly to management. she delivered her proposal for smoke-free workplace policy to bell. she said bell should ban smoke and workplace offices in the same way it is banned in the central office and switchboards,

and if bell cannot bring itself to regulate smoking on behalf of non-smoking employees, at least he could do so on behalf of the bottom line. citing figures from the public health service, she pointed out that non-smokers spend world 1/3 more time away from work because of disease. bell did not take her advice. donna decided the courtroom would be the only venue that could provide her relief, so she decided to sue. but how? how could a customer service representative living in rural new jersey find a lawyer with expertise in employment law and perhaps even a sympathy for non-smokers' plight? the answer to this question should warm the hearts of booklovers everywhere. donna schempp called a librarian.

[laughter] [applause] she called the reference librarian at rutgers university, and that librarian happened to know about a law professor teaching a course on employment discrimination. alford blue rose and had been a lawyer and the johnson administration, and an important one at that. he had been an architect of the equal employment commission, the organization charged with banning discrimination at work. donna, it turned out, had a real-world need for the series bloom was developing in his law class. he agreed to take on her case pro bono. this was her first stroke of good fortune. the second and third were the and surprisingly so responsys

she received from two medical sources to whom she wrote soliciting advice on her behalf. the surgeon general who oversaw the publication of the famous 1964 report on smoking and health agreed to provide an affidavit affirming that tobacco smoke in the workplace could be a hazard to a significant number of workers and an irritation to an even larger number. dr. jesse seinfeld was also no ordinary doctor. he had served as nixon's surgeon general before he was canned, in his opinion, for denouncing the tobacco industry too forcefully. he also submitted testimony. the judge presiding over the case at the new jersey superior court was moved by this celebrity testimony, but he was also moved by the argument that donna herself had made to bell's corporate brass, that if the switchboard equipment was

precious enough to merit a smoke-free environment, then surely, so, too, were the bodies of employees themselves. a company which has demonstrated such concern for mechanical components should have at least as much concern for human beings, the judge wrote. new jersey bell had a common law duty to provide employees a safe and healthy work environment, which for donna meant an environment free of tobacco smoke. in wresting the right to a smoke-free environment from her employee, donna was at the vanguard that i read about in my book. cigarettes were a testament to federal regulation upon behalf of tobacco, specifically on behalf of organized tobacco producers. so activists did more than try to create tolerable conditions to work, congregate, dine, and

exist in public. they asserted an alternative way of thinking about the value of citizenship and the obligations of government. the idea of non-smokers' rights, that in individual by virtue of not partaking in a habit can dictate where that habit is expressed, this idea cut against the producer-centered politics that undergird smokers' supremacy and shared spaces. donna soon realized she was part of a young but emboldened new social movement, the non-smokers' rights movement. these were a very particular kind of tobacco activist. their goal is not to get people to quit smoking but to get people to quit smoking in public. in effect, their intention was to subvert the paradigm that both the tobacco industry and federal government had used to govern tobacco. this paradigm was in your face

every time you picked up a pack of cigarettes. it was right there on the warning label that read, cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health." having been warned, it was the consumer's choice. but the majority of americans never did experience cigarettes as smokers. they experienced tobacco smoke as part of shared public space except for when tobacco smoke may have kept them home. clara was one such exile. in 1971, the housewife, and her words, and mother of two young daughters decided she had had enough of bending her life around tobacco smoke. her youngest daughter had a tobacco allergy that kept the family from enjoying one of the central pleasures of middle-class life -- going out to dinner. she and some girlfriends made a pact of sorts. their first political action. they would remove ashtrays in

their homes, ashtrays that neither they nor their husbands used but were there is a room fixture for the convenience of guests. that this small gesture required premeditation and the kind of confidence that only can be shored up by a group of the like-minded suggests the degree of anxiety clara faced when she considered claiming an exclusively non-smoking space, even when that space was her own home. she started group against smoking pollution or gasp from this action. using $50 of her grocery money, she produced the first batch of buttons that would become a standard symbol in the non-smokers' rights movement. gasp -- non-smokers have rights, too. she also published a newsletter called "the ventilator," which got off the ground thanks to the prince georges county tuberculosis and respiratory disease association, which

allowed her to use its mimeograph machine, and it mailed "the ventilators to surrounding counties, sharing with hundreds of state and local affiliates across the united states. piggybacking on this, gasp quickly reached a big audience. a year after its founding, it had assembled and mailed over 500 new chapter kits, literature that helps fledgling activists conceive of themselves as possessing both a legitimate grievance and the means to do something about it. gasp drew energy from contemporary social movements. at times, activist spoke the heavy language of civil rights and emancipation. drawing comparisons between the non-smokers rights movement and the african-american struggle. here is an image of endocyte saved lincoln who proclaim the emancipation of non-smokers --

here's an image of an ersatz abe lincoln who proclaimed the emancipation of non-smokers. the co-founder of the berkeley chapter of gasp put it this way -- although i would not suggest that non-smokers' rights are trampled on to the same extent as have been the rights of minority groups, i would suggest certain parallels. after all, he wondered, is there any real difference between saying to a person you cannot eat at this lunch counter and saying you cannot eat at this lunch counter if you are concerned about your health or if you want to enjoy your lunch?

consciousness raising was yet another tool for increasing non-smokers' sense of grievance. as powerfully expressed by contemporary feminists, consciousness-raising brought the hidden indignities of private experience out into the open where they could be located in a structural critique of power and patriarchy. for a long time, many non-smokers had felt individually annoyed by smoking but had suffered in silence, gouin explained in a 1972 profile. people are more likely to speak out when they know that others feel the same way. the fact that non-smokers comprise the majority of the population made speaking out a lower risk proposition than minority activism, but physical suffering itself ennobled the non-smokers' cause, opening up

avenues for analogies to the liberation struggles of other oppressed peoples, and ask for suggested by the very name, the non-smokers' rights inspiration drew energy from the environmental rights movement, pointing out that some of the chemical compounds present in ambient tobacco smoke would fall under the epa's regulatory ambit had they been emitted from actual smokestacks. unbeknownst to donna at the time, these non-smokers' rights activists were beginning to achieve their first successes. by the time the new jersey superior court ruled on her case, just over 100 cities had passed some of the first ordinances that restricted where people could smoke -- mostly in public buildings. non-smokers' rights activists had, by the mid-1970's developed

a vocabulary of entitlement and a theory of harm, and they have found venues within the american political system that allowed them to assert what they deemed to be there rights. in inventing the non-smoker, social activism, not scientific pronouncement, began to clear the air. in fact, substantial epidemiological evidence about their physical harms brought to non-smokers by other peoples' smoke -- by other people's smoke would not emerge until the 1980's. they would not run through law and public policy, at least not at first, but through the private sector. after her courtroom victory, not much changed for anybody but her. her ruling applied only to her and only over the next few years when non-smoking employees brought suit against their employers, courts repeatedly failed to rule in their favor.

where do donna's case served as president, donna herself -- failed as president, donna herself was determined to change the way people work. she began an after-hours career as a workplace consultant. in the 1970's, the field of management consulting was not yet perceived as launching pad for the young and i be educated and donna jumped right in. she called her business environmental associates incorporated. it was dedicated to improving the indoor work environment, and her firm aimed to create demand for the services that only it could provide. that is, and trying to convince a business to take seriously the issue of workplace smoking and thereby to hire the firm, donna shimp pointed to the legal liabilities created by her case.

environmental provement associates pointed to the costs arising from potential non-smoker litigation as a reason for employers to consider voluntarily adopting workplace smoking rules. shimp's case for smoke-free workplaces converged on a single argument -- smoking, and quite often smokers, cost too much. they were bad employees. they destroyed equipment. they took frequent breaks to feed their habit, and they were sidelined with sickness. shimp had broached this argument in her unsolicited proposal to bell, but she would hone it over the upcoming years. non-smoking activist did not so much convince employees -- employers to eliminate smoking in the name of health as they convince them to eliminate smoking employees and the liability created in the name of the corporate ledger.

as shimp wrote, "is there any better way to interest management and restricting smoking them through the bottom line?" the promise of corporate health, not employee health, encouraged as an assist to adopt smoking restrictions and bands, even when there was no law forcing them to do so. official government channels adopted this line as well. the introduction to the 1979 surgeon general's report argued that steps of action on cigarettes was necessary because an individual's smoking habits and located every taxpayer. lost productivity, wages, absenteeism caused by smoking related illness put the tally close to $12 billion. within a decade, the business case for non-smoking had begun to bear fruit. a nationwide business survey found that 54% of responding businesses had adopted workplace smoking restrictions and 85

percent had adopted them within the past three years. such restrictions gathered their own momentum. workplace smoking restrictions not only decreased non-smokers' exposure to tobacco, they also create more non-smokers because they help people quit smoking. non-smokers' rights activism did not simply clear smoke-filled rooms. it created new chambers of power where new tobacco rules were made. the new jersey superior court, the human resources departments of large companies, state and legislative houses, city councils, and thousands of cities across the united states, all of these places have done more to vindicate the right to smoke-free air than the federal government. if donna shimp brought suit today, she would find is still the case that osha and the epa do not regulate indoor smoking. the patchwork system that exists in the country is a vastly uneven one. smokers are poorer and less educated than non-smokers, and

poor non-smokers are more likely to suffer from tobacco-related disease that non-smokers with more money. blue-collar workers are more likely to go to work at worksites where smoking is permitted. in 19 states, it is legal to fire or refuse to hire someone because she smokes, a kind of permission for business that reinforces the existence of an underclass of poor smokers. this, too, is the legacy of business case for non-smoking, a legacy of the non-smokers' rights movement. just as the physical consequence to smoking could not be contained in just the body of the smoker, the american body politic was forced to reckon with the secondary effects of smoke-filled rooms. what can we learn from thinking about the rise and all of cigarettes in american life as a product of social movements? for most of the 20th century, the federal government has been hostile to regulating cigarettes on behalf of consumers. there is, in that rather

depressing statement, to show that action can be taken at the local level, action that can be substantial in its own right and can service pressured on the road. what's more, one of the primary levers that non-smokers pulled on to vindicate their demands for rights were not those of government at all but of workplaces and private business. here, too, we see an opening for activists today. in response to mass shootings, goods stoppedg all gun sales, and walmart haunted the sale of -- halted the sale of rifles and ammunition. equally important in a parallel drawn from the non-smokers' rights movement are decisions made by businesses to ban the

open carry of guns. big chains like walmart, cvs, and kroger have begun to ask customers to refrain from open carry in their stores, even with open carry is legal. small stores across america have also taken a page out of the antitobacco playbook, posting stickers with the red dash circles. such displays do not just declare store policy. as non-smokers rights activists understood decades ago, such displays serve as a consciousness-raising tool, drawing forth a sense of entitlement to control public space. a second lesson of the cigarette, non-smokers rights activists operated within constraints. one of those was a political and economic system that measured the worth of a citizen by his or her cost to the state or employer. although non-smokers rights activists like donna shimp asserted they had a right to comfort and shared space, the

lore of the cigarette was irresistible. it is now thought of as a private vice and private failing, unnecessarily stigmatizing overtones when you consider people who smoke tend to be poorer and less educated than those who do not. activists today continue to find the social cost of disease framing irresistible, especially for the obesity epidemic and the opioid epidemic, two industrially produced diseases that disproportionately affect people with lower incomes. a healthier society may in fact be cheaper in the long run, but the business case will not produce justice for those who suffer from the diseases of modern life. finally, it is not possible to talk about tobacco today without talking about vaping. with ultra's 35% stake in juul, when we talk about vaping, we are after all talking about the tobacco industry.

the tobacco companies hired their own lobbyists and statehouses to thwart legislation, using what are known as preemptive laws. the tobacco industry worked to render local ordinances less effective by passing weaker laws at the state level. once passed, these preemption laws are difficult to repeal, in part because they tamp down on enthusiasm for grassroots organizing. many in public health -- the vaping industry has shown interest in taking the power to regulate e-cigarettes out of the hands of the colonies and putting it back and statehouses, but the history of tobacco shows that the most accessible levers of power can also be the most effective. vigorous assertion of local control over vaping is good for public health and good for

democracy. the political history of the cigarette suggests meaningful social change takes a long time. often decades of work by people and organizations that are overworked, unheralded, maybe even derided in their own time. it also reminds us that activists operate within constraints in a world not entirely of their own making. the case for non-smokers' rights was ultimately democratic and at times elitist, a fitting paradox perhaps for recasting a product that simultaneously relaxes and stimulates. the system invites our empathy and courage to imagine a different future. thank you. [applause] i would be happy to take questions. there's microphones on either side.

>> i don't think i need a microphone. [inaudible] >> i think for the closed captioning, it's a good thing to do. >> hi, good morning. thank you for being here. i wanted to ask you, there was an earlier analogy that was made in terms of civil rights and the rights of non-smokers in terms of impressing their agenda. what is your personal perspective on that, and do you feel that it was a legitimate association or analogy? >> i think that, given the context of the 1970's, non-smokers' rights activists were in search of a vocabulary

that in old there because, and the most morally -- and no bold their cause and the most morally hefty vocabulary of the day was the african-american struggle, the civil rights movement -- in search of a vocabulary that ennobled their cause. the extent to which i think it is legitimate -- i suppose that cuts in a couple of directions. first, non-smokers did feel themselves to be oppressed. that oppression is clearly not the same thing that african-americans and experienced under jim crow but perhaps was born out of a similar feeling that they felt they should be able to exist in public spaces they felt themselves exiled from. the sad irony is that in achieving control over a public space, what ends up happening to smokers that -- is they themselves are exiled from a shared common space that is the

movement unfolded meant that people who were exiled a smokers tended to be poor and less educated. i think that they were strategic in their use of that language, and more than just strategic, it resonated with them because they -- there were unintended classist consequences. yes, thanks for a wonderful presentation. i was wondering if your book delves into the marketing aspects. i know that with the juuls appealing to children now, there is pushback against the marketing of it, and joe campbell, of course, was thought to be too cute for adults, thought to be aimed at children.

how does the political structure deal with the marketing and the appeal? >> at the risk of maybe you not buying my book, the marketing of cigarettes is not a primary focus of the book, but i have thought of what the history of cigarettes can tell us about what is going on with juul. the tobacco industry, like perhaps the e-cigarettes and juul today, they realized their product was appealing to young people, and they realized that most of their customers started when they were children, so it was important to attract young people, and there were all sorts of ways that they did so. a sickly prior to the 1990's.

what is interesting, too, about the lessons of the tobacco industry for e-cigarette regulations now is in the history of the cigarette, you actually see companies exceeding --acceding and giving into regulatory demands in a way that juul has agreed to give up certain marketing practices. in the late 1960's, antitobacco activists basically secured the right to free airtime on television to run antitobacco ads, and these were really emotionally powerful. they packed a wallet. wallop. this is the first time people had really seen public health advertising on tv and public health advertising on tv that dealt with death in a meaningful way. by the late 1960's and early 1970's, these are on television

and a 3-one ratio. for every three tobacco advertisements that are on television, one anti-tobacco advertisement is on television, and the companies get together and basically say, "we are out. we do not want to be dogged by this antitobacco advertising, so we are going to back off of television. we will agree to a broadcast band." and they put that money into other types of advertising. you see strategic decisions made on the part of business to give in one's activism against to be successful, and i do wonder what parallels exist in juul's decision to stop marketing. >> thank you. >> do you talk about in your book the complicity of the medical community? can you explain that? johns hopkins ashtrays, as an example.

>> again, at the risk of you not purchasing the book, i will say that's not a primary focus of what i work on, but what i think is fair to say and what has been really well explored by some other scholars, robert proctor in particular has a book titled "golden holocaust" that explores basically the tobacco industry's use of what you can think of as scientists for hire. basically beginning in the 1950's, the tobacco industry, the major cigarette manufacturers came together and decided to pursue the strategy of creating doubt, and doubt would be the way they would avoid regulation. one way was to give money to scientists who were researching either topics unrelated to tobacco or methods of research that they felt would exonerate

the cigarette, so you do see a large number of not just physicians but other types of scientists receiving tobacco grant money, and the tobacco industry saying, "well, these scientists agree with us, and we sponsor research. we are genuinely interested and finding the answer" to the question that was really no longer a question, as to if cigarettes cause disease. >> thank you. >> hi, i'm curious about how individual smokers or groups of smokers may have responded to this activism. like people get smoke breaks at their jobs now. can you speak a little bit more to that? >> yeah, one thing i did not get to talk about in this presentation, but it is an important part of the donna shimp story are the role of unions.

donna shimp's union and unions for the most part at large is pretty opposed to the assertion of non-smokers' rights because what they see is the ability of an individual worker to subvert the hard-won bargaining agreement, which is supposed to be governing the rules at work. unions had bargained for this right to take a break at work. the business case is really anathema to what unions represent in a sense. it is not a productive use of time. it is not supposed to make you more productive. it is just a habit you should be able to do because you are a human being or at least the kind of romantic case for smoking on the job. for a very long time, you see resistance by unions to this

type of individual activism. what is taking place on the ground is considerably more complex in these kind of high-level proclamations by the executive committee of unions. the fact now and the fact then was, i think, that most smokers did not desire to be smokers. the notion that non-smokers' rights activism might be countered with smokers rights activism never really materialized, though that was very much the goal of the tobacco companies who tried to create these essentially smokers rights groups, astroturf and type of groups, but by the 1970's, but really by the 1980's and 1990's, people don't want to be smokers, so while they might not welcome a band, while it might be inconvenient, it does ultimately result in fewer people smoking and a greater

number of non-smokers. >> thank you. >> would you say and looking at things like the anti-juul, with the e, are there different actors in front now, like the donna shimp of that era? that is an interesting question. with juul specifically, there are many of the same actors. altria, which is philip morris, owns a 35% stake. i think i read this week that juul's ceo stepped down. the anti -- so, people in public

health in the 1990's, two 2000's on the forefront of antitobacco activism, those institutions continue to be important institutions in opposing juul. in the interest of full disclosure, one institution i doc, an antitobacco think tank at the university of california san francisco, they have been on the forefront. they were actors in the non-smokers rights movement, a legacy in the berkeley gasp chapter. some of those same actors are now part of this antitobacco think tank that has been very much on the forefront of researching the harms of e-cigarette use as well as what the industry itself is doing.

well, if there are not any further questions, i would like to thank you for being a wonderful audience and for letting me share my work with you. [applause] trump [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] you are watching american history tv covering history c-span style with archival films, lectures and college classrooms and visits to museums and historic laces. all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. >> monday night on "the the cofounder of

netflix and author of the book "that will never work," shares his experiences. --n april 14, 1998, our and we were live. it did not take long we got that first ding. we began opening bottles of champagne and three minutes later, 30 more orders. we were so excited and that we got two more orders. in all of the excitement we kind of lost track of things until someone noticed that has been a while since the bell has wrong. is it unplugged, is there a problem? the first 15 in minutes of being online, we crashed all our servers. >> mark randolph monday night at 8 p.m. on "the communicators," on c-span >> american history tv is on c-span3 every weekend and all programs are archived on our

website at c-span.org/history. watch lectures and classrooms, tours of historic sites, archival films, and see our schedule of upcoming programs at c-span.org/history. nationmuscogee creek capital city is okmulgee, oklahoma. we visited there and asked the tribe's curator, john beaver, to give us a tour of their landmark council house. john: hi. welcome to the creek nation council house. the building you are in, this building here served as the creek nation national capital from 1878 until 1907. prior to 1878, there was a two-story log cabin that sat on this site that served as the -- as our national capital building until this was constructed in 1878. we actually were a