A: --but I haven't read it so I don't know how correct it is.

Q: Yeah, yes so. My first question is what was the campus environment like during the 60's? What was going on, and everything else? When did you start teaching here?

A: '63.

Q: 1963.

A: See, you can't say 60's. Because '63 was still very much the old way. And things started changing, what, this is just off the top of my head, I don't know, but, '66, maybe '65, '66 beginning of it and then '67-'68 with the Vietnam War, things began to change a lot and so the--there's more change as you get into the '70's. And then things kind of settled down mid-70's. So it's kind of late '60's, early '70's is the peak--that's of course student movements and things, but a lot of other changes. In other words, when I first came in '63, of course the college was smaller, it was Old Dominion College at that point. There were, you know, there were no--there was no student movement as such, no alternative culture, nothing like that whatsoever.

I remember the Dean of Women, Becky White, back I don't know where quite, this was probably a little farther on, toward the end of the 60's you know. Wanted to make it a requirement that women students had to wear skirts to go into the library, you know, no slacks or shorts or anything, just the one thing and then she found there was a resistance. You know, so her mind was in the 50's when that was considered proper, you know. And yet things were already changing. So where different people were in this process, and then she found that she was so out of touch with people that... that they let her go, you know, I mean that she was... terminated.

And I remember I had troubles with the President, who was Lewis Webb at the time--but this is a little later on in the 60's--who still was very, rather paternalistic, and he was going, you know, to control the university, well excuse me, the college. And you know, took a personal interest in making sure that no one rocked the boat. And then when, I suppose it's more of what we might call a free speech movement or something was first because I was, right away in '63 I was the faculty adviser to the Emerson Forum. Which was you know, to investigate all issues, any kinds of issues. And you know, at Berkeley similar things were happening in the mid-60's. And so we were kind of reaching… reaching out to new ideas or something (???) to the students in that group and we had a... from Emerson, we had a quote, you know, and this is a paraphrase but, that at the end nothing is sacred but the integrity of your own mind. No, you know, no sacred cows, anything can be, anything can be looked at. And in--in--in a sense we did. Obviously we--we met weekly, mostly just talks, you know, nothing radical about it, only time that there was a radical one, and this is somewhere in the mid or toward the end, toward later 60's, I don't know the exact dates of. I have all the information but when the group wanted to invite the American Nazi, George Lincoln Rockwell, to campus. And then there was, that was, yeah, what we were wanting to do was to set ground rules. Yeah, we would debate American Nazi ideology, sure we'll debate it, you know, but he couldn't come in uniform, he couldn't bring any, you know, his brown shirts or anything like that you know. We'll keep this in an academic setting. And we had a professor in the English department, since retired Leland Peterson, who you will talk with--

Q: Actually, Julie Hale is speaking to him now.

A: Fine, OK. Who said he would be the moderator for the debate. So we had a number of faculty, you know, interested in doing this and we got some coverage obviously brought George Rockwell in town without big coverage. And we thought that that would be, you know, an appropriate thing to do. Oh my, the central administration was not happy. And I remember I was called on the carpet by the, I guess Dean of Students at that time, Bill Whitehurst, for doing this. And, you know, I came back with free speech type issues. How do you, how do you like Thomas Jefferson and his arguments about, you know, the (???) Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom? How do you know what the truth is unless you can debate it? And if issues are open to debate, freely open to debate, the truth will come out. And one of the ways to damage truth is politically to say, well we can't talk about this subject, or we can't listen to this person. But that's not the way the Bill Whitehurst saw it. We never invited him, as you can imagine. And, you know, so the issues were-were, the first issues that I remember, that I was involved in or anything like that, was kind of opening it up for free speech. And to take what, maybe was at some time, a kind of small backwater Southern college and, you know, and make it a seed of ferment of ideas. We--we, a number of us, including the Emerson Forum, felt this was a very appropriate thing to--to happen in--in an academy. And ... and I suppose around that time or so you know that the--that the Hyde Park kind of debates and so, that they were doing at--at the gates at--at--at the University of California at Berkeley, you know, getting into some controversies over some of these things, these were all going on nationally.
Can you stop for-

So that was we first (???). Then also in the 60's, we started another organization, again I was faculty adviser, called the Intercollegiate Forum. This started with the--out of the Emerson Forum, membership some of those people. And the Intercollegiate Forum, the idea was to work with Norfolk State …to develop ties with Norfolk State. At that point I knew a number of faculty, Professor Roberts, Robinson, whose son is now in the legislature. Over there in political science, Professor Blue, John Blue, and others who I got to be rather friendly with. These faculty members. And we thought it was a good idea to pull the two campuses together. Now at that point, ODC, college, was all white. No African-American students or Asians. This was a white southern college. And you know, things were in transition, the desegregation of Virginia, of Norfolk was taking place, you know, in the restaurants, in the movie theaters, all this was happening in the 60's. It was later in the 60's when I remember having the first African-American student in my class, who was an outstanding student as I suppose one would have to be to be such a pioneer.

Q: Do you recall his name?

A: No, not right now, I could--I could probably find it, but no. It's not in my mind. But he became a student leader, he was elected vice-president or something of the student body or something so he--he was, you know, he was number 1 or one of the first few. I mean it was back in the 50's, just a little bit before, there would be complaints from the community when there would be even blacks and whites meeting together. Not on campus necessary, but in professors' homes. I remember Professor Robert Stern of the Political Science department who funded the Stern Award for Excellence in Teaching which is given to a faculty member every year. And that the you know, the President, Lewis Webb would get these calls from people in the community, very upset that Old Dominion professor would have, you know, black and white people go out their front door of their home to have some evening meeting. This was breaking down the old Southern customs.

Q: And did Webb do anything to stop that?

A: No, not that I know of. He didn't do anything to stop it. I think he was kind of being, I think, I don't know, I think he was--he knew that change was coming, I think he was trying to prepare for it, adapt to it, you know, I think he was quite resistant to immediate rapid headline-type change. I think that slow revolution was the way he, and this is my feel for it, the way he preferred to do things. But we had the--this ... this forum and we met once at ODU and nobody in the community complained. Now when was this? I have the information in that box over there, mid-60's, maybe a little later, '67, '68, it might be in there, I'm not sure. And then we would meet alternately at--at Norfolk State, and we would sit around a circle and--and talk on some issues. Now it--it--it didn't work. After a number of meetings, perhaps only in one year, I don't know, it didn't have a direction and didn't have the vision and folded up. But what was very interesting out of it, was that the suction became stronger and stronger in my mind that the black and white students didn't at all share the same basic values. I mean we all shared the va--values of integration, as--as--as something that was morally right, but that wasn't enough. Because the black students, what they were wanting to do was get into the white middle class world. To be accepted in--in the middle class... setting which includes housing and, you know, obviously accommodations and things like that and so, but also the lifestyle. In other words, to move to a nice subdivision in Virginia Beach that at least in the white community seemed to be the ideal, you know. Nice lawn around your house, and the neighborhood schools, and you know, boy scouts and girl scouts and stuff like that. They wanted to get in that, which they were precluded from up to that point. The white students, those who were interested anything like the Emerson Forum or the Intercollegiate Forum had gone beyond the majority of ODU students at that time, ODC students at the time. And were looking toward, and having a dream toward, what later we'd call an alternative culture. Not that they were there yet, everyone was dressed like the 1950's, you know, no long hair yet, no you know, ties and, men would wear ties and you know, women would be very nicely dressed with skirts and so as the 1950's type model society would have it. So none of that yet. But there had to be something more than suburban life pushing your lawn mower up and down, you know, I mean, life needs to mean something more. What would that be? They weren't sure, they wanted to investigate that with the black students that they could really reach. Yeah, this is our vision of the future, but the black students wanted the kind of life that the white students were in the process of abandoning. And you just take, you know, a few years later, they are going to rebel against them in ways that, you know, are kind of obvious or parental you know, teenage relations (???), you know, alternate culture, you got drugs, you got, you know, long hair, (???) short hair, etc. etc. (???) boys, you know, free sex. All that is going to come later. And so, but, here they wanted something, the white students that they found no basis of talk with the black students. And that was through a number of these discussion meetings, it became more and more obvious to me. You know it was an eye opener to me, I didn't really realize that there would be that barrier, but it was there. And the only ones who wanted to reach out to the black community were those who wanted to abandon the middle class white, you know, values. Which were associated at the time with rather, you know, with a lot of social constraints. And this was before the women's movement really got started so, you know, the social constraints that are, you know, the ideal needs to be tract housing in Virginia Beach. And really almost like abandoning, because there was a lot of feeling at the time that the growth of Virginia Beach, that that was people who would move from Norfolk, population was declining, white people to Virginia Beach were really the racist segregationists and they were moving to Virginia Beach to escape having to live in close proximity to black people which was largely true at that time. So, so anyway, that's what happened to the Intercollegiate Forum. So we had free speech kind of issues in the 60's and then you had this, you know, interracial contact and differences of vision there, but, which we were never able to bridge or even to see very well. It became obvious to me but it seemed obvious to white people, to white students that black students certainly would have the same values as the white students, and the black students couldn't understand, you made it all, now you want to abandon it for who knows what. There was enough uncertainty in the black world and here the white students of their same age wanted to take on, you know, uncertainty or searching for something (???) So, we have that.

Vietnam, of course, comes into it slowly. It's an intellectual thing in the--in the mid 60's until the Tet Offensive of '68 largely. I know that I was one of those who felt that the Vietnam War was an inappropriate war for the United States. Some moral qualms, but mostly, you know, I guess I--I felt that it was more of a nationalistic movement than a communist threat. Which I think it turned out to be, but you know, I was a small, small minority. In most of the faculty, such as in the History Department where I (???) better, were of the mind that, you know, that you know, make the sacrifice and fight Vietnam and communism is what we should do (???) patriotic. But it was on an intellectual level, it didn't really get to be something that involved students very much except, you know, because of the deferments, until the 60's went on more and then students would get hooked, you know, many students obviously (???) there. And as it went on, the feeling was among many of the students, I don't know about percentages but in terms of prominence and you just know that it's right there was increasingly hostile towards the war in Vietnam. Which reached a peak on this campus I think around the time of the Kent State shooting. Because you know there were demonstrations in every, in every, most campuses you know. University of Virginia, I mean there weren't riots, but there were certainly demonstrations against ROTC on campus and I'm not sure they approved of ROTC off campus. They did the same thing at my alma mater, Brown University, you know, all that stuff in the late 60's. And that's when you know that you got really radical, you know, Jerry Ruben, people like that, radicals, you know, like John Brown in the Civil War period. Throw over the existing system, and you know, American constitution, laws, democratic process, seemed to be a sham to a lot of these people. It never seemed that way to me, but nevertheless, there was all these, this was what was around you a lot, a lot. And the focus of this was less on civil rights, because it seemed to be moving under Kennedy and Johnson, moving toward, even Eisenhower at Little Rock, moving toward a more open society. But the focus was so much on Vietnam but you know it's all involved with all the social ferment that is taking place that is domestic to this, you can't really separate it. I mean, this is the same time, for example, as the, might be early 70's here-late 60's I don't know, but the welfare rights organization, you read about that one but that's, you know, where--that if society has not, you know, provided sufficient wherewithal for a family to live, then it's the government's responsibility to do it, you know, it's--it's a right that people have to have a decent income. And ... and--and none of this eligibility business, you know, that you would be so (???) today. That really this is--it's kind of like socialism in a way, you know, that the society has resources through the government and the purpose of that government is to make sure that those who are, you know, below the poverty line or somewhere get, get the sufficient resources, which includes medical care, all kinds of things not just a check, a welfare check. And that was a big national organization, and also active here to some extent. So, so it's just not Vietnam, lot of this stuff, this--this idea that we--this is a revolutionary phase, I mean a very rapid evolution, a lot of feeling on the part of students, that you know, I have an appointment in a couple of minutes.

Q: OK.

A: A lot of feeling on the part of students that things should change radically, very soon. And a lot of frustration then when the world didn't adapt to their image of what it should be very quickly. And those frustrations took all kinds of different forms. Not at this--on this campus, the kind of violent forms that it sometimes took at other places, an--where there was a small amount of violence it was not by students, but by outsiders and students who were on the radical side. I'll give you one example I was involved with. And that is we had a--a march around the mall, the mall was mud at the time we finished so it was a--it was a mess. Looks nice now. But we had--we had a march around the mall. And ... and where the engineering building is, that was being built at the time, Webb Center was built (???) on the north end of the mall, education building over there. And this was, I think at the time of Kent State, but we had a few hundred people, torches and speeches, TV's out there, and as we were chanting our antiwar ... chants, this was in the evening, I remember it was dark, kind of getting dark, late in the afternoon, probably something like that in winter, I'm guessing, I have a feeling it was evening, maybe it wasn't evening, I forget. Anyway, the work, that's why I figure it was still during working hours though, the workmen on the--on the engineering building started to hurl these big heavy bolts down from the top of that building into the marchers which could have caused real injury (???) thud, you know, it was this big heavy metal bolt, heavy thing. And there they're up there and of course, when you look up they aren't doing anything and then another one would come down. There was only a few of them, and never hit anybody. But, you know, there's that, you know, all pro-American, American flag type, you know, working people on the building, and what seemed to be, you know, lazy draft-dodging, you know, unpatriotic students and professors who all looked alike, about that time I was about their age anyway. Were ... were the victims of some of their anger. That's the only level of, you know, it was a fairly peaceful, peaceful time. I could also tell you, I can't hardly ever, I have another appointment, but I could tell you about the--the SDS, Students for Democratic Society program which I was (???) professor of the History department, (???) and English were the two that were very much involved in this. And some of the, you know, response of the President. I do believe that what we were in the middle of doing, thinking this is perfectly legitimate, and not being very radical about it at all, I don't think, you know, but and people like Bill Whitehurst and made his peace with, you know, (???), very friendly since those days and great tension (???). They tried to fire me. But they couldn't really find a way of doing it, so I got tenure and stayed anyway. But, what was the point, I forget (???). Oh I think this is what I was going to say. I think it's out of all these things that earlier than he was originally expected to do that President Webb decided to retire, that he, as he said in a tearful speech at a faculty meeting, in the new Webb Center, named after himself, the first time in that building. That he said in effect, that the times, you know, are gone on, it's time for --you know new leadership to meet the new challenges and I knew what he was talking about, I knew what he was talking about, this was this was hard for him. The ---

Q: Do you think he lost touch with ---

A: He never, he never had touch with that, and it was hard to. I mean, if you are an older generation first, and then secondly people are--are making assumptions at, you know, like teach-ins and sit-ins, I mean, Leland Peterson sitting-in in the President's office, you know, I mean you--you're doing physical things that this is over free speech issues, we got to (???) another, you maybe read about these things, I don't know.

Q: Immaculate deception?

A: Hmmm?

Q: Immaculate deception?

A: Yes, Gadfly, oh my yes, all those things. I got copies of all this stuff. Yeah, right. So anyway, all that, you see, it's too much. It's, and your image of the college, I mean a college needs to be a place of ferment of ideas, it needs to be a place of changes, this is where you expect it, you know, if society is in some transition, which it really was over things like integration, you know, every year at that time, something new that's happening at restaurants desegregating, the movie houses desegregating, you know, motels desegregating, you know, it all happened at once. The buses started right back early, 1955 or something. The bus system, but, you know, but it took till the late '60's to complete that job of ... of legal segregation. And then there was all the white flight and fear of you know, one black family moving into a white Norfolk, Lambert's Point was all white when I first came here, all white. One black family moved in, all the rest of, you know, you felt that was what you had to do. And you need to talk with Norman Pollack here because he's the one that stopped that process cold in Colonial Place.

Q: Again, he's someone black man who moved into Colonial Place---

A: That we accept the black man and we work toward the goal of a diverse neighborhood. And the first in the entire area and he did it from his experience in Baltimore where they had similar things just before coming here. He came here in '64, a year after I did, he is just retiring this year, he's here today. But you know, you want to talk to him, you want to talk to him about that. You know that's off campus in a way, but it's all part of the context of this. Of the--- You can't talk about the university in a vacuum, what's going on nationally and internationally, the culture as it's changing in America, the things that are happening, so and of course part of this is going to be the slow integration of diversity of ethnic diversity, etc., in the student body and then eventually a little bit in the faculty, but--and all that came very peacefully. Possibly, but slowly, too slow for some and but it was all part of this larger context. That's why, you know, ODU needs to be, history of ODU has to be seen in this context, especially during those years and I think here is where Webb, my guess, Webb realized that, you know, yeah this is what a University does. And at the same time, you know, being ... trying to slow the pace down and make it all respectable in his term. And he thought of us, as he called us, irresponsible sensationalist, he came out with a mimeograph newsletter called the Irresponsible Sensationalist, where he put all kinds of stuff, you know, this was getting to him. And he couldn't really, you couldn't ban it, you know, underground newspapers written all over the place.

Q: The Brown Shoes?

A: The Brown Shoes, that's not ODU. Actually it started in Norfolk State. Down in Ghent, that's where it had its... But Brown Shoes that came, you know, underground newspapers were all over the place. But the Irresponsible Sensationalist was our newspaper, which a number of us put together at that time. You know, you know, but I mean, obviously it was intended as a counter to the President.

Q: Did you see a difference between President Webb and President Bugg?

A: Oh yeah, sure.

Q: Major difference. Major difference in their backgrounds, and how they ---

A: Yes, Yeah, well---

Q: Webb was an Engineer, Bugg was an Historian ---

A: Well, yeah, but, you see you know, Bugg's another Virginian, you had to have a Virginian still, see. And then after that with President Rollins you didn't need a Virginian, you're na--national. But you see that is all part of the evolution. But his Provost, Bugg's Provost, Johnson, who later committed suicide, but he stood with the students. See, I mean, here's, I mean, this is we know there's a new--there's a change taking place, when there's a demonstration against Dow Chemical or something coming to the (???) on campus, because they make napalm or DFM, and I think it was something like that, anyway big demonstration, we had demonstrations and you know it seemed so unpatriotic. And there was somebody who had been in the Marine Corps or something, this had been (??) I don't know the exact details, I don't remember the details. But who was, you know, expressing his disdain for these demonstrators and how they shouldn't be doing it against Dow Chemical meaning against the war in Vietnam and inhuman weapons. And Provost Johnson waded right into that crowd and confronted this young man and said I fought in WWII for the principals of free speech that these students are expressing here. That's the difference between Bugg's administration, Bugg was a "bubba man". But that's the difference in Bugg's administration, from the previous one. Let's see, there's nothing wrong with the Webb administration, I mean I respect all these people because for their time and where they were in this process, they knew things were happening, they did the best they--they could, trying to build an institution that's not going to destroy itself, called the University. I mean eventually, university about '69. It's not going to destroy itself. And you need to be open to change. But you also need to have some continuity and you know, some you know like (???) of government in terms of decorum and respect and deference, and you know, which he always had. Everyone deferred to him, you know, he was very subtle, paternal existence. And the old boy network, etc. and that's what he grew up with. And that's the political side of it, and of course, the community is so important, you have to get the support of Norfolk, and the community and the state. And you just let radicals do crazy things, where is the funding going to come from, Richmond was very, very conservative. Much more conservative than, you have to live in that kind of environment and so you know, you know, all I'm saying is, there was evolution, it did change, yes with Webb's resignation there was, you know, a relief from the way he saw the world to much more toward what has been since. Someone is waiting --

Q: (???) some of their student movement, how President Webb treated it. Can you, you finished up basically telling me about how President Webb paternalistic, but you never really spoke ---

A: Didn't go into any detail on that. Well, yeah, I mean he's from the old school you know, I mean, he obviously was reared in a time when college leadership was different from what it was becoming and he was living right through the revolutionary 60's as President. And so you know, the 60's hit him hard. My, you know, how to deal with it all these--these questions and the st--you know the new students of the, starting the mid-60's you know, the free speech movement I guess at Berkeley was one of the beginning parts of what later became hippie and other aspects of the late 60's early 70's. And so that was happening here too, and I think he had just had difficulty with that. But I don't see him as being really particularly vindictive or so "stick-in the-mud" that he wasn't willing to change. I see him trying to adapt but this is just very personal feeling about him, you know, to change. Now you know he had support, you know, I don't know where all those lines of relationships were, but he had support from other members of the administration. Very clearly so, you know, they were thinking along the same wave lengths so he wasn't alone as a conservative with a lot of other liberals around so to speak in terms of issues like free speech. And, I mean, lets say, let's take the question of my salary, did I mention that about my salary?

Q: No.

A: Well, I'll go into that. I'll go into that in a little bit. Because you see, I was the faculty advisor to this Emerson Forum which was church-sponsored, Unitarian Universalist church-sponsored group. That group had met weekly, had all kinds of speakers, and purposely on controversial topics to open up controversial topics. It led Emerson Forum's first meeting of the year when the minister of the Unitarian church of Norfolk gave a talk. And part of that church's approach to life and questions is to question (???). Emerson was a Unitarian, so I remember that a lot of our little things says, you know, at last, nothing is sacred but the integrity of your own mind, you know, that's Emerson kind of stuff. Very individualistic and the like. So with that as a kind of background with what we did is to invite some controversial speakers. The most extreme case was the toying with, we never actually did it, to invite George Lincoln Rockwell, the American Nazi to a debate with Leland Peterson, an English professor. And it never really came to that. But I forget maybe, the exact sequence of all these things, but it was around that time and when was that, it would be like '66 or '67 something like that. Maybe it's in here, it will say in the materials. But I remember the Dean of Students at that time was Bill Whitehurst. And he called me into his office, you know, he was very much against this, you know, and how would your Jewish students feel by inviting George Lincoln Rockwell. And I came back with free speech type issues you know, to learn truth from falsehood, right and wrong, in a sense you have to ask questions. Goes back to Abelard in the middle ages, in a way, you know, just keeping asking questions and the truth will come out, that's Thomas Jefferson another Unitarian. Just keeping asking questions, Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom (???) approach to. How do you know what is true with things (???) theorem. You have to keep an open mind including asking questions and the debate between truth and falsehood, Jefferson assumed, truth will always come out if we are really free, but you needed to be free. So that is part of that kind of background and then therefore also its kind of response to Bill Whitehurst, so it's kind of stand off. And then, I found that my salary was cut from just a few hundred dollars, I forget how much, but that, those were the days when, to make, I came here I think I made 5400 dollars a year. I mean that was a decent salary. So there has been a lot of inflation so, a few hundred dollars would be like a few thousand dollars today. And you know, I wasn't worried about the money so much, but you know, I was not happy about that and then there was a message from the President, and I forget how this exactly went, he wanted to see me or something. And I remember going to his office, in the old Administration building, Rollins Hall or something. His office had a fireplace which is still there in one of those rooms. And he suggested that it might be better that I would go to someplace more congenial than here. And I hadn't even finished my dissertation yet so, you know, I was on rocky ground to get tenure in those days, even though it was much easier than today. But I… my reaction was that academic work came first and I was certainly working hard and diligently on it and I liked ODU and I wanted to stay and he backed off. However, my salary was cut because I was--I supported the, Lewis Webb's term, the "irresponsible sensationalists", Emerson Forum and some of the other groups that, you know, cause we also had the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, which Professor DeBedts was the faculty advisor (???), but anyway we were all irresponsible sensationalists and again my chronology might be off but I remember then going back and talking to a couple of my colleagues, my senior colleagues, (???). One was Ralph DeBedts who was the, you know, professor in his department, and the other was Heinz Meier who later became Dean of the College. And they went over, trooped over and talked to somebody, whether President Webb or Whitehurst I'm not sure, and a little of my salary was restored, not all of it, you know, they made a compromise. And then my--the Chair of my department who was William Spencer, got very, very angry that I went around behind his back. And, again just gather all this support so, in other words there was a kind of--there was a system of the President, the Vice-president, Dean or whatever it was, Whitehurst--Dean of Students, and the Chair of the History Department, they were all pretty much in sync about this, you know, and not wanting all the sensational stuff that was going on, rocking the boat. Now, you know, all this would be considered just a few years later as very mild in a way, except the George Lincoln Rockwell thing which--which, you know, I--I wonder about today, but you know, most of what we were doing, the stands we were taking and we had our own newspapers that we were distributing (???), pretty mild compared to the early 70's, and that's because the Vietnam War, I think, spawned a--an extension of the radicalism beyond the 60's, maybe also the Civil Rights movement too. But, you know, you had Martin Luther King who was taking quite a different position on these things from the most radical socialists (???) anarchists, communists, and I don't mean that with a capital "c", small "c", but I mean this was a time a lot of ideological extremism (???) late 60's especially early 70's around here, and around the country (???) a fairly calm aspect of the nation that had student riots, (???) a student riot and we had a mild sit-in by professors over free speech issues. None of the things that certain other campuses (???) of course (???) thousands of colleges (???) headlines because of the big issues (???), Berkeley. So I think we were fairly mild but nevertheless we were part of that generation and Lewis Webb just didn't--all these student crises kept coming up, you know, I mean this, you know this was the time when the Dean of Women or I guess it was the Dean of Students maybe Dean of Men I don't know, Whitehurst, but the Dean of Women, Becky White, wanted to require that all women students wear skirts to be able to use the library, none of this slacks stuff and shorts that she was seeing on campus. Well, you know, students by that time were not accepting this, that kind of in loco parentis, you know, these specific kinds of rules and she was behind the times too. I believe the Administration was behind the times. So she had to back off and eventually she was fired. I don't know whether by Webb, I would imagine probably when Bugg came in (???) it was kind of squeamish to tell you the truth (???). You know, the student body was different by that time (???) let's say, you know, we had these student teach-ins, picking up on what was happening on some other campuses, maybe Bugg was here. But that was sanctioned by the Administration, you know, they allowed it and actually even supported it, it might have been Bugg's term--when did Bugg come here?

Q: '69.

A: '69, yeah, I'm not that sure whether it would be '68 or '69. I probably told you about when Webb announced his resignation and he started crying in front of this faculty meeting (???) school year, previous year, it would be '68, so I felt sorry for him, you know in a way, because the words that he said and I wonder if that's recorded anywhere, it would be very interesting if it were, and I'm not sure, if it were all written down my feeling about it was that some of it was not written down, that it was extemporaneous, maybe rehearsed but extemporaneous. And without remembering the exact words, my feeling about what he was saying was that it's time for new leadership. The school has grown, he's the one who created it and made it what it is, you know, so it's very appropriate to call Webb Center Webb Center. He was very instrumental in taking a very small kind of backwater branch of William and Mary and making it a independent, you know, college in the system, instead of just a branch.

Q: Well, in retrospect, when you look back and you can understand why Webb took some of the actions that he took--

A: Well I can un--you know--I can understand from his, his generation of perspective and the reality that he saw, the appropriateness of things that he saw was not what I saw or many of the other faculty who were a lot older than I was so, I was just a junior faculty member (???) a lot other people, not lots but a good many, in the English Department, Foreign Language Department, Economics Department, I mean I'm just thinking of all these people I knew back then who were here a lot longer than I was and a few in my own department who were totally supportive of the things I was doing. I had a lot of support, not just from all the--virtually all the students, but--I mean all the students I dealt with anyway, you know, very supported by the students, but also by a lot of colleagues. And if colleagues were interested in this kind of action toward debate on public issues that are on the fringe, that you know in a way, you know things that would excite students in a way like any of the kinds of big issues of the time, obviously Vietnam came in, obviously civil rights came in then, a lot of things going on in government, reaction to the Kennedy assassination, you know and then later on Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, all those things were happening in the nation - what does this mean? Just to explore these and sometimes some somewhat extreme things were presented, you know, but then debated. I didn't think people--I think what happened was that it helped people develop an open mind--I'm getting beyond your question, but I'm just talking, OK?

Q: That's fine.

A: Help people get beyond, you know, let's say beyond just an emotional response to things to, not maybe totally intellectual, a lot of emotion in those days about right and wrong and what we should be doing about the state of the world and are we part of the problem or part of the solution. But I didn't see, looking back on it as I knew those people and sometimes I've run into them since, not very many of them anymore, but as I knew them I think they got more level heads. Sometimes they'd go through a radical phase but they change, I change, you know as we, it's all these curves going around, the society changing, the sexual revolution, the civil rights revolution, the Vietnam War, all this stuff is happening, everything's turning topsy-turvy, the parents as really guides are, you know, you kinda throw out anyone over thirty you can't trust, which means, you know, where do you look to, look to each other. You know, it was a difficult time. It's the 60's, late 60's early 70's. And I think that this opening of things up like this was responsible and I think that the teach-ins that we did--Jay Pelzer, whose address I can give you, he lives in Tennessee or something, was one of the student leaders who organized these, and a history major, who organized the teach-ins. And the teach-ins were, you know there were these big public issues. There was uncertainty about things and various members of the faculty mostly talked, and some students. But I don't remember anything that was really way out of line, you know, the "I sing of Olaf" poem, you know, did have an off-color word in it, "shit" I think was the word, wasn't it, you probably know better than I do, but, you know, and that caused a big ruckus, but, you know, there it was in anthologies of the coming poetry and published by reputable university publishers and sitting right there in libraries all over the country of--university libraries, and so you extract that and put a, you know put that poem, which is a kind of hard-hitting poem, in a underground newspaper and cause a lot of flack. And I suppose when the president thinks we are irresponsible sensationalists, what we thought we were doing is being responsible, you know, inquirers into how to live in this rapidly changing world, you know, Bob Dylan (???) songs of the time. The world is changing with us. What are we go--where are we living, you know but then you see, you know, then there was a kind of assumption that the change is good and we're going along with it and we're helping to make it, to make a better world, and, you know, so join in or get out of the way. That's Bob Dylan but it's also a lot of our--our students, but you know ... I remember going up to the University of Virginia where one of the big radicals in the 60's and I forget which one it was, Jerry Rubin I think it was, one of them anyway, was going to be in the Field House there giving a talk, you know. Here's the University of Virginia, has to allow this kind of stuff--thousands of students in the gym, right? Thousands, absolutely mad to hear this guy rant on and, you know, I mean ... but as we were driving back, you know, no one was really taking his very extreme radicalism and assuming that that is, you know, it was--was true and right and proper, go with it, got kind of excited by being part of this--I remember being in this van with a lot of other stu--I was a faculty member but everyone else was a student, and, you know, they weren't, they didn't go off the deep end with it, they didn't go off the deep end. So, I mean, I think that it was a response that would help them think, and try to make change, try to figure out what is respons--being responsible to change, responsible to themselves, somehow responsible to the world, the planet, society and everyone else too. Tough business when you don't have too many guides, and everything, you know, when--when society is changing and family responsibilities and so, you know, if the university is no longer in loco parentis who is? Not the parents, we're--we're, you know, an 18, 19, 20-year-old, you know, not much life experience, not much, you know, not enough grounding really to know what in a sense to do except that in a way if--it could have been the blind leading the blind, but what I see it is that, you know, people helping each other see new hidden insights, and so I was, you know, and I still feel, I think this was a very constructive thing we were doing and--and, you know, and maybe we could object to the George Lincoln Rockwell talk, we could object to the "I sing of Olaf", but, I mean these are minor, minor little things with what's going on in the world. So, anyway, that's what I, you know, so my perspective on it all, then, and but Webb was not in tune to that, so where he thought we were--that's getting back to Webb again--when we were--when he thought we were irresponsible sensationalists, just making sensationalism just for itself, I--I don't think that's what we were doing at all. I think we were trying to figure out how to live in this world and what's to be responsible in this world and where we find our guidance and that stuff. And that's hard questions about life is I think what people were dealing with and meanwhile, you know, people being killed in Mississippi and the Vietnam War, people were getting killed in Vietnam and we did not feel any equanimity toward all--toward what was going on in the sense of the outer world and so we were, yeah, trying to deal with it, and I think responsible. Nobody here became a Jerry Rubin or an anarchist. No one wanted to burn anything. No violence, the only violence was against us, like, again not the, those words of violence of course I suppose, but those words of violence were not followed by physical violence except the construction workers on the engineering building, you know ...

Q: Big bolts coming down from--

A: Big bolts.

Q: No one got hurt, no one got hit, though.

A: No.

Q: (???)

A: Yeah, but they were thrown AT us.

Q: Yeah. Now, what--how did--when Bugg came in, how did he handle--

A: I, you know, well, you know, I--I didn't have much to do with Bugg, but his--but--but things did change, but incrementally, you know, in the sense of support for some of these things the students were doing. I think perhaps the--he came in in the fall of '69? I don't know, maybe that--well '69, no the teach-ins were under Webb then and that was before that. And Jay, I think it was Jay Pelzer because he was about '69, maybe it's the spring of '70 he graduated. I forget when he graduated. I'm not sure, but I do, you know, there was no re--no radical change no difference in day and night, I mean, Webb wasn't that bad, you know ... my salary got cut, I was encouraged to leave, you know, I got tenure, I mean that's, you know, no--not a lot of horrible things--no horrible things happened in the administration, things that you would like to be a little bit more open-minded but not--not horrible, so, you know, and so there's not a difference between day and night, but there were these refreshing things that did happen and, you know, and I don't think of Bugg, because I didn't know Bugg personally---But I got to know him later, when he retired actually he was--had the office next to this and, which is Dr. (???)'s office now, as retired president in the History Department, you know, he was a fine colleague, in that sense, not lording it, you know, not saying I know all the answers to life, just because, same thing with President Rollins, but, anyway. But, you know, when Provost Johnson - did I mention the story about Provost Johnson, one of our rallies or something--

Q: (???)

A: It was, yeah, about someone would say, you know, I fought in WWII for freedom of speech, and someone would say (???) it's un-American to oppose Dow Chemical recruiting on campus because they made napalm for Vietnam. (???) be out there and do that, you know, and well that would have not come from the, that kind of statement, I don't ever remember anywhere in the administration, higher levels, in the Webb era. That's part of the Bugg era. And then of course realize that by '72, '73 certainly by '75, in the early 70's this whole thing began to wane. The hippie movement went down and the war in Vietnam we got out in '73, and it ended in '75, you know, civil rights went on to another level in a way, you know, and there was voting rights and so (???) all those things were all passed and then, you know, and there was a lot of assumption on the part of whites that, well, you know, that that problem had been largely solved, which my current perspective is no, no it wasn't, but that, you know, you--things are much better. You have the government and the law and the Supreme Court, etc., etc., etc., on your side in the way of a lot of these things which wasn't the case before. In the South, particularly, changed tremendously from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, in adapting to a more open society. So, you know, a lot of things changed and ... and I think there was a kind of in-between before you got to the more materialistic 80's. But this is national, so Bugg was just in the middle of that, in a sense riding a societal calming down where you didn't need to react to, you know, ever-new challenges to the established order, which Webb had to deal with, because there were these challenges to the old-established-order way of doing things. So, you know, I'm not going to give a lot of credit to Bugg and dump on Webb for those reasons. And I was satisfied with--with--with Bugg, quite, you know, I mean just personally, just as my president, the president of this institution, and how he--the style of his leadership or moral stands he took on things, the kind of people that he picked for his team. Quite satisfied. And then when President Rollins came in I was even more satisfied in a way, because he was a real liberal, in my sense of a liberal, and really believed in freedom. He was a civil libertarian, a Civil Liberties Union person. I was too. I am. And, so he was--and a non-Virginian, so he had come from New England, a different approach, much more open than what I experienced ten years before.

Q: With all the student movement of the 60's, (???) and the SDS, there was only a small percentage of the students that participated in that, is that correct? Or was it pretty much widespread on campus?

A: No, everything was a very small number of students. I mean, you know, don't forget we--we were, are still partially a commuter campus, so you didn't have a lot of campus life except in Activity Hour. And in Activity Hour, yeah, you know ... Emerson Forum, what, that would get maybe 20 students, 30, you know, for a talk or question and answer, you know, if you had a teach-in there might be 2 or 3 hundred in what was then the library assembly room in the Hughes Hall, upstairs. Two hundred would fill that room. We didn't have any big room anyway, you know, you got a few hundred people--

Q: You think it--

A: --if you had a demonstration, I remember the demonstration when these bolts were thrown at us, along the mall - now the mall was just put in and it was still kind of, you know, just mud in the middle, you know, just landscaped, and you can consider that mall, all the way around it, Webb Center and down by Engineering and down by Hampton Blvd (???), you know, all around the perimeter--outside perimeter of that, full of marchers. How many hundreds were there? Not everyone was a student. People from my church, you know, were not students, I know 'cause I knew them and other people I didn't know, people of more advanced age than most students. But the, you know, the large majority were clearly, were students. And, this was after Kent State, that particular march was after Kent State... which was what '71? Somewhere like that? And, you know, so how many were there? Three hundred? I don't know. Two hundred? Enough though, I mean, we weren't all crammed together, but enough that you could string it out and it would, you know, with some gaps it would take that whole--that whole perimeter of the mall, that's a lot of people to do--do that. And we had a rally down by Hampton Blvd before that--- with microphones, speeches, 60's type things like that with people gathering around and, you know, I don't have an image of exactly the numbers, but I said, you know, look at that, that whole mall is full of, you know, of--of--of marchers.

Q: Do you see a change in the student body of today, with--

A: Oh, it always changes, constantly it's changing.

Q: But, there was a, I remember reading about the Gulf War, there was a--some kind of a protest against the Gulf War.

A: Yeah. Oh, nothing. Nothing. Nothing compared to the early 70's. The late 60's-early 70's about Vietnam, absolutely nothing. Yeah, in part because it was short and successful, of course, you know, if the thing dragged on and we were in Baghdad and we were still, you know, there and we were trying to find some leader to take over and there wasn't anybody and, you know, and we were being attacked from all sides and the casualties were mounting and, yeah, but that didn't happen. But, no, I mean, there's no comparison, no comparison whatsoever. That, you know, the Vietnam War (sic) --I was one of the early ones to think that there was something fishy about it in a way, in the mid-60's, before we even got any deeper and started putting a lot of troops in in '65, and I remember some of my colleagues when I would, you know, talk about all the you know, the only way we are going to make a world community work, the UN work is you have to have people in it--that was the mistake in 1919 with the League of Nations. The major states weren't allowed to be in company with bad boys or something like that, and here we just had little Taiwan representing China, and I have long felt that we needed to recognize China, long before Nixon did it. And... I got a lot of criticism from my--some of my conservative colleagues. But, you know, we are all part of the national, you know, evolution of society and ways of--and its culture, the evolution of its culture and of its values and so on and so on. We're all part of that, and, you know, that's all I see (???), you know, and I think that we sometimes exaggerate the differences in generations, you know, the hippie generation - there weren't very many hippies here. We all started wearing a little different clothes than we did before, as we do now, so, you know, hair got longer, well, that's OK, you know, but when you talk with people, you know, the people, what they care about and so on, this is quite, you know, what ... you know, people trying to learn what it means to be a moral, caring, responsible human being in a complex world where a lot of things seem crazy. And I see that with every generation, so, you know, in the 70's things were--late 70's early 80's, things were very quiet. Here, this is a time when there was hardly, you know, no major changes, no major changes out in society. They said that people were becoming more worldly and, you know, just wanted to become yuppies and things, but my students I like them for the same reasons I liked the more radical ones earlier or those today, I, you know, I--I don't see--I don't see major changes except the way the people, maybe, talk and act and so comes out of their own time. But basically they're good decent people, and I've felt this, all these generations of students that I've dealt with here.

Q: Do you think the--what you worked for and what your college worked for, what the students worked for, free speech, faculty freedom, do you think that left a lasting legacy on the University?

A: Yeah, I don't know whether the things that we did particularly, you know, did that... you know, we're all part of this larger culture and the larger culture is one that is quite open-ended in terms of intellectual inquiry and remains so and they've--

Q: So you're saying that the 60's itself has changed the world?

A: Well, I don't know if the 60's, you see I don't whether the 60's did it--

Q: Yeah.

A: --you know, I, not necessarily, nor what we did here at ODU. I don't think it harmed any of this, I think it was helpful in a way, but I'm not going to say we did it, you know. But I've never felt an oppressive feeling about intellectual inquiry at this university at any time, under Bu(gg)…under Webb, you know, or (???). I never felt that one couldn't speak one's mind and really ask open questions and, you know, that students be free to answer those questions and, you know... I never felt there was any--I always felt we were true to what the mission of an academic institution should be. I don't think that ever was seriously challenged. It would be challenged, but not by the University. I mean, you know, I say challenged, there would be those who would want, you know, us not to do this or to do that, and presidents always get people in the community who say, hey, you shouldn't do this and shouldn't do that. I don't know that they ever were listened to, and one thing I'll say about Webb: he grew up in an age of segregation and so and when--before I came, these are stories I heard when people like Professor Stern for whom the Stern Award is now named, you know, and who would in the 50's, late 50's, early 60's maybe, invite black people to his home for the discussion of race relations. There were those who called President Webb and wanted him fired... He put 'em off by saying something, I don't know what he said, but, you know, "Calm down, you got to keep the town happy", but Robert Stern was never threatened in his position. He was one of the founding members of the local and state ACLU, too. Political Science professor, never threatened in his standing. He spoke out as he saw things, and students picked up on that and that kind of thing still happens.

Q: Did you have some interesting classes when--when there were--when you had students that had (???) philosophies ?

A: Sure. Oh yeah, you know, civil rights. A lot of people here were, you know, were white. In the early days, of course, this was a totally white school. And--and, you know, and we get discussions. Here I'm a, you know, here I'm a Northerner, obviously by my accent. I don't have any Tidewater Virginia accent. In fact you hardly hear it anymore, but, you know, I'm not a Southerner. I was--I'm a transplant, and I talked about, I mean, we had a lot of discussions in my history survey classes, much more than in more recent times, just on current events, the times needed it, and maybe I was just a little bit more open, say, and now I'm going to stick to the--stick to history. But I think it was very helpful to the students. Again, the South going through all this change, and I remember even my first year, '63-'64. '63 was my first year. Within a couple of months of my joining the faculty, President Kennedy was assassinated. We had a lot of discussions in class. And, you know, one of them had to do with the feeling of self-worth, of native-born, thick North Carolina accent Southerners. Southern whites, born into a segregated way of thinking and so and being fearful of change and, you know, and yet not, you know, not--- wanting to, you know, trying to figure it out, like I've just been talking about Vietnam and other things. And one of the things that I said, you know, that I was afraid of the South, in a way, as a Northerner born in New York state, the South was a horrible place where bad things happened. We're so much better up here. Well, race relations or not, I mean, Northerners are--Northern whites are just as racist as was any Southerner, but they felt arrogantly superior. And it took me coming to the South to realize that that was just arrogance, and also to realize that a lot of blacks I knew - I had lot closer relations with colleagues and others at Norfolk State in those days than I do now. You going to sleep? Am I too tiring?

Q: Oh, no, no, not at all. I just had something in my eye.

A: OK. Oh, I'm sorry. That... you know, that they would say that, you know, there's fear in the rural South and things, you know, Klan, people disappearing - this happened - lynchings, and, you know, at the same time, they knew where they stood. The white Southerners didn't--were--told 'em what they thought and if they were slightly liberal they'd say so and if they were deeply segregationist they'd say so and you knew where you were. And in the North you got all the--what blacks were telling 'em, you got all this, you know, this, you know, "some of my best friends are black" kind of talk, you know, but their actions belied that, I mean, they were as racist, you know, in a sense of power and--prejudice and power, you know. To make sure you stay in your place. And in the South in many places there were tight-knit, fairly tight-knit black communities, Norfolk and etc., of course Portsmouth, Suffolk, you name it, working closely together. Now what happened in the late 60's and 70's is a lot of these places got--these close-knit black communities with their own segregated schools and their own segregated churches, their own segregated this and that, but also with their own businesses. And so, you know, you didn't go out into the white man's world. Maybe you needed a job but you were safe and you made money and you spent your money in a black business in the black community, and it stayed in the black community, you know, and therefore the churches were supported and the churches developed schools and all of this was going on and actually was fairly comfortable, within the context of that larger segregation and racism out there. But the community is strong and come the late 60's and 70's and you start bulldozing through here and putting in malls out there and then the black middle class is now allowed to go out in the suburbs because of the breakdown of segregation and leadership is lacking and you have inner-city problems and so on, and well maybe it's not very good anyway let's put a throughway right through the middle of it. Right? And so you (???) Yeah, yeah, right, which, you know it needs to--in that sense it needs to come back, still is room I think for ethnic communities. So ... you know, people, anyway, you know, through all this change, you know, the South was not a bad place. Southern whites spoke their mind. I can live here - this is Blacks talking to me. And so I talked to my students, and back to a classroom setting, you know, I often asked a question, a current question, started this with the Kennedy Assassination and kept that going all year and I did it the next year and the next year. Started every session with something from the news, something that might grab them, something I was thinking about, wanted to know what they thought and get this discussion going for 5 - 10 minutes.

(End of recording)

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