American Experience; 1964; Interview with Robert Cohen, Historian, part 2 of 2

I just wanted to ask you a little bit about music, and then I talked about that. Sure. And then some big picture questions in where I think we're done. Okay. We say anything more about Savio and the speaking style, because I didn't really get, or you think have enough of that. I think we're going to have it. Okay. People will know from watching it what was so. Okay. Okay. Sure. That's the beauty of having the clip itself. Okay. Visual medium. Okay. February. February 1st, second. The Beatles land in America. By mid-August, the Supremes have a number one hit. You have Elvis. You had Frank Sinatra.

Is this different? Well, I think it's part of something. I don't see the Beatles as something by themselves. I think they're connected to what's already going on in a lot of ways. I mean, there's already the folks seen in New York, there's already been a lot of, I think, a very distinctive youth culture that's emerging. That's beginning to emerge. I think the Beatles just reinforced that, because there's such massive popularity. In other words, I think there's already these streams of kind of what we say, what they would see as the roots of a counterculture. A different way of using music and thinking about music. That's already begun to register. What the Beatles do is they combine like this, you know, Ed Sullivan, the TV piece, looking different, and just this enormous wave of popularity. I mean, if you think about the folks seen, it was a gradual thing. It had to sort of just, you know, it was just moving up gradually. It was just burst on the scene and was able to kind of, I think, to expand that countercultural force very, very dramatically. So I think it is very important.

And at the time when, if you think about the parallels between culture and politics, at the time when we're having with the free speech movement and student involvement in the civil rights movement and the baby boomer demographic itself, this feeling of being distinct, that just adds to it. Because the music is so dramatically different from what's come before. And with the Beatles in terms of their hairstyle, what they look like is really different than what's before. So I think it just adds to what is this sort of generational consciousness that's coming to bear. So I think that's, I think it's a very significant piece. And the Supremes are filling in a whole other kind of element, which is the way in which the motown is really, astutely packaging, black sensuality, blackness. Yeah, I saw a tape with Barry Gordy, you know, actually sorry, with Smokey Robinson, talking about the founding of Motown. And he was saying that, when Motown was just a few people,

and Barry Gordy was initially saying, we're not making black music, we're making music. So the way, in other words, that has to be like a crossover appeal. But the reality, and I think what you're talking about with the Diana Russ on the Supremes, is that if you look at the audience, because if you look at some of the TV imagery of who's watching them, it's a lot of white kids are watching them as well as black kids. And so what that's doing, I think, is getting people to cross racial boundaries. And rock and roll music has always been about that. Is that, you know, Chuck Berry, there are all these, you know, the Beatles and all those British artists are being influenced by black music. So what's happening is, I think that the musical scene is running very parallel to the kind of political scene, and that people are crossing racial boundaries in ways that today don't look as so liberated. You know, the Supremes, it's very coordinated, it's very Hollywood-esque, right? But these are black performers. In both dance, with white kid clubs. Right, that's right, yeah.

Singing about raw, I mean, it's really loaded, 64, for black women to be singing about sexuality. Right, right, that's right. No, I agree, I agree. It's brilliant. Yeah, yeah. And if you think about it though, the idea that popular culture for young people is so centered, I mean, at least, or part of that centering is on Motown, is on Black, you know, Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, all these black artists, Marvin Gaye, Tommy Terrell, that has meaning. You know, it's like, in the words, if you're looking for an integrated society, even though, again, because it's early 60s, when you went back to Berkeley, where they're marching in 64 when there are coats and ties and dresses, right? It's still not, not Woodstock, right? But it is racial boundary crossing that's going on. And it's saying that, you know, that it's okay for all of a sudden, it's okay for white youth to be engaged with this, obviously, this black musical enterprise. Why is it that, if you think about that black and white world, we talked about January 1st, and then you think about,

I think Johnson lights the Christmas tree in December of 64, he's talking about the future, you know? On so many levels, political, cultural, social, and military, things feel like they've, but the genie's at the bottom. How do you kind of, understand that? I mean, is it too late to go back on any of these levels by the end of the year? Yeah, I think there's just an anti-authoritarian ethos that is present in lots of different layers and places in American society. It's present on the college campuses. It's present all over the deep south where SNCC is organizing. It's present in the music scene. In other words, it's just bubbling out all over the place.

And part of it is, I think, things have been so suppressed for so long with this long fifties, and sort of the haunted fifties, I have stone called it, with McCarthy, and having to dress up and be repressed, and not sound radical, and be conformist, that all of a sudden, when there's ways to escape that, it just comes bursting out. It's like Savio's speech. All of a sudden, you haven't been able to talk for decades, and all of a sudden, wow, you can say whatever you want, and you can dress however you want. And you can organize on things that mean stuff to you. So I think it's tremendously anti-authoritarian impulse that's being felt in many areas of American life that really defines what the sixties, even before they call it the sixties, the way that we do, you can feel that beginning to happen. And you start to see it, in terms of the campuses, with the free speech movement and all that, it starts to affect people's idea about school. Why do we have to do term papers?

Why can't we do a film? You know, go ahead. Just because we're having a... Sure, go ahead. Just think about it, because that was great. One point at a time. Why is it, do you think, important to look back and remember six people? Well, I think 64 is an important moment, because if you think about the Cold War with Vietnam, begins to think about it escalate, right? We get more and more deeply committed. While we're also, on the other hand, it's supposed to be more deeply committed to this liberal humanitarian project at home of fighting this war on poverty. So those things are going on. On campuses, this sort of... Pour here on vision of the university is being engaged with social criticism that's happening. And students aren't just talking, they're acting. So if you think that there's just three examples where you have like this moment when the fifties are breaking down,

when society is, I think, kind of moving to a new paradigm, when people are feeling empowered to make change in a way they weren't quite feeling before. I mean, right before the free speech movement, Bettina talked about this, the students were feeling... The progress has just lost a student government election and they're feeling, oh, this is hope. This is like trying to organize in a country club. People will never organize here. And then all of a sudden, on a campus that people are afraid to sign a petition, people are now willing to get arrested. So there's a big transformation going on. And 64 is an important year where that's happening. But go ahead. Why do we need... Why is it important to look back and remember it, though? What do we learn from this? Well, there's lots of things. First of all, about how... Well, a cork popping out of the bottle. Kennedy's assassination is just this moment when the first water starts pouring through the dam.

And I think of 64 as being this moment all of these cracks in all of these places first becomes visible. And they're just going to widen my deep end. Well, I think 64 does have a lot of those elements. But on the other hand, you can think, well, maybe there's the idea that one of the things is can electoral politics solve all these problems? Think about it politically, right? Because you get Johnson with this big re-election. Is that going to be like... Is he going to be like FDR and dominated is era? Is that going to happen? And I think it becomes clear pretty quickly. You know that there's going to be resistance to that. And that you start getting this questioning that's going to intensify in the spring on Vietnam with the bombing and the first bombing. And as early as talking golf, there are questions being raised. So I think the issue is... I mean, thinking about that as a moment is that where does this liberal consensus start to come...

How and when does it start to come apart? Yeah. And I think there are elements of it even earlier with, you know, of course we saw it coming with Atlantic City. But even during the Kennedy era, there were people disappointed, as I said at the beginning, that Kennedy was not doing enough on civil rights. But the center still helped. Well, there wasn't a massive crisis the way it wasn't. But even members of the movement would say, you know, I think it was maybe Moses who said, you know, maybe it was Dave when I talked to him on the phone, said, we weren't sure even after that that we could keep going, that we could actually make things change. What? Kennedy was barely able to make a speech. He couldn't deliver it. Yeah. And yet, this year, these lines across these steps are taken. And there's no going back.

Yeah. But also, don't forget, like, say in Mississippi, they get crossed because things got so bad. In other words, the reason why Moses invited all those white students up, because the, you know, it was like the terrorists were having a field day, blowing things up and terrorizing, you know, burning down churches and just threatening all these freedom workers. So things were so bad that he felt like the only way to kind of to save things was to try to get some outside help to shine the light of publicity of America on Mississippi and bring people down there. So I think that, you know, I don't know that I think that things were so calm. I think in a way that what happened with 64 was this movement, that is the civil rights movement, which had been mostly focusing, as it should have been, on freedom in Mississippi and in the South, all of a sudden involves people from way beyond the South. And so, like, like, obviously, they spent the summer down there and they come back and like seedlings, they spread that kind of democratic, you know, the hyper-democratic ethos all across the country. So in a way what's happening is there's been elements of that

all through the early 60s, but it's going much further now. And so politically, the role of the civil rights movement, the freedom movement in the deep South, as a catalytic agent nationally in making people think change is possible, is really bursting out in 64. So I think that is important. It's not just in Berkeley. It's happening. People are going back to campuses all across the country. And again, young people who've had some very searing experiences doing political organizing are coming back. And you're not going to, it's very hard if you haven't done that, risked your lives and gone through all that, to come back and say, well, I'm just going to go to classes and be quiet. No, then you're going to connect with other issues that are meaningful. Some of them are about racial equality, but soon it's going to be about the war. Later it's going to be about gender equality. It's going to burst into lots of other areas as well. But I think what you're right in thinking about 64 is being important, is that this is a moment when that sort of spreading of that hyper-democratic ethos of the freedom movement from the South, is spreading nationally. It's still not massive, but it's really seeding forces of change all over the country.

Is there a legacy of 64 that you can see around you today, when you look around, do you see in the red state, will we live in, for example, that we're still living with 1964? Well, I think in a lot of both good and bad ways. A good way is that if it wasn't for 1964, we wouldn't have an African-American president. The folks who could vote down there, the fact that people would consider African-American candidate in a serious way. Of course, Jesse Jackson ceded that as well. But also Jackson, with somebody who had been active in the freedom movement in the 60s. So I think that making possible, and much more democratic society is what 64 did in terms of making possible Barack Obama. But on the other hand, there's a backlash against that that's present. Okay, now there are Republicans instead of Democrats. But that changed, that sudden change in society,

that the freedom movement embodied in the Deep South evoked lots of fears. And many, many whites saw the world that they knew coming apart. And they felt threatened by that. Now, in retrospect, that was a better world that was being a born. But they didn't see that, they didn't understand that, and they resented it. So I think in a way, and that's why, if you look at conservative politicians, ever since the 60s have been sort of waving this bloody flag from the 60s. Like we've got to turn back the clock to bring back the time like the 1950s where everybody kind of put on their suit and the time and dressed up when men were deferred to, and they won't say it this way, when whites were supreme. You know, that's not how it's articulated, but there's an undercurrent there that I think is that nostalgia for a world before there was big government. What big government? The big government that gave us the Voting Rights Act? They gave it the Civil Rights Act? They gave us the Fair Housing Act? Yes, that's what's going on. That's one of the undercurrents there.

I mean, it may be fair to say, unfair to say, all this is just, all the right is just because of racism. I'm not going to say that that's the case. That's really probably unfair. But I do think this reaction to that chain, when any time you have a major social change, some people are going to welcome it, others are going to be scared by it. And I think that being scared, that being frightened of change, causes a historic realignment. Johnson after that, the Civil Rights Act passed, said that we've lost the white South for the next generation. And you know what? He was right, you know? So that's important. In other words, we are still debating a lot of the issues that were raised in 64 about what kind of society we want to be. And I think, you know, so that legacy is positive in the sense that it makes people hopeful and I think has made our society more democratic. But the flip side of that is, some people really resent that. And I think we saw that, we see that increasingly on the part of the sort of hard right within the Republican Party. I think we're done.

Let's get 30 seconds from town for Robbie Cohen, starting now. Okay, great. Okay, great.