Interview with Sarah O'Brien

Sarah O'Brien (#503) Transcript

SO: You know, I have to tell you, my memory is like Swiss cheese, I've found. I mean, there's things, I remember a lot of things, but I can't necessarily remember what I'm asked to remember. So we'll make the most of it.

BT: Well, we'll just [words unclear].

SO: All right.

BT: You'll remember things [words unclear].

SO: And I brought all these props. I told you, I had so much fun looking stuff up, so I brought some --

BT: Oh, great, great. I'm going to give a brief introduction. We set? This is Barry Teicher of the Oral History Project. Today is November 1st, 1996. I have in the studio at WHA Studio today, Sarah O'Brien, and she's going to be talking about, um, her years at the UW and, her years at the UW, as an undergraduate and as a law student.

Sarah, let's start out with a little bit of your family background and early schooling. Talk about where you were born, and just give a brief description of your early education through high school.

SO: I was actually born in Stevens Point, but I was raised in Appleton. I think we moved to Appleton when I was two or three or something, so that's, I have no recollection of Stevens Point. I grew up in Appleton. We had, well, by today's 00:01:00standards, a large, by those standards, probably slightly small Catholic family. There were six of us. My dad was in advertising. My mother was a housewife most of the time I was growing up. And then she began volunteering at the, uh, County Mental Hospital and eventually became a social worker there.

I went to Catholic schools all the way through grade school and high school, wore a uniform every, every day of my life. And by the time I was a senior in high school was in 1967-68, there was already quite a bit happening in Madison that I was well aware of. I, one of two of my sisters had lived down here briefly, so I had some contact with Madison, and I knew that this is where I wanted to be. And it was, the only question was how quickly I could get here.

BT: Why did you know, why did you want to be in this kind of environment, 00:02:00knowing the situation as it was in Madison at the time?

SO: Well, in comparison to Appleton, first of all, it seemed like, uh, certainly, a much livelier place. The war as already an issue by the time I was a senior in high school, and I did have some opinions about that. To be perfectly honest though, I think the draw to Madison was more cultural than political at that point. I can't say that I chose it because I had to make a difference in the world. There was a lot going on here in terms of music and the counterculture, and it was very attractive to me.

BT: Had you taken trips with your sisters down to Madison during --

SO: Yeah, I'd been here enough, um, to get a little taste of what, what was going on.

BT: Let's talk about a woman, a young lady from Appleton coming down as a senior 00:03:00from a Catholic school, where I assume things were rather regimented and whatnot, and coming to Madison, what was, what were the streets like? What were you thinking when you saw this, this new and probably exciting and stimulating environment? Are there any images or things that stand out in your mind?

SO: Well, State Street looked a little bit different in those days. There was, it was a street. It was open to traffic, but in many ways, I think it looked the same. There were a lot of different types of people out on the street. Madison was just so much bigger than, than Appleton. People dressed much more colorfully, and people looked different. I mean, there were a lot of hippies here. People had a lot of hair and a lot of, uh, jewelry and leather and all 00:04:00sorts of accessories that was just much different from where I had come from.

BT: I remember my first trip to Haight-Ashbury, I think when I was about a junior in college or a sophomore, even with Madison as a background, it just really blew me away. What about your parents and politics, what were, did they talk about that much? Was it an issue when you were growing up?

SO: My, my parents were unusual, I think, for the Appleton area. They were both, I would say, liberal Democrats, very fond of Kennedy, and I think today, they'd still be unusual in Appleton. They cared a lot about politics. They weren't necessarily active in political parties, but they cared about political issues. They cared about what was going on in the country. And so that was not unusual to talk about issues like that in our house. And I think that did have an impact on me.

BT: In terms of your Catholic high school, were there any teachers or counselors 00:05:00or anything like that, anyone like that, who you turned to or who you particularly admired?

SO: Well, I think my favorite teacher overall was my gymnastics teacher, to tell you the truth. Mr. Hussy, I think he was also the basketball coach. And his wife, actually, ran a discussion group for Catholic girls. A lot of us belonged to discussion groups like that at the time, and I think she also had an influence on me, more so, actually than any of my academic teachers.

BT: And you graduated in what year?

SO: 1968.

BT: Where, I can remember this so clearly, I have to ask you this. Where were you, and how did you hear about and respond to hearing about the assassination of President Kennedy?

SO: I as at home. Um, my parents were --

BT: Put this in a [word unclear].

SO: Okay. When Kennedy was killed, I was, I was at home. I may have been at 00:06:00school that day. I honestly don't remember that. But I remember being home. I think they probably sent us home from school. I remember being there after school and watching the TV reports. My parents were out of town, and that was very alarming to me that something terrible had happened, and they weren't there. I think they were in New York at the time.

And I was just very, I think I related more to the children than anything. I remember cutting out pictures of Caroline and John-John and making a scrapbook and, uh, I think I related to the event more as, in relationship to the children that had lost their father than as an important political event.

BT: When you came to Madison, um, in terms of your studies, what were you, did you have any idea what you were going to be doing in terms of the course of study?

SO: Well, I was interested in psychology. Everyone in my family sort of has 00:07:00picked up my mother's social worker bent in one way or another. I have a sister who's an accountant, and worked for years at a human services agency as an accountant. So it seems like no matter what career we take, we've all ended up in sort of a human services, um, field, and I now have daughter in college who thinks she might want to be a psychologist or a lawyer.

So I think it may be moving onto another generation. So I think I knew that I wanted to do something like that. And I was, I found the psychology classes very interesting. There was some opportunity to do some limited fieldwork or clinical work, and I remember going to the children's treatment center at Mendota and thinking that I wanted to work with kids like that.

BT: Were there any particular courses or instructors in psychology that influenced you?

SO: You know, I, to be perfectly honest, I can't remember the name of a single psychology professor. I had a couple things, uh, I guess surprised me about that. One of the things I learned in college is that the instructor is much more 00:08:00important than the course, that what you think you're going to like or what you know you like can be completely ruined by a bad teacher. On the other hand, things that you're not at all interested in, you can find fascinating if you have a good professor.

In the psychology area, a lot of the, um, animal behavior and sensory behavior, learning about how eyes and ears work, it surprised me how much I enjoy that because I didn't think I had any interest in that. I wanted to deal with how people relate to people. Uh, but there is no professor who stands out today by name in my mind.

BT: What about in other, um, outside of the psychology field at Madison, were there any professors who had an influence on you, particularly in terms of your political coming of age?

SO: Well, there's some pretty well known professors here that had an impact on a 00:09:00lot of people. Uh, the best known probably is Harvey Goldberg. The entire time that I was an undergraduate, his class was the, I think, best attended class on campus, and not perhaps the highest enrollment because I think probably three-quarters of the people that went to his classes weren't actually in the class. And I spent semesters listening to him lecture in his astonishing way.

He was a pretty homely little man, and he would sort of screw himself up and, and speak in this incredibly dramatic manner with few or no notes for an hour lecture period and just make these historical times come to life. I finally made the mistake, I think, in my junior year of registering for his class and was completely intimidated by the history majors, almost dropped it, feeling like I 00:10:00just could not possibly succeed and went in and made some deal that I'd write some book reports or something that I felt like I could handle and ended up with a pass in the class. But I enjoyed it a lot more when I didn't actually have to produce anything.

I think the, he had some pretty, um, outstanding history grad students TA-ing for him, and people who were really interested in history were taking that class, and that was never my strong suit. So I liked him better as an observer than my teacher.

BT: Were there a lot of people who were attending, the noncredit people, was he kind of developing the political awareness on campus? Do you think that that was coming across in his classes?

SO: I think it -- I think that through his classes, not only could we get some historical perspective on what was happening, but I think he also related current events or tied them into his lectures. So it did give him more intellectual framework perhaps to what was going on in the streets. There were 00:11:00some other professors, a number of professors that became fairly controversial during that time because they were active in the antiwar movement. I think Anatole Beck, the mathematician was one of them.

And again, these weren't people that I had as teachers, but people that I might see at rallies. They might speak at rallies or, you know, be interviewed in The Cardinal or something in some other way that I became aware of their views. But that was important to know that there were, I think we did look up to professors. I mean, they had some experience and age and perhaps wisdom. And I think it was comforting somehow that some professors were on our side.

BT: Were there any professors in the psychology department in the courses that you took or that you related to in other ways who were politically active in any way?

SO: Not that I recall. I mean, there probably were, but I, nothing I recall.

BT: Let's talk for a minute about the culture of the '60s. You mentioned the, your impression of the, quote, hippies, walking around when you came to state street as a high school student. Um, what about the music of the '60s? Talk a little bit about it and the role it played in your life, and if there were any particular groups that stand out in your memory as something you turn to a lot for whatever reasons, whatever psychological reasons you might listen to music.

SO: Well, I think music was a, a big part of what was going on then. I think it always is with people that age. Of course, there was Woodstock, which I didn't go to, and there were a few lucky people that actually went to Woodstock. And I think the rest of us all wished we had. Uh, the bands that I remember from that time would be Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seger, he came 00:13:00to campus a number of times, and I saw him in the Stock Pavilion. He, even when he was getting pretty old, I think he liked this campus, and he'd come and perform here. Buffalo Springfield, Janis Joplin, I think those were all important musical influences at the time.

BT: Were there any local groups that you followed or went to see?

SO: There were a few local groups that I remember, and they were probably more important bands. There was a band from Appleton, actually, that performed in this area, called Soup, and they were pretty, um, well known at the time, a guy named David Foss, who still lives in Madison was one of them. And I think, actually, one or two of the other members have died, as seems to happen to musicians. Uh, one of my friends from the dorm, Scott [Eken?] was in a band called Tayles, and they were pretty big. I think it was T-a-y-l-e-s, the Tayles.

Later, going into the '70s, the biggest band in town, as far as I was concerned was Spooner. I happen to be married to the lead singer and lead guitarist, so I was probably a little bit biased, but Spooner played at a lot of the later Mifflin Street block parties and Great Hall and Union Terrace, and but that was into the mid-'70s by that time.

BT: Well, we're going to get to the block parties in a minute, but when you went to hear these local groups, where did they generally play?

SO: That's a good question.

BT: I remember the Nitty Gritty was often [word unclear].

SO: Uh-huh. There were a lot of blues bands that played at the Nitty Gritty. B. B. King came here a number of times. I'm trying to think where I saw him. I feel like I saw him in Union Theater, actually. Um, there were a number of clubs on State Street that sort of opened and closed. Merlin's was later in the '70s. 00:15:00There was like a three-story vegetarian folk music place. I have no idea what it was called, that some folk singers came and played at. The Nitty Gritty was a popular placed to hear bands. And I, I don't remember any other place. A lot of bands played at the Union. They played in the Rathskeller, and they played in Union Theater.

BT: What about dress, how did your own dress change as you acclimated to Madison?

SO: Well, my, my appearance changed quickly. I came here, I was assigned a roommate. My roommate, Rachel, came here from New Jersey, and her experience, I came to the big city. She landed at the airport, which was in the middle of a cornfield at the time, was absolutely horrified at what had she done? Driving into town, I mean, the airport was completely separated from the city at that 00:16:00time. Now it's all built up out there. But, you know, you got off the plane and walked across the runway into little Quonset hut is about all they had out there.

And she came and met her roommate from Appleton and thought, oh, my God, I have to get out of here. And she quickly said, all right, you got to stop setting your hair. You know, throw those rollers out, and let's go get you some bell-bottoms, and, you know, I'm sure we can get along if we work on this. And I'd like to think that she was pleasantly surprised that I actually was more progressive than I perhaps appeared to her. But I'd have to credit her with probably a, giving me a more natural look.

BT: Was she impressed by the fact that you came from Joe McCarthy's hometown?

SO: I'm sure it was one more frightening factor to her when she found out that Joe McCarthy was buried a mile from my home, that his bust, I think, to this day, is in the courthouse in Appleton. I actually remember Joe McCarthy's 00:17:00funeral procession when I was a little kid.

I have no idea what year it was, and my parents putting us all out in the field where we could see the road to the cemetery and say, watch this. This is important. No, I think there was, that was one of the really interesting thing about Madison and there were a lot of students here from the East Coast, and there were a lot of students here from Wisconsin, and I think the blending of those was one of the things that made it interesting. It certainly opened my eyes to a world outside of Wisconsin.

BT: What happened when you'd go home those first times you were dressed in bell bottoms and your hair wasn't set, how did your parents act, and did you get, catch any flack from neighbors or anything like that?

SO: Well, I don't remember that I ever created much of a stir in Appleton. My younger brother, Kevin, who has extremely kinky hair grew the equivalent of 00:18:00about an eight-inch Afro, and he was well known in Appleton for his hairdo. There are some pretty amazing photos of him from that time. But I don't think I really stood out.

BT: I got fired from a job for growing a mustache once.

SO: It's amazing, isn't it?

BT: You think back, and I'm just astonished. Mopping floors, they wouldn't let me mop floors with a mustache. Anyway, let's talk for a moment about drugs. I don't want you to necessarily go into your own experiences, obviously, but how prevalent were they, and what kind of drugs were people taking and for, how much did that contribute to the political or altered conscious state of Madison at the time?

SO: The most prevalent drugs were marijuana and LSD. At least in my experience, I don't think anyone had access to or interest in anything like cocaine or 00:19:00heroin. There was nothing really like that. I think people had psychedelic mushrooms. I would say marijuana was everywhere. Um, it was certainly a part of the culture. At the block parties, they actually had stands where they either sold or handed out joints. I can't remember if you had to pay for them or not.

It was extremely prevalent. And I think those types of drugs, I guess, contributed to the -- in my mind, those types of drugs go together with tie-dyed T-shirts and incense and bells more than some other sort of, you might say, harder drugs would. So I think it was part of the whole culture.

BT: Well, we have the music, we have the dress, we have the drugs, and let's talk about the Mifflin Street block party for a moment, because in a way, that's kind of where a lot of these factors came together. Describe a Mifflin Street block party, just what it was like and what it was like to attend one of those. 00:20:00A lot of people who will be listening to this tape would have no idea of what the old Mifflin Street block parties were before they became what they've become now.

SO: Well, Mifflin Street was a little community of its own. It was the 400- and 500-block of West Mifflin was the, the best place to live, if you could. And in between the 400- and 500-block was the Mifflin Street Coop, which is still there today. And the community there existed day in and day out. It didn't just exist at the time of the block parties, obviously. But once a year, the idea was to have a street party and celebrate our community. The problem was that the city denied permission for these parties.

And it's almost hard to believe the difference in the policing style at the 00:21:00time, but the policing style then was to, to use force, to enforce whatever the will of the police was. So what would happen is the party would be planned. The party would be publicized. There would be bands and music and food and dancing, and that would go on for a while. And then the police would try to clear the area, and a riot would begin. And this happened a number of years in a row, two, three, maybe four years in a row.

Um, so the party might go on during the day, and as it started to get dark, the police would determine to clear the area, and they would come in in force with their riot gear on and try to move down the street. They had armored vehicles that they used, uh, some step vans, black painted evil looking vans, and they'd come down the street with them. And Mifflin Street is all two-story houses with 00:22:00porch roofs or second-story roofs that it's very easy for people to be up on, so they were, by this time, up there armed with apples or whatever they needed to pelt down on the police. And a battle would ensue.

The residents of Mifflin were determined to have autonomy over their neighborhood and say we can party here if we want to, and the police were equally determined to say these streets are going to be open, and we're going to open them. The, there were some unfortunate bystanders because this was a very mixed neighborhood. There were a lot of elderly people that lived in the same area. And so as night fell, there would start to be, you know, pushing and shoving and throwing of rocks and throwing of other objects, and then the police would start to gas the area, which, of course, would drive people out of their houses.

It was not a calming influence. Now your house was full of tear gas. You can't 00:23:00very well go in and, and behave yourself. So it just ensured that everyone was out in the streets. And then people get mad. You know, the 70-year-old lady downstairs now is, has to be taken to the hospital and that makes you even madder, so you go out and fight back. The level of violence throughout this time is just almost impossible to believe from our perspective today with community policing and, you know, dispute resolution and conflict resolution and all the ways that police would handle that today.

The police had no concerns about beating the crap out of people, and they would come in with their clubs and just beat the crap out anyone they could get their hands on. One of my most vivid memories of a block party is being on West Washington. Of course, then it would spill out to the surrounding area, and then 00:24:00you'd go around the block and come back and try to get back in. And being over on West Washington, and I think it's the 400 block, where there's an old funeral home there, and it's a very wide sidewalk and boulevard and seeing a cop car chasing, driving down the sidewalk, chasing a couple of women running in front of the cop car, and the cop car trying to run these women down.

And it was just so shocking to me as were many things I saw. You know if they didn't stay ahead of them, he was going to hit them. There was no doubt about it, and that was his goal. So things got pretty nasty, and it would go on for sometimes two or three days. The next night, it would sort of start up again, and the third night there'd be fires, all the windows are boarded up by that time. There's tear gas hanging in the air, and but every year, we'd try again.

BT: Here's a relating question. How much did that impact on your growing political awareness? Did that contribute, what you were saying [words unclear]?

SO: I would say that the reaction of the police sort of paralleled the action of 00:25:00the administration in Washington, where we felt very strongly that we would try to express an opinion and, about the war. We would say, look, nobody wants this war. People are getting killed. There's no rational reason to have this war. And then, you know, as the years went on, we would say, look, the majority of the people don't want this war.

They're willing to come out and march in the streets. They're willing to, you know, send petitions and send letters to their congressmen, and nothing would happen. And so there was a sense that you had to continually escalate, that peaceful means were ineffective. And I think there was the same sense with the police. It was like living in two different worlds. So we had a view of the world that, and we're relatively powerless, and trying to find a way to have 00:26:00power in this situation.

BT: Let's talk a little bit about the, since Paul Soglin is going to be voted upon next week in Congress, he's been on people's minds a lot lately. What about the mayor at the time? Was Dyke mayor, and could you talk a little bit about the attitude of the students toward the city government for the, we don't have to go as far as Washington, in a way. We can go right to the city government in Madison.

SO: Bill Dyke was the mayor. I'm trying to remember the name of the guy who was in the assembly from up north somewhere. He was a complete buffoon. Now what was his name? I'm just blanking on it. Bill Dyke was the mayor. Ralph Hanson, of course, was the police chief down at the University. There were some, there were some pretty well-known people in the assembly at that time, whose names I can't remember right now.

And all of them, I think, sort of collectively were the object of our scorn. I, it was very much at time when we felt that we had the right answers, that we knew what had to be done, and that no one was going to stand in the way of accomplishing that. And the people that, that held a contrary view were wrong and frankly, not worthy of much respect. I think his name was Rosenberg or something like that. Is that, Rosen-something.

BT: Yeah, I can't [words unclear].

SO: Anyway, it's coming back to me. He, I mean, he just distinguished himself by the sorts of stupid remarks he would make and then that was just more fuel for the fire.

BT: Rosenquist?

SO: It's Rosen-something, I think.

BT: Um, can you make a distinction, or do you need to, does one need to make a distinction between the behavior of the Madison police and the campus police? Was --

SO: I certainly couldn't distinguish the behavior of the Madison police and the 00:28:00campus police. I don't know how anyone could, frankly. I don't know what was happening in the leadership. Certainly, we wouldn't be aware of that. But once things started to happen, it seemed to me that all the police acted the same, and there certainly, if there was restraint being exercised by someone, it wasn't obvious. When the National Guard came in, they were more restrained. I mean, they basically took positions and held positions and guarded things. I don't remember the National Guard being particularly aggressive. I think they acted more as, as barriers. They seemed more restrained to me.

BT: What about the campus administration, do you remember any particular figures that were either vilified or not?

SO: Well, the campus administration always had this anguished posture, like, oh, you have to understand, we're caught between -- you know, we understand what you're saying, but we have these other interests, and, uh, I think, you know, 00:29:00they were never willing to, to put their -- my view of the administrators is, although they might mouth that they supported our objectives, they were never really willing to act in accordance with that. And that was frustrating. I mean, there were certain goals that we wanted. We wanted ROTC off campus. We wanted Army Math off campus. We wanted non-cooperation with selective service system.

And I think the administration was caught in the middle. They got a lot of money for research, for example, through the Army Math Research Center. It was not in their interest to turn that money away. They, they were less than forthright in revealing the relationship with the military in regard to the Army Math Research Center, which was the subject of a long series of articles by Jim Rowen. He 00:30:00investigated and, uh, really revealed what the nature of the relationship was there. And I think the administration tried to cover it up.

BT: Let's talk about some of the political leaders, some of the student leaders at the time. You just mentioned Jim Rowen, his writing, he was writing for The Cardinal, wasn't he?

SO: Right.

BT: Yeah. Who were some of the other principle people who you would consider the leaders of the, of the student movement?

SO: I think SDS had a role in the front of the movement. There was an ongoing enmity between SDS and the socialists. To the rest of the world, it might have looked like we were all communists, but within the ranks, I think there was a lot of disagreement about affiliation with these groups and objectives and the Socialists Workers' Party was always the enemy. So I think SDS did have a 00:31:00leadership role, and there were leaders in SDS. I wasn't close to that group. I mean, I would go to rallies. I went to some SDS meetings. Bill Kaplan, Billy Simon --

BT: Are these the local SDS people?

SO: Right. Those people were, were leaders of SDS locally. I think it was probably a fairly small group that was actually, you know, actively involved in running SDS, and I think, but I think that leadership had an effect on the movement as a whole. But there certainly were no officers or directors of this movement. I mean, that was one of the things that was very exciting and invigorating about it is anyone could call a rally. Anyone could declare an action.

All you had to do was create some posters and put them up around town and 00:32:00suddenly an event was going to happen. You'd be going to class one day, and someone would hand you a flier saying where to be that night, and then you'd go there that night. It was all very spontaneous and, you know the movement ended up to be so large. I think, by the end, I think I was at a march where there were 50,000 people marching. I mean, it was huge. So to say there was a leadership of this, I think, is not actually accurate. I mean, there were certainly people that led various factions, but I don't think anyone led the whole thing.

BT: So there was no mayor of students --

SO: There was no mayor of Miff-land.

BT: What about, um, national SDS figures, for example, like Tom Hayden, did they ever come to Madison, or did they have any impact in what was going on here? And along the same lines, did you, did people you know or you, yourself, network 00:33:00with the people in Berkeley, people at, in Ann Arbor, people at TC, places like that? Was there any kind of interaction between the different rallying factors [words unclear]?

SO: Well, I certainly wasn't part of any national network. In fact that was one of the charges that was made, you know, that this was some sort of conspiracy or international conspiracy. Like maybe Russia was leading this or something, I think, was the allegation. I don't think there was a network. There probably, there probably were meetings between people in Madison and Ann Arbor, you know, and people traveled a lot. And you go to other cities, and you'd want to see what was going on there. And you'd go to events there. But I, I don't believe that there was any national structure to what was going on.

BT: Were you ever involved in the demonstration that did turn kind of violent, I 00:34:00mean, whether, where the police has essentially attacked you, attacked your group?

SO: From the time I came to school here until 1970, there were constant demonstrations and many of them turned violent, dozens and dozens of them. And again, it's really hard to comprehend exactly what it was like here, and the movie, The War at Home, I think shows it most graphically. There would be a rally called, the police would come and declare the rally over. People wouldn't leave, and, and stuff would start to happen. And as it happened, usually the crowd got bigger, and whatever had begun this might even be lost in, in the fight.

There, you know, there were a lot of specific issues, so there might be a demonstration outside Army Math, and maybe people would sit down, or people 00:35:00would go in the administration building and sit down. And then they'd be pulled out. Or people would confront recruiters from Dow, and then they'd be told to leave the building. I mean, there was always something, I guess, that started it. But then it seemed to grow of its own accord. And people would just go trashing.

One, one of the things that, there are so many long-term effects, I think, from this whole period of time. But one that's little noticed is the architecture in Madison, that went, State Street used to have windows all the way along it, and buildings like the Walgreen's on the corner of Lake and State used to be all windows. Rennebohm's became one of the targets, I mean, a lot of things became targets. But Rennebohm's was big. It was, there were a lot of Rennebohm's, and it was seen as part of the establishment. And so the windows at Rennebohm's got broken every time there was an action.

There was a bank on the corner of University and Park, and their windows got 00:36:00broken every single time. So eventually, these people stopped having windows, and those buildings are windowless today. Downtown the phone company, IBM were frequent targets. And when they built new buildings, they built them without windows. So I, I think there's these sort of little unseen effects that perhaps this era had that we don't think of.

BT: What, I'm going to just back, go back for a second. I forgot to ask you one quick question from earlier, and then I want to return to this for a few final questions on the student unrest. And that's about gender as an issue at UW. Did you ever feel that you, that as a woman, you were discriminated against in, in any way on campus as an undergraduate?

SO: That's such a complicated issue. You know, as an undergraduate, I would say 00:37:00that I was not aware of discrimination in classrooms as a, as a woman. I think it was more apparent in Law School, frankly. I mean, women were still a minority. I think, 20% of my class was female. And many of the old-line professors still had a hard time accepting the presence of women. And I think that there was more conflict that I would define as gender-based in Law School than as an undergrad. I think women are more accepted in a psychology class that has 200 people in it. There's not much room for, uh, discrimination in that environment.

One of the things I wanted to mention, I read something about this in The New 00:38:00York Times recently. It was posture pictures. I think posture pictures really have to be documented for history because it's so bizarre. And apparently, there was a whole science that went around this, but when I came here as a freshman, we all lined up in the gym and they took pictures of us in our underwear, and then based on that, determined what phy ed class we had to take or didn't have to take.

And apparently, this was something that went on nationally because there was an article in The New York Times Magazine about it about a year ago. And I thought, and it just brought it all back to me. And I think that was just women that had to do that, but I could be wrong about that truly bizarre.

BT: No, you're not wrong. It was only women. And all of those were shredded under the supervision of the dean of students' office several years ago. I found that out for a fact too.

SO: Very strange.

BT: But they did it [word unclear].

SO: You know, there was a lot of tension in the movement though about between men and women because it was an evolving point of view that women were to be 00:39:00treated equally, and many men had not yet adopted that point of view. So it was a source of friction that women were expected to type the fliers or, I don't think we had photocopiers. I think we used mimeograph or something at that time, the fliers or, you know, do that sort of grunt work. And men were going to get up and speak. If you look at the early rallies, I'm sure almost all the speakers were men. And I think only gradually, did women demand and, and get a role in, in the leadership or in the front ranks of what was going on.

BT: Well, yeah, aside from Jane Fonda, I can't really think of a national figure or leader that really had an impact. Is this, is this kind of an early stirrings of what would become, not early stirrings, but was this an indication of what was going to be happening not too many years later when the feminist movement 00:40:00came about? Do you think there were some roots that started, that 

SO: I think a lot of, a lot of changes in the way we view our relationships with other people began in that time in terms of women's rights, in terms of civil rights. I mean, the idea that women might keep their own name when they got married was, was a very strange concept to people in 1968. It was virtually unheard of, and there was a lot of question about whether it was even legal for women to keep their own name. And today, although, not everyone chooses to do that, it's pretty well accepted that it seems normal if someone wants to keep their own name when they get married.

Race relations, I think, were undergoing a dramatic change. There was a lot of -- what might be viewed as anti-Semitism in Madison. There were a lot of 00:41:00students from New York and New Jersey. And there was a lot of feeling in the Wisconsin Legislature that if we just got those students out of here, that trouble would go away. And I think, uh, an unspoken part of that was the fact that a lot of those students were Jewish. And I think that what really was going on was a lot of anti-Semitism. But that wasn't really spoken. But it was sort of a subtext for what was really being said.

You know, every, in every area we tried to create our own, you know, we started the Mifflin Street Coop so we had a grocery store to go to that, Kroger's, the only grocery store on campus got burned down in a demonstration. So we sort of had to create a grocery store. But there was -- the blue bus was started for, uh -- we didn't call them sexually transmitted diseases then, but that's what we call them now. You know, there were alternative health clinics. There was, I was 00:42:00involved in a consumer organization. There was a Madison Tenant Union was founded, and on and on and on.

I mean, eventually, there was a cab company that came out of this. There was a liquor store that came out of this. And some of this is a little bit down the road. WSA Pharmacy was started as a -- WSA was the Wisconsin Student Association. It actually started as a project of the student government. Student government has a lot of money in those days. Well, they probably still do. And most of the money went to political causes. So there was a lot of politicking for the student government jobs, not because people wanted to run the student government, but because they wanted to funnel the money to their causes.

And the same was true in Law School. My last year of law school, the Black Student Association, National Lawyer's Guild, and Women's Student Association ran a slate of candidates, Stan Miller, who's a judge in Milwaukee now is the 00:43:00president. I was the vice president, and another black man was the other vice president. And our sole purpose for wanting to run the Law Student Government was to allocate the funds the way we wanted them allocated. So there -- the sense was to create a community within a community. And if you can't control the other community, then create your own. And we went pretty far towards doing that.

BT: Excellent. I'm glad you brought that up. That's very true. All those things started, and so many of them are still in existence today --

SO: That's right.

BT: -- which is really astonishing. You did mention, very briefly, civil rights. Let's talk for one moment, if we could, about race, the whole concept of race in the late '60s, the concept of minorities and blacks. Was that, how much of a part of the movement is that, and how did this manifest itself in any ways that you can recall?

SO: In, uh, February, of, I think, 1969, there was a black student strike. And 00:44:00the, um, the movement as a whole, I guess sort of joined behind the black students in supporting their demands. They wanted a Black Studies Department. They had a list of probably ten demands. We always had a list of ten demands. Well, sometimes it was four or six or whatever, but, uh, and I think that was probably the beginning. It was good for the anti-war movement, I think, to take a look at this other issue.

And there was strong support for the black student demands. I, there were certainly some black students in the anti-war movement, but I don't think those movements ever really combined. I think they sort of stood parallel to each other and offered support from time to time to each other. But [Blank spot.] 00:45:00maybe a few exceptions a leadership role in the anti-war movement, for example. I think [Quomi Salter?] was involved in that black student strike at the time. Yeah.

BT: Well, let's jump back into the -- fast forward things a little bit to the end of the, near the end of the, what was considered the anti-war movement on campus, and this was --

SO: Can I tell you one more story about Mifflin Street?

BT: Please, do.

SO: It's a very funny story.

BT: Please, do.

SO: [Laughs.] In the 400 block of Mifflin Street, there was a vacant lot. And we decided we needed a park because we had everything else, and now, we needed a park. And so we declared this vacant lot People's Park. I think there was a People's Park in San Francisco at the time, and we wanted one too. Well, of course, the lot was owned by somebody. He, it was owned by the landlord of the 00:46:00adjoining building, and he was not happy with the fact that we had declared it People's Park and were going to use it as our green space.

And so there was a lot of conflict over that. I think he may, actually, may have tried to evict some people from those buildings, or the police were harassing people in those buildings. I can't really remember all that. But for some reason, the C. C. Riders, the Madison Motorcycle Club, decided to get behind this landlord and come down and throw the hippies out of People's Park. And it, I remember this day so well. I actually, years later, became good friends with Dick Smith, who was the leader of the C. C. Riders at the time, and he actually turned his politics around and, I think, wouldn't have wanted to find himself in that position again.

But so they came down in all their motorcycle regalia, and we're all hanging out in the park in our hippie gear. And they, they got off their bikes, and they set up a perimeter around the park, and they put up a fence, and they set up a 00:47:00table, and they put a record player on the table, and they put on, they played The Star Spangled Banner, and they all stood there in their motorcycle gear, you know, with their hands on their hearts, and, you know, determined to retake this park. And I just, it was just one of the quirkiest little moments. I don't think there was any conflict between the two groups. I think we just watched them in amusement, and eventually, they went away.

But there were a lot of meetings in that park. There, and I remember being at a meeting there, and I don't remember what we were talking about, and they said, well, there's a lawyer here. Let's ask her what she thinks. And the lawyer was Susan Jordan from San Francisco, who was probably two or three years older than me at the time. And she was there in her blue-jean jacket and blue jeans and long hair, and gave her opinion, and I remember being really impressed that maybe here's a woman they're willing to listen to maybe because she's a lawyer, because she's from San Francisco or something. And that moment sort of stuck in 00:48:00my mind. It perhaps had something to do with my deciding to go to Law School.

BT: We all have those defining moments. We're going to get into Law School in just one minute. There's just one more thing I want to talk about, and that's the bombing of Sterling Hall. Can you talk for a moment about any events that you think might to be told about the leading up to this in terms of the Army Math or whatever, and also your own personal reaction to the events of that day, fateful day in August?

SO: It had been a demand for years that Army Math be off campus, that we felt that what Army Math did was the mathematics behind very sophisticated computer warfare that was going on in Vietnam. They designed weapons that were designed for the purpose of killing and maiming as many people on the ground without putting American troops at risk. And we felt that that mission to design those 00:49:00weapons was incompatible with a peaceful learning environment, and that Army Math should leave campus. And that demand had been made and ignored for years.

I think what it's important to, to realize is that there were dozens, probably hundreds, maybe thousands of Karl Armstrongs out there. There were firebombings constantly. There were probably hundreds of fire bombings a year at that time. There was, you trashing going on constantly. It was inevitable that Army Math was going to be blown up. And I think everybody knew it. And it was not surprising that it happened, and it didn't, it was not out of context when it happened. I lived on Dayton Street.

When the bomb went off, and it woke me up, I was probably close to a mile away. 00:50:00It was a tremendous explosion, and said to somebody else, what was that? And he said, it was the capitol, go back to sleep, which I thought was sort of ironic, but it shows how inevitable this all was, that things had escalated to such a point that violence was so intense on both sides that it was inevitable that something big was going to happen. And it just happened to be those people and that building and that day that was the big event. But if it hadn't been that, it was going to be something else.

I actually had met Karl briefly before that, but I wasn't a friend of his. Um, and I ended up being extremely involved in, in those cases. I was in Law School at the time Karl got arrested and ended up working on his defense team, and then 00:51:00ended up working on David Fine's case and Dwight Armstrong's case when they got arrested. And it really was a huge part of my life for probably close to a decade in many ways and affected a lot of other people's lives too.

BT: Did you, um, I've heard some people say, I've talked to, that the explosion at Sterling Hall sort of took a lot of the momentum away, sort of, the movement kind of dissipated after that and was never that, that cohesive force that it had been beforehand. Do you agree with that assessment, and --

SO: Well, I don't know. There may be some truth to that. I think the movement was dissipated at that point, and I think to some extent, it's coincidental. Um, Kent State was that spring. Then there was a lot of violence after that. Um, it 00:52:00was a quiet summer. There wasn't a lot going on. And then Army Math was blown up in August right before school started. And there continued to be peace marches, but I think it was more the nature of peace marches after that time.

Um, it is true that those two things correlated, and whether one caused the other, I don't know. I mean, there certainly was a strong reaction to that bombing, and I think people were very taken aback by the fact that somebody was killed and people were injured, and -- but whether it was cause and effect, I don't know.

BT: Uh-huh. Okay. Let's talk, well, we've covered some stuff that's really --

SO: It's kind of fun to be able to go all over the place and not have to be coherent here.

BT: Well, we're going, we're following a pretty good line. It's kind of jumped out a few times, but let's just talk a little bit about your law school career. Um, this was just most interesting, this whole thing. I'll probably write down a few other questions. Is Leo Burt still alive?

SO: Who's Leo Burt? [Laughs.] I always say Leo Burt's probably a dentist in Michigan. That's my guess.

BT: You mentioned this a little bit already, but let's, let's talk about it for a second. How much did the events of, of the late '60s and the early '70s actually, how much did that affect your decision to go to Law School here in Madison, become a lawyer?

SO: By my junior year, going to school here, at that time, really involved a small portion of going to school and a large portion of demonstrating and being involved in political activities. The political activities were really more important and more consuming than school. And by my junior year, I was pretty disillusioned with my choice of psychology and really didn't know what I wanted to do anymore. And my brother-in-law encouraged me to take the Law School 00:54:00entrance exam, which I did.

Law interested me because it was clear, by that point, that lawyers had some ability, I guess, to maybe enter the establishment and have some impact, that if you could play that game by their rules, you might affect what we wanted to affect in certain ways. Uh, it was a very frustrating time. I think we felt like we were not being heard. We weren't, we felt very strongly, incredibly strongly, about ending the war and I think feeling fairly impotent. And Law School sort of beckoned as a way that one might be more effective.

And then they offered me a really good deal, where I could go in my, start Law School in my senior year, and in effect get double credit for that year. So that 00:55:00was too good to pass up. So I started Law School.

BT: Um, again, before, what instructors and courses, if any, did you feel really had a -- well, this is sort of an action-oriented law school too, isn't it? It has a reputation as being kind of socially involved type of place. Was --

SO: Well, we didn't think so [laughs.].

BT: Were there any instructors and courses then, within the Law School that you found particularly inspiring, especially in terms of your, your growing, your political ideology or --

SO: Well, the Law School, like everything else, was in a state of flux. We still had the instructors, who were very old school and taught by the Socratic Method in these big lecture halls, which really means teaching by humiliation and refused to deal with anything that was going on outside the Law School, and thought it was irrelevant to our mission in there. And then there were other professors who had a more socially active or activist approach.

And there was a lot of conflict. It was, in some ways, it was sort of a fun environment to stir trouble up in because the contrasts were so great and it's always kind of fun to unnerve stuff shirts. And it was so easy to do it. So in some ways, it was like the Law School was five or six years behind the rest of the campus. Like they just hadn't been affected. And Paul Soglin was actually two years ahead of me in Law School, and his class was probably the first class that had a pretty progressive outlook.

And there are a number of people -- I think Mark [Frankel?] was in that class, a number of people that were active in that class. So there were a lot of disputes about things in Law School. I, one of my, well, several of my friends and I put out a little, we put out our own little paper to sort of tweak the Law School 00:57:00administration called Maggie's Farm, which comes from a Bob Dylan song, I Ain't Going to Work on Maggie's Farm No More, and we were trying to raise issues about what is cheating, is it really cheating to work together?

And we had a national plea bargaining contest sponsored by the newsletter, and just trying to talk about, you know, which values that the Law School was promoting were values that we wanted to take out of there. There was a lot of dispute about admission standards. As I indicated that there were only about 20% women, there were very few black students, and so there was a lot of, uh, discussion about those issues.

And there were a couple of professors, Joel Handler had done a lot of work on the poverty area and was pretty well known. And I think the students liked him a lot. Steve [Hertsberg?] had come from California, where he worked for California 00:58:00Rural Legal Assistance. And he was very political and ran a clinical program. There was another professor, whose name I'm blanking on, who was denied tenure, and the students were enraged about that.

And we demanded to go to faculty meetings, and there was a point where some of the faculty, and a lot of the law students came together, that towards the end of the war and said, we have to, we have to do something about this. And they planned a demonstration. And we were very proud of them. And they went down to the post office and the police came and cracked their heads. And they were completely shocked, and a few of us that had had our heads cracked previously were standing back because we knew what was going to happen. And they, but they were incredibly radicalized by this, just like all the rest of us had been 00:59:00several years earlier.

And it, it does change your opinions very quickly when someone in power comes and hits you over the head with a stick. Then you have to think about whether you want that person to be in power and all kinds of other things. So Law School, I would say, was just as exciting an atmosphere.

BT: So a lot of the same things were happening in Law School, maybe not as much on the streets, but actually within the classroom. Not that's very interesting. Do you, do you, looking back on it from 20/20 hindsight, do you think that what happened on that, on the campus in Madison, had any impact in terms of ending the war in Vietnam?

SO: I, I do believe that the movement, very slowly, did have an impact on, first of all, changing the strategy in Vietnam. Um, when it became untenable, because 01:00:00voices were protesting so loudly to continue to kill tens or thousands of American boys, uh, then they changed to the air war and a more sophisticated warfare, where fewer Americans were being killed and as many Vietnamese. And I think the movement had an impact on that.

And eventually, on ending the war, I do believe that. It didn't happen as quickly as we wanted it to, but it became impossible to continue to wage that war. It took, it took a long time before the majority of Americans opposed it. But once they did, then it became politically untenable to continue it.

BT: On a personal level, looking back on this time period, is there any, obviously, it's changed everyone in so many different ways. Is there anything in particular about this movement that you think has directly had an impact on your 01:01:00day-to-day life and your whole attitude toward politics and life? That's a very broad question.

SO: It's very broad.

BT: Trying to think of a way of making it more specific, but I really can't. How did it change you the most?

SO: I don't know that this is something I've really thought about. To some extent, I think that we, we lived in an environment where it was thought that you could do anything, and that you were responsible to do the right thing. Everything was political. What you ate was political. What you wore was political. What music you listened to was political. There was a right and wrong about everything, which frankly, got rather tiresome after awhile. There's a certain inflexibility to that also.

But I think there was a really strong feeling that citizens should not be sheep, 01:02:00that we have a responsibility to the world. We have a responsibility for what our government is doing, and that it's morally necessary to speak out if your government is doing something that's wrong or evil. Unfortunately, it's, I think it's very hard to hang onto that in this day and age, and I think most people younger than us don't believe that and feel very powerless. So I don't know.

BT: Um, any other comments you'd like to make and end it up?

SO: Let me look at my notes. There were two newspapers, first, Kaleidoscope and then, Takeover. And they were also a very important part of what was going on. 01:03:00It was our own press in many ways, and we could report on what we wanted to. The Daily Cardinal was a more intellectual part of the movement. There was some very, extremely important research and writing down by the staff of The Daily Cardinal.

Kaleidoscope and Takeover were a lot more fun. They often made stories up entirely, about Bill Dyke or Oscar Mayer, um, in fact they had a very famous issue, where they mocked up the Cap Times, and put their newspaper in all the Capital Times boxes, and so people thought they were buying the Capital Times, when actually, they were buying Takeover. And I think reported on a worker at Oscar Mayer that had been ground up in the sausage. It was really quite, created quite a stir. Capital Times was not amused.

But one of the ways I earned a little spare change in those days was to sell 01:04:00Kaleidoscope and Takeover on Wednesdays when they came out on the street corner. And my best customers were the police. The police loved those newspapers, or they hated them. But they had to have them. And by the time I got out to the corner, I'd have three squad cars waiting to buy their issue of the newspaper. Maybe it was our joint press.

BT: Yeah, I can almost remember the name of that worker. He was Polish, the one who was ground up.

SO: Was he, in the Polish Sausage maybe it was.

BT: [Words unclear] yeah.

SO: That's about all I have.

BT: Ralph, how about you, anything you want to --

SO: Still awake?

BT: I think it's wonderful, fantastic. Well --