- Ellen Antoniewicz: Today we are pleased
to introduce Stu Levitan
as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's
History Sandwiched In lecture series.
The opinions expressed today are those of the presenters
and are not necessarily those
of the Wisconsin Historical Society
or the museum's employees.
Stu Levitan is an award-winning print
and broadcast journalist and a mainstay of Madison media
in government since 1975.
He is the author of Madison in the Sixties
and Madison: The Illustrated Sesquicentennial History Vol 1 .
He has written extensively on politics, culture,
and Madison history for several publications,
and currently produces the Madison in the Sixties podcast
for WORT FM Community Radio,
where he also serves as vice president of the board.
He hosts Access: City Hall on the Madison City Channel,
and previously produced the interview program
Books and Beats with Stu Levitan on 92.1 The Mic.
After leaving daily journalism in 1980,
Stu served five years on the Dane County
Board of Supervisors and spent 27 years as a labor mediator
and arbitrator for the
State Employment Relations Commission.
Stu has also chaired several city of Madison commissions,
including the Community Development Authority,
Landmarks Mission, and Plan Commission.
This fall, he will present a course on urban renewal
and civil rights in the 60s
through the UW Division of Continuing Studies.
Here today to discuss Madison in 1969,
please join me in welcoming Stu Levitan.
[audience applauding]
- Thank you, Ellen.
It is of course a great pleasure and honor
to come back to History Sandwiched In,
and especially to do so on behalf
of the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
My thanks to the Historical Museum for hosting,
and of course to the Historical Society Archives Library
and Foundation without whom, all of whom were essential
to the writing and publication of Madison in the Sixties .
My talk today is in the following parts.
First, we'll mark the golden anniversary
of the three big stories from 1969,
student anti-war protest,
the Mifflin Street block party riot,
and the Black Studies Strike.
Then we'll step back and look at the big picture
with an overview of the five distinct issues,
some of them unique to this place and time
that really dominated the decade.
Some are gone, some remain.
And I've left some time for questions and comments.
As it happens, I am celebrating an anniversary today too.
It was on this day, 44 years ago, that Dave Zweifel
offered me the job as the Washington correspondent
for The Capital Times , which is what indirectly
brings us here today.
Madison 1969, a tick over 171,000 people live here.
Several things which would define
the 70s and 80s and beyond
begin in 1969.
The Mifflin Street Community Co-op opens,
the Madison Tenant Union organizes and
has its first rent strike.
Names in the political news include Republican attorney
Bill Dyke, who defeats Democratic attorney
Toby Reynolds for mayor.
Eugene Parks is elected Madison's first
African-American alderman, and Mrs. Ruth Doyle
becomes Madison's first female president
of the school board.
This is, excuse me, State Street, west of Lake
in the summer of 1969.
Planners want to turn the last four blocks
into a full pedestrian mall,
but the business owners are protesting.
While the city considers closing a small street,
it opens a large road, Campus Drive,
a freeway between Babcock Drive and Farley Avenue opens
in November, taking 15,000 cars a day
off old University Avenue.
And a few days later, the new athletic director,
Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch, fires
the failed football coach John Coatta,
whose teams had won just 3 games out of 30
in his three years.
[audience murmuring]
But Hirsch has some sympathy for Coatta,
and he tells reporters that student unrest
has made it difficult to recruit football players
quote "because their parents don't want to send their sons
"into a situation such as we had here."
And the situation such as we had
here in 1969 was pretty bad,
and it was getting worse.
As the war in Vietnam escalates and continues
and anti-war protests grow,
some activists edge into violence, and city, state,
and university officials step up their crackdown.
It's a vicious cycle of protest, rejection,
resistance, repression, leading to seven new laws
this year alone dealing with protesters.
And the city gets in the act, empowering the mayor
to impose a street-clearing curfew
and to call out auxiliary troops.
"We are in a period of unlawful conduct bordering
"on outright rebellion and anarchy,"
police chief Wilbur Emery tells graduating cadets.
And the courts are quote "building legal curtains
"around the criminal while restricting the police officer."
This is the police chief of Madison, Wisconsin,
hired by the Police and Fire Commission,
appointed by the liberal mayor, Ivan Nestingen,
criticizing the war in court and the Miranda decision.
Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk gives a talk
at the Memorial Union in late August.
It's eight months since he left office,
and there are no uniformed police on the scene.
So when a crowd of about 150, led by members
of the Young Socialist Alliance, heave rocks at his car
as he is driving away, pound on other cars,
and partially blocked traffic, there are no arrests.
A few weeks later, Madison police inspector
Herman Thomas tells an interagency meeting
at the governor's residence that "Mifflin Street radicals
"are gathering machine guns and grenades,
"and the consensus is to expect bloodshed,
"probably a death on campus this year."
Third week of September, there's a training exercise
at the National Guard Armory on Wright Street.
Quarter to three in the morning, a bomb,
about 20 sticks of dynamite with a timing device explodes,
doing $15,000 in damage to the armory
and the training equipment.
It's about an hour after a similar explosion damages
the Federal Building in downtown Milwaukee.
October 15th is Moratorium Day.
15,000 fill the Field House for a series of speeches
against the war in Vietnam.
It is the largest crowd in the Field House
since the JFK campaign appearance in October 1960.
And after the speeches, almost the entire crowd marches
to the Capitol through the cold rain,
filling State Street with flickering candles
and shimmering umbrellas from Mall to Square.
At the Capitol, all falls to a hush
but for the tolling of the bell of Grace Episcopal Church
for an ecumenical memorial service
for the more than 900 Wisconsin servicemen
who had died in the war so far.
As each name is read, a candle is extinguished.
The mournful ceremony ends about midnight,
the war goes on.
After entertaining thousands
at the Dane County Memorial Coliseum on November 13th,
Peter, Paul and Mary perform another full set for free
at the crushingly crowded moratorium midnight vigil
at the University Catholic Center on lower State Street.
At both shows, they urge fans
to join the march on Washington
that weekend, and many do.
The next day, the regents reinstate curfew
for freshmen women under 21, and raise to 21
the minimum age at which students can live off campus
without parental permission.
The president of the regents, Dr. James T. Nellen,
team physician for the Green Bay Packers,
calls it quote, "a vote against the permissiveness
"that is going on in universities."
And as the decade closes, Governor Warren Knowles
signs the year's seventh law dealing with protesters,
setting a minimum one semester suspension from attendance
or employment for anybody convicted of seizing
a university building or forcefully disrupting
classes or traffic.
This is something that thousands of students had just done
in the Black Studies strike.
Now only a few were arrested and charged, but from now on,
everyone who blocks a building or blocks traffic
knows that if they are arrested and convicted,
they will be suspended from employment or attendance.
Now, whether this would prove as great a disincentive
as the state hopes remains to be seen.
And it really doesn't seem so because three days later,
there's an SDS action against a Quonset hut
that the ROTC uses for instructions called T16.
It's at the corner of Babcock Drive and Linden Drive.
And it leaves four campus policemen injured
and four protesters in jail.
Then about 200 move through campus,
smashing windows in the Army Math Research Center
and Bascom Hall.
A group of about 20 attacks
the Peterson Administration building,
where they smash the large plate glass windows,
and destroy thousands
of the hated photo identification cards.
And if you can see the byline on this story,
is Leo F. Burt.
4:15 in the morning on December 28th, Carl Armstrong,
a recent UW dropout working
for Gino's Restaurant and Pizzeria,
breaks three windows in T16,
tosses in two one-gallon jugs filled with gasoline,
and lights a match.
The fire department saves the building,
and police track Armstrong's footprints in the snow
to Tripp Circle, where they lose the trail
and never develop any suspects.
The Badger Army Ammunition Plant in Baraboo.
On December 31st, Armstrong, a Madison native
from the East Side, gets his brother Dwight to steal a plane
from Morey Airfield where Dwight works,
to make a bombing run on this facility.
About two hours into 1970, Carl drops three makeshift bombs
of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, it's called an ANFO bomb.
They fall harmlessly into the snow and do not explode.
Driving back to Madison, Carl is pulled over by the police,
who do not smell the kerosene on his pants
and only give him a warning for speeding.
[audience chuckling]
This is the start of the New Year's Gang,
whose number would soon come to include
the aforementioned Leo Burt, who literally embodied
the growing radicalism of The Daily Cardinal .
The New Year's Gang will undertake a series
of firebombings and other actions,
culminating in the ANFO bombing of Sterling Hall
at 3:42 in the morning of August 24, 1970
in an unsuccessful attempt to damage
the Army Mathematics Research Center.
The explosion destroys valuable research,
does about $2 million in physical damage,
and kills postdoctoral physics researcher Robert Fassnacht,
who has no relation to the Army Math Research Center.
And there are 35 other war-related deaths
in Madison this decade.
1969 brought seven funerals,
including two-time Purple Heart recipient
Corporal Charles Le Bosquet.
That's down from nine in 1967 and '68.
And we have two 22-year-old heroes among our number.
Marine Sergeant David B. Thompson
is awarded the Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry
and the Navy Commendation Medal.
And Army First Lieutenant Ricky B. Brantmeyer
is awarded the Bronze Star for heroism in ground combat.
So that's a brief overview of the state
of the anti-war protest movement in 1969.
Now let's go to the Black Studies Strike.
The Black Studies Strike was the most successful
political protest of the decade.
Students issued a series of demands
and got several of them satisfied,
including the most important one.
At the time, when there were about 500 black students
out of 35,500 on campus,
the university's academic program for Black Studies
consisted of two courses, a seminar,
and a series of guest lecturers.
It was not enough.
Friday February 7th, 1969,
the Black People's Alliance presents the 13 demands,
starting with a degree-granting program
in a Black Studies Department,
organized and controlled by black students and faculty,
with students having veto power over personnel decisions.
They also want to double the black enrollment and more.
Then about 300 students, mostly white,
marched up Bascom Hill and enter seven classrooms,
enter classrooms in seven buildings
to explain their demands.
Some professors and students are intimidated,
but there are no arrests or serious incidents.
A group of about 1,500 do the same thing on Monday.
The Reverend Jesse Jackson is on campus Friday night
for WSA symposium on the black revolution,
curated by the same woman, Margery Tabankin,
who would organize the Moratorium Day speeches.
Jackson tells an overflow crowd in the Great Hall
that the 13 demands, quote,
"should be followed to the letter."
And from the same stage the next afternoon,
black student leader Willie Edwards tells a large crowd
quote, "The only power we have is the power to disrupt,
"and if the 13 demands are not met,
"this university will not function."
Afterwards, about 600 students chanting
"2, 4, 6, 8, organize and smash the state!"
march on the Field House
to disrupt the basketball game with Ohio State.
150 helmeted police with riot sticks and tear gas
arrive barely five minutes before the students do.
If they had not arrived at the Field House when they did,
Chancellor Edwin Young tells the regents,
"there would have been a great deal of violence."
There are scuffles at various gates,
and the governor's black Rambler is vandalized.
Four students are arrested,
most of the 11,000 basketball fans
are unaware of the disturbance.
The WSA calls the university a racist institution
and supports the strike.
The student senate creates a bail fund.
Tuesday, a new tactic.
A non-penetrable picket line standing
in the schoolhouse door to shut the campus down.
Some fist fights break out, but the lines generally hold
and hundreds leave or are turned away.
Strikers have effectively seized control
of several university buildings.
When close to 200 city and county officers
sweep up the hill,
and the obstructers, as they say,
make like steam and vaporize.
[audience chuckling]
There are more blockades on Wednesday
and the cops are overwhelmed.
So Mayor Otto Festge and Chancellor Young
and other campus leaders ask Governor Warren Knowles
to call out the National Guard, which he does, 900 at first.
The guardsmen keep buildings open,
but they also trigger a defensive reaction
by the students,
causing strike participation to increase sharply.
That afternoon, close to 7,000 students,
that's almost 20% of the entire student body,
take to the streets under a tight control
by the black marshals,
and they block University Avenue for hours.
Knowles activates another 1,200 Guardsmen.
That night, another group of about 8,000 students,
this is more than 20% of the student body,
hold a torchlight parade that winds
through State Street and Langdon Street.
It is self-policed and orderly,
with only a few racist catcalling by onlookers.
Things calm down on Friday, and the guard leaves
the central campus.
There's a Valentine's Day march to the Capitol
on February 14th.
It goes to the Capitol and back and disrupts traffic,
but again is disciplined and peaceful,
as is another march, another torch-lit march
of about 1,000 that night.
The strike never really gets going the second week,
it is over by Tuesday,
but for a brief outburst of vandalism a week later.
Over the 11 days of the strike,
attendance has been off by about 10% in classes on the hill,
while on the western campus, things were pretty much normal.
A few days later, a special faculty committee recommends
the university establish a Black Studies Department,
and in early March, the full faculty endorses the idea.
And on December 1st, the faculty unanimously accepts
the detailed plans and academic program
for a degree-granting Department of Afro-American Studies,
the primary goal of the strike.
And proponents hope the regents and Coordinating Committee
for Higher Education will give final approval,
and the department will start in the fall of 1970.
The Mifflin Street Block Party Riots of May 1969.
Invitation to a block party
that becomes a three-night riot and an example
of how history happens.
The great radical leader Tom Hayden
called the student neighborhood around Mifflin
and Basset streets "one of America's liberated zones."
But in the angry year of 1969, it becomes a war zone.
That is the Zig-Zag man, he's the logo of a French company
that makes rolling papers, originally for cigarettes,
by now mainly for marijuana.
But unlike the real logo, he is wearing
a bandolier of bullets.
Under the inscription, "armed love and the command
"to off the pig."
This worries police chief Wilbur Emery,
so he schedules extra men and coordinates
with Sheriff Jack Leslie for 100 or so Dane County deputies
to be in reserve.
He does not bother to consult with Mayor Bill Dyke,
who has only been in office for two weeks.
Detective Tom McCarthy, whose face was fractured by a brick
at the Dow Protest in 1967,
is looking forward to the weekend.
"We're gonna bring the war to Mifflin Street," he vows.
Now the hippies and the heavies and the hangers-on
of Mifflin Street don't really care
that they don't have a permit to block the street.
Many neighborhoods throw block parties without a permit.
There was just a block party a week before on Gilman Street,
no permit and the police actually diverted traffic.
That's not gonna happen today.
Mid-afternoon on Saturday May 3rd, groups are gathering
on the porches and lawns, grooving to the tunes
coming from Ronnie Bergman's house at 512 West Mifflin St.
That's when the police department's number two man,
Herman Thomas, and a few officers respond
to a purported noise complaint.
It does not go well.
The music plays on, kids edge off the sidewalk
into the street.
Thomas goes and gets eight more men,
this time in riot gear.
"We're going down there to crack some skulls," he tells them
and he returns to the scene about 4:15.
He orders the crowd to clear the street
and is met with vulgar catcalls, a few rocks,
and a roasted pig's head on a stick.
[audience murmuring]
Baton-wielding police start pushing into the crowd
and making a few arrests, including Alderman Paul Soglin.
[audience exclaiming]
Whom they pull up and out of his 1959 Triumph convertible
and arrest for driving on the street
they are supposedly there to keep open.
[audience chuckling]
Soon, 30 officers in riot gear are in the street,
and about 500 youth are on porches and roofs,
and a handful are hurling rocks and bottles.
When Thomas fully unleashes his men, they charge
into the crowd with riot masks on and nightsticks up,
and are met with a hail of rocks and bricks.
Thomas fires some tear gas and withdraws,
and calls in the 100 county and university officials
and officers standing by.
For the next several hours, small affinity groups
engage in hit and run battles with police,
often in coordinated attacks and ambushes.
County deputies pump out massive amounts of tear gas,
and a toxic cloud settles over the three flats.
The crowd blocks Bassett Street with burning barricades,
cops knock them down and they're set back up.
Finally, an uneasy calm settles
over the neighborhood around midnight.
It does not last.
Sunday, as hundreds of youth congregate
and an equal number of officers approach,
Mayor Dyke again refuses to grant a temporary street permit,
and threatens to use his new power
to declare a street-clearing curfew.
That afternoon, Alderman Soglin is arrested a second time
for unlawful assembly while standing by himself
near his Bassett Street apartment.
When jailers won't take alderwoman Alicia Ashman's check
for his $507 bail, Fire Captain Ed Durkin,
president of Firefighters Local 311,
authorizes the use of union funds.
The police department and the Police and Fire Commission
are not amused, especially since Soglin
was one of the few aldermen to support Ed Durkin
when he took local 311 out on an illegal strike
just a few months before.
If everyone wonders what the distinguishing factor
about Madison is, it's this, we had a fire captain
and a union leader in the 1960s in Ed Durkin,
who took the union out on two illegal strikes.
What did we do to him?
We made him chief.
[audience laughing]
That's what you need to know about Madison, Wisconsin.
Alderman Eugene Parks, elected in April
as the city's first African-American alderman,
is also arrested for not leaving when police tell him to.
If you know Gene Parks, he doesn't do
what police tell him to do.
A jury finds Alderman Parks innocent,
but the council breaks with its usual practice
and refuses to pay his legal fees,
which his attorney Dick Cates then waives.
Soglin is convicted of failing to obey a lawful command
from a police officer and pays a small fine.
The unlawful assembly charge against Soglin and 20 others
are dropped, because Inspector Thomas broke the law
when he declared an entire six block area
an unlawful assembly.
After dark, the riot resumes as kids and cops
battled throughout downtown.
Late Sunday night, some Mifflanders
come to the City County Building
where the City Council is holding an informal meeting
in the vain hope of meeting with Mayor Dyke.
But a horde of high school kids and other townies
beat them up while sheriff deputies turn their backs
and do not intervene.
"After last night," Sheriff Leslie says,
"they deserve everything they get."
Early Monday evening, Mayor Dyke comes to ground zero,
speaking to a jeering crowd of about 1,000
from the steps of the new Mifflin Co-op,
which you see still has its old white front grocery sign.
He rejects Soglin's demand for amnesty and tells the people
they have half an hour to depart,
they build new barricades instead.
And soon after Dyke leaves,
400 officers from several jurisdictions
resume their tear gas offensive
and the third night riot is on.
The Monday night riot is the worst yet.
Tear gas blankets the area, with rocks thrown
and trash fires set from the fraternities
to the southeast dorms.
Police fire tear gas at girls giving first aid
in front of the Hillel Foundation.
They fire tear gas into a group of professors
on the porch at the University Club.
Students studying for finals have to leave
the Memorial Library because tear gas
is coming up into the building.
Police finally exhaust their supply of tear gas canisters
and start throwing empty soda cans at students
to try and get them to disperse.
And the students are fighting back,
and not just with projectiles, but by firebombing
three city, state, and university offices.
For the second May in three years,
student chaos in downtown streets shuts down
the city bus service, and the city buses
are driven by teamsters.
So the protest movement has scared away
football players and teamsters.
[audience chuckling]
Tuesday morning, there are shattered storefronts
up and down State Street,
86 people have been treated for injuries,
the student senate puts $1,900 into a bail fund
for the 100 or so arrestees.
The city and county have spent about $80,000 for overtime
and emergency costs, and Madison has again made its mark
with the first lifestyle riot of the era.
This is three weeks before Stonewall.
On Tuesday, a citizens group called
the Committee of Thirty gets Dyke to withdraw the police,
so their volunteers can go into the neighborhood
to interview the kids to find out
not just what happened, but why.
And the group is organized and led by a young attorney
with the La Follette Sinykin firm,
[audience exclaiming]
Shirley S. Abrahamson, with help from businessman
philanthropist Lowell Frautschi
and the Reverend Max Gabler.
Dozens of volunteers spent three days hearing
about mean cops and bad landlords.
And the committee tells Dyke, and he orders
a comprehensive inspection of all 140 buildings
in the core Miffland area.
221 citations for building and sanitary code later,
Dyke declares there is considerable legitimacy
to the tenant complaints.
Now while there's peace in the streets,
there is no peace in the suites at City Hall.
Soglin pleads for a four-hour block party permit
for Saturday, and even though Mayor Dyke now supports
the request and praises Soglin for quote,
"his desperate and significant attempt to bring peace,"
the council denies the permit 17 to 3.
"These people have shown a lack of respect
"for anything honest and decent,"
Eastside Alderman Ralph Hornbeck says.
"They've also shown they plan to have a party
"whether or not they have a permit."
And the threatened showdown is averted only when Ed Durkin,
who is popular with students
even before he bailed Soglin out, invites everyone
to his large spread on the West Side.
Dyke provides two city buses free of charge,
the Mifflin Co-op gives the beer,
and about 400 Mifflanders have a pretty good party
and pig roast.
And the national media take note.
"Campus riots in many parts of the country
"have given some people the idea
"there are too many radicals,"
CBS newsman Murray Fromson reports.
"But perhaps in fairness, it should be said
"there are too few Ed Durkins."
In June, Mayor Dyke appoints a three-man panel
to investigate why and how things got so out of hand.
Their report blames both sides and pleases neither.
Now among its findings, that Police Chief Emory's policy
of responding with overwhelming force before it's needed
actually helped provoke the riot.
The committee finds that the police did not use tear gas
quote, "until they had been pelted with missiles,"
but fault Emory and Thomas for the initial response.
Quote, "The second additional precipitating factor
"was the bringing of police attired in riot gear
"to Mifflin Street before there had been
"any actual violence."
Police show up in riot gear, the kids go,
"Hey, you want a riot, okay, we'll give you a riot."
Once the violence began, the report continues,
"training proved inadequate in the case
"of a certain few officers who, during the disorders,
"engaged in beatings, improper use of riot sticks,
"and indiscriminate and improper use of tear gas.
"More and better training in this field is needed."
Stores along State Street with shattered windows
and lost inventory file claims for $8,000 under a state law
making cities responsible for damages during riots.
The day after Christmas, the city denies all claims.
Now this was a time when the Badger football team
had gone 0-19-1 over the past two years.
And the Wisconsin State Journal columnist Roundy Coughlin
had a unique perspective on the first two nights of riots.
"If the football team could get a march on
"like a lot of the students did Sunday night,
"they would go to the Rose Bowl."
[audience laughing]
And a few days later, a sibling city's underground press
pays respect on its front page,
and this is just a 100 miles
north of the Rose Bowl stadium itself.
"On Wisconsin," the Berkeley Barb declares.
So those are the highlights of 1969.
I want to take a few minutes now and step back
and give you the big picture, and the five issues
that dominate the decade.
At one time or another, each of these issues
was the most important issue
in city politics and government,
and often had a direct and overwhelming impact
on city elections.
Law Park, landfill on the shores of Lake Monona,
here being used as a waterfront parking lot.
And as the decade opens,
the most politically significant issue was building
or blocking Monona Terrace,
the Civic Auditorium and Convention Center
Frank Lloyd Wright designed for this location.
It was the big issue in 1960,
and loomed so large in 1961 that Henry Reynolds
ran for mayor, that it was the main reason
that Henry Reynolds ran for mayor, and killing it
was the main issue in a referendum in 1962.
It was the dominant issue for those three years.
This is Frank Lloyd Wright's last iteration,
finished seven weeks before his death.
The project was approved by referendum in 1954,
contracted for in 1956, killed by state legislation in 1957,
revived by state legislation in 1959,
put out to bid in 1961.
That's how close we came to building it.
We put it out to bid in 1961,
and was abandoned by referendum a year later.
Henry Reynolds and the other conservative businessmen
who fought Monona Terrace figured
if they delayed it long enough
through litigation and legislation,
inflation alone would make it too expensive,
and it would be abandoned.
And they were right.
Now it is heresy to say, but I think in a way
those who fought Monona Terrace did us a favor,
because it had the same size theaters and art gallery
as the Overture Center for the Arts.
If we had built this, I think it is highly unlikely
that Jerry Frautschi would have given us
another $205 million to replace it.
Which would have been too bad, because Overture
is such a much better building,
and the Monona Terrace is in such a poor location
for a performing arts center.
There just aren't enough bars and restaurants,
and it's got lousy mass transit.
And even as a convention center, it would have failed
because it only has 45% of the convention space
in the Monona Terrace that we finally did build.
And obviously there would be no way
to expand from Wright's design.
There was another effort in the late 60s
by Wright's son-in-law, William Wesley Peters.
It was not as politicized, but it met the same fate.
The construction budget did not satisfy
the construction drawings, and the project was abandoned.
And this would have been just phase one of Monona Basin,
a staggering statement of architectural ambition.
Three miles from Olin Park to Law Park,
this would have been John Nolan's
grand esplanade on steroids.
These plans are as far as it got.
The next dominant issue was urban renewal.
Especially what city staff
and the Madison Redevelopment Authority did
to the eastern tip of the Greenbush addition.
The Bush was a 60-year-old neighborhood
that was international, intergenerational,
interreligious, and interracial.
But unfortunately had inadequate infrastructure,
so the MRA turned this into this,
the Triangle Urban Renewal Area.
It is to Madison's shame that we knowingly destroyed
this important community without a second thought.
It is further insulting to see how poorly
the program was planned and executed,
and especially how it failed to provide
timely, affordable replacement housing.
But I do not think the motive was malevolent,
I do not think its purpose was to break up the neighborhood.
The city didn't care about the neighborhood,
the city only cared about streets and sewers
and building codes and the highest use of land.
The community was not the target
but yes, it was collateral damage, and the city
was okay with that.
Urban renewal was a major issue when Mayor Reynolds
won re-election in 1963,
and was on the ballot itself in 1964
when it barely survived a referendum
to end urban renewal and abolish
the Redevelopment Authority.
Reynolds, both newspapers, and the entire political
and business elite opposed that referendum,
and it failed by only 367 votes out of 37,000 cast.
Think how angry people must have been at Urban Renewal
to have come that close to rejecting years and years
of future federal aid.
But wait till you hear the kicker.
Now the hardest part about urban renewal in '62 and '63
was finding replacement housing
for the displaced black households.
With no law at any level against housing discrimination,
non-whites here had access to 27% of the rental units
in the city, and 10% of the housing for sale.
Housing discrimination was so universal,
it was reflected on the federal forms.
Of almost 19,000 housing units in the city of Madison,
non-whites had access to 3,500, that's less than 19%.
That is why, as the decade opened, 76%
of Madison non-whites lived in just four census tracts
and eight aldermanic wards had no non-whites at all.
So the civil rights movement was a big issue
throughout the decade, and it was a very big deal
in December 1963, when Mayor Reynolds,
a conservative white businessman,
cast the tie-breaking vote
to enact the first law or ordinance
in the state of Wisconsin to ban housing discrimination.
And the principle drafter of that historical ordinance
was that young attorney whom we've already met.
[audience chuckling]
Another indication that Madison in the 60s
really was a special place.
A figure of statewide historical significance,
the first female Justice of the Supreme Court,
the first female Chief Justice, was a leading member
of the mayor's Commission on Human Rights,
and wrote the ordinance creating
the Equal Opportunities Commission.
And Shirley Abrahamson was not the only future
Supreme Court Chief Justice to play an important role
in local politics.
Here's Rollie Day, chairman
of the Madison Housing Authority,
which tried to build public housing for the people
displaced by the Redevelopment Authority,
at the dedication of the Triangle's
Gay Braxton Apartments,
Madison's first public housing
since veterans housing in 1949.
That's Rollie under the arrow next
to mayor Otto Festge.
The good news is that all those tenants
were from the old Greenbush Addition.
The bad news is that their houses had been torn down
in 1962 and '63, and the grand opening was June 1965.
The University of Wisconsin was the fourth great issue
throughout the decade, because it is the critical component
that makes Madison Madison.
And not just when protests spill out into the streets.
Economically, intellectually, emotionally,
socially, culturally, the university is central
to our identity.
And in the 60s, the university had a profound impact
on downtown planning and development.
Thanks to massive amounts of federal funds
and a president in Fred Harvey Harrington,
who proudly proclaimed himself the biggest imperialist
since Teddy Roosevelt, the university
turned this into this.
And created such a backlash that it was the cause
of the referendum to end urban renewal
and abolish the Redevelopment Authority,
not the Triangle.
The Triangle residents had very little political
and economic capital.
They couldn't fight back.
But the property owners around
the southeast dorm expansion area had political capital,
and they could fight back, and they are the ones
who almost ended urban renewal.
So what's really important about university expansionism
is that that's what caused the decade's first rift
between town and gown, not student protests.
The 1964 referendum to end urban renewal
and abolish the redevelopment authority was 18 months
before any student protests generated appreciable backlash.
Harrington and the regents are to blame
for the decade's first community hostility
toward the campus, not the students.
It was the adults, not the kids.
Of course, radicals and revolutionaries
did cause serious problems
for the university and themselves.
Most especially on October 27th, 1966
at the Stock Pavilion, when Senator Edward Kennedy headlines
a campaign appearance for Governor Pat Lucey.
And a dozen or so leaders
from the Committee to End the War in Vietnam
heckle him so aggressively that Kennedy gives up
and leaves the stage.
8,000 students sign a letter of apology
for what a handful have done,
but there's more than just
symbolic public relations backlash.
There is a substantive reaction by the university
with profound implications.
Because it was the heckling of Senator Kennedy
that caused the faculty to adopt the rule
against obstructing university activities.
They actually called it the Kennedy rule.
This was the rule protesters knowingly violated
when they blocked the hallways of the Commerce Building
in October 1967 to block the Dow Chemical Company
from conducting job interviews because they made napalm
for use in Vietnam.
It was to remove the students from the building
to enforce the Kennedy rule
that Chancellor William Sewell called
in the Madison Police Department.
As you may have heard, that also did not go well.
The Battle of Dow radicalized thousands of students
and made the community curious about the anti-war movement,
and it made a star out of Paul Soglin,
who you see under the red arrow about to be beaten.
Madison police officers whale on the obstructors
for 13 minutes, sending 52 to the emergency room,
most of them with scalp lacerations that bleed profusely
but are not really serious injuries.
But then on the plaza outside, a different dynamic.
It's class break and suddenly a crowd
of several thousand, and many are fighting back,
some with rocks and bottles.
The police are under siege,
several officers are severely injured.
Emery finally calls for tear gas,
its first use anywhere to quell an on-campus protest.
This is the moment when Police Chief Emery vows
he will never be outnumbered again,
that he will respond at all future demonstrations
with overwhelming force,
even before such force is necessary.
This is the birth of the policy put into place
on Mifflin Street on May 3rd, 1969.
The cops help spur a riot on Mifflin Street
because they showed up in riot gear.
They were in riot gear because they had bricks
and rocks thrown at them at Dow.
They were at Dow to enforce
the Kennedy rule against obstruction.
An event in 1966 creates the conditions for an event in 1967
that helps produce an event in 1969.
The spirit moves through time and leaves us with history.
And finally, bringing it all full circle,
the 60s ends with the deaths of two stellar citizens
who fought each other for years over Frank Lloyd Wright
and Monona Terrace.
Joseph W. "Bud" Jackson, 90, indefatigable advocate
for Madison improvements and implacable foe
of Frank Lloyd Wright and Monona Terrace.
Colonel Jackson organized the army's
last mounted cavalry unit under General Jack Black Pershing
in World War I.
Was later business manager for the medical clinic
founded by his father, a Civil War surgeon.
He left the Jackson Clinic in 1937
to found and lead the Madison and Wisconsin Foundation,
the forerunner to our chamber of commerce.
He raised private funds for the University Arboretum,
the Madison School Forest, and 18 city parks,
helped get public funds for the airport,
VA hospital, and City County Building,
and helped kill Monona Terrace.
An economics professor emeritus Harold Groves, 72,
a founder of the modern cooperative movement,
the intellectual and political father
of Wisconsin's first in the nation
Unemployment Compensation Act,
and an important supporter of Frank Lloyd Wright.
One of six children of a Lodi farm couple,
Groves earned three degrees at Wisconsin.
Took his doctorate in 1927
under the legendary John R. Commons,
whose endowed chair he would later hold,
served in the Assembly and Senate in the 30s.
He was the chief faculty sponsor and patron
of the interracial, interreligious
women's cooperative Groves House.
He and his wife Helen were friends of Frank Lloyd Wright
since the 30s and leaders of Citizens for Monona Terrace.
Groves served six year on the auditorium committee
until he was replaced by Mayor Henry Reynolds
after that momentous election of 1961.
May their memories be for a blessing.
That concludes my talk,
thank you very much for your kind attention.
[audience applauding]