 | |
| Author | Jeff Kisseloff |
|---|---|
| Subject | 1960s U.S. History |
| Genre | Oral history |
| Publisher | University of Kentucky Press |
Publication date | December 29, 2006 |
| Media type | Hardcover, ebook |
| ISBN | 9780813124162 |
Generation on Fire: Voices of Protest from the 1960s, An Oral History by Jeff Kisseloff is a nonfiction collection of oral histories from 1960s activists and counterculture figures, published in 2006 by University of Kentucky Press.
Jeff Kisseloff is a journalist and oral historian who before publishing this book, had previously published two other oral histories. [1] [2] During the 1960s, he was too young to directly participate in anti-segregation and antiwar protests. [3] He began this project with a focus on the history of rock 'n roll but was drawn to the descriptions of activism in the interviews and began asking about political views. [4] He then lost his agent and his next agents had difficulties finding a publisher, but ultimately the book was published by University of Kentucky Press. [4] Kisseloff describes the book as "a tribute to those Americans who stood up and said no to war, greed, racism, sexism, homophobia, pollution, censorship, lame music, and bad haircuts". [1] [3]
The book is based on fifteen interviews with a variety of activists and figures from the 1960s, including Bernard Lafayette, Daniel Berrigan, Bob Zellner, Paul Krassner, Frank Kameny, Elsa Marley Skylark, Peter Berg, Verandah Porche, Gloria Richardson Dandridge, David Cline, Lee Weiner, Marilyn Salzman Webb, and a joint interview with the mother and boyfriend of Allison Krause. [3] [1] [5] [6]
Each chapter begins with an essay about the interview subject along with photographs, and each oral history is written in a narrative format without the interview questions included. [3] [6]
In a review for American Studies , Amy Scott anaylzes the usefulness of the work for instructors, writing, "Interviews with Lafayette, Zellner, and Richardson Dandridge provide numerous examples of how Civil Rights activists endured brutal beatings and risked death to render racial injustice visible, thereby altering the perceptions of activists, white segregationists, and bystanders who witnessed movement activities." [1] Ray Schuck writes in a review for The Journal of Popular Culture , "When Gloria Richardson mentions how she and others put red pepper on their legs to deter attack dogs, you understand the enormity of the struggle for equality" and that the book "should have a spot reserved on the bookshelves of all who want never to forget the price paid for freedom and equality in America." [7]
In The Oral History Review, Zachary M. Schrag writes "it seems not to have occurred to him that conservatives of the era also fought for what they believed was right" and states the lack of interviews with opposing sides "missed the chance to draw parallels between clashing worldviews." [3] Eric J. Morgan, in Material Culture, also asks, "Where, for example, are the forces of Barry Goldwater, the influence of Phyllis Schlafly, or the rise of the Christian Right?" [2] Morgan also describes the collection, despite "some glaring and obviously biased omissions", as "a fine collection of remembrances from one of the most contentious eras in American history." [2]
In a review for The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society , Caroline Hoefferle describes the book as "ideal" for high school and undergraduate history students, and states, "Kisseloff's approach of writing the stories from the perspective of the interviewee may be a little problematic in terms of teaching students how to analyze primary sources, but a short discussion of his journalistic methodology may clear this issue up and make the chapters useful nonetheless." [5] In a review for H-Net, James Eichsteadt extends praise to Kisseloff for the development of the oral histories, including the interview questions chosen and the editing afterwards: "the fact that each interview reads so effortlessly, entertainingly, and with such authenticity is a testament not only to the storytelling abilities of the interviewees, but to Kisseloff's behind-the-scenes work in shaping the final product." [8] Publishers Weekly writes, "While Kisseloff's clumsy introductions to each entry may err on the side of campy, the testimonies themselves more than make up for it in substance and spirit." [9]
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who participated in or observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are to be preserved as an aural record for future generations. Oral history strives to obtain information from different perspectives and most of these cannot be found in written sources. Oral history also refers to information gathered in this manner and to a written work based on such data, often preserved in archives and large libraries. Knowledge presented by Oral History (OH) is unique in that it shares the tacit perspective, thoughts, opinions and understanding of the interviewee in its primary form.
The Youth International Party (YIP), whose members were commonly called Yippies, was an American youth-oriented radical and countercultural revolutionary offshoot of the free speech and anti-war movements of the late 1960s. It was founded on December 31, 1967. They employed theatrical gestures to mock the social status quo, such as advancing a pig as a candidate for President of the United States in 1968. They have been described as a highly theatrical, anti-authoritarian, and anarchist youth movement of "symbolic politics".
Paul Krassner was an American writer and satirist. He was the founder, editor, and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958. Krassner became a key figure in the counterculture of the 1960s as a member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and a founding member of the Yippies, a term he is credited with coining.
James Morris Lawson Jr. is an American activist and university professor. He was a leading theoretician and tactician of nonviolence within the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1960s, he served as a mentor to the Nashville Student Movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was expelled from Vanderbilt University for his civil rights activism in 1960, and later served as a pastor in Los Angeles for 25 years.
Daniel Joseph Berrigan was an American Jesuit priest, anti-war activist, Christian pacifist, playwright, poet, and author.
Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr. was an American business executive and civil rights attorney who worked for various civil rights movement organizations before becoming a close advisor to President Bill Clinton.
Verandah Porche is an American poet living in Guilford, Vermont.
Theodore Roszak was an American academic and novelist who concluded his academic career as Professor Emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay. He is best known for his 1969 text The Making of a Counter Culture.
Franklin Edward Kameny was an American gay rights activist. He has been referred to as "one of the most significant figures" in the American gay rights movement.
Gloria Richardson Dandridge was an American civil rights activist best known as the leader of the Cambridge movement, a civil rights action in the early 1960s in Cambridge, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore. Recognized as a major figure in the Civil Rights Movement, she was one of the signatories to "The Treaty of Cambridge", signed in July 1963 with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and state and local officials. It was an effort at reconciliation and commitment to change after a riot the month before.
Lee Weiner is an author and member of the Chicago Seven who was charged with "conspiring to use interstate commerce with intent to incite a riot" and "teaching demonstrators how to construct incendiary devices that would be used in civil disturbances" at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. He was acquitted of all charges by the jury and convicted on seven charges of criminal contempt that were later overturned on appeal. In 2020, Weiner published a memoir, Conspiracy to Riot: The Life and Times of One of the Chicago 7.
Bernard Lafayette, Jr. is an American civil rights activist and organizer, who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He played a leading role in early organizing of the Selma Voting Rights Movement; was a member of the Nashville Student Movement; and worked closely throughout the 1960s movements with groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the American Friends Service Committee.
Who Speaks for the Negro? is a 1965 book of interviews by Robert Penn Warren conducted with Civil Rights Movement activists. The book was reissued by Yale University Press in 2014. The Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University created the Who Speaks for the Negro? digital archive featuring digitized versions of the original reel-to-reel recordings that Warren compiled for each of his interviewees as well as print materials related to the project, including the transcripts of those recordings, letters written between Warren and the interviewees, and contemporary reviews of the book.
Peter Stephen Berg was an environmental writer, best known as an advocate of the concept of bioregionalism. In the early 1960s, he was a member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Diggers. He is the founder of the Planet Drum Foundation.
Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China is a scholarly book by Rowena Xiaoqing He, published by Palgrave Macmillan in April 2014. The book has been named one of the Top five China Books by the Asia Society. It is primarily an oral history of Yi Danxuan, Shen Tong, and Wang Dan, all exiled student leaders from the 1989 Tiananmen Movement in China. "Tracing the life trajectories of these exiles, from childhood during Mao's Cultural Revolution, adolescence growing up during the reform era, and betrayal and punishment in the aftermath of June 1989, to ongoing struggles in exile", the author explores, "how their idealism was fostered by the very powers that ultimately crushed it, and how such idealism evolved facing the conflicts that historical amnesia, political commitment, ethical action, and personal happiness presented to them in exile." Dan Southerland notes in Christian Science Monitor that the book provides "fresh insights and an appreciation for the challenges that exiled Chinese student leaders faced after they escaped from China." Paul Levine from American Diplomacy states that there was "a fourth major character: the author herself." Tiananmen Exiles is a part of the Palgrave Studies in Oral History and contains a foreword by Perry Link.
Judy Gumbo Albert, known as Judy Gumbo, is a Canadian-American activist. She was an original member of the Yippies, the Youth International Party, a 1960s counter culture and satirical anti-war group, along with fellow radicals Anita and Abbie Hoffman, Nancy Kurshan and Jerry Rubin, and husband Stew Albert
The Cambridge movement was an American social movement in Dorchester County, Maryland, led by Gloria Richardson and the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee. Protests continued from late 1961 to the summer of 1964. The movement led to the desegregation of all schools, recreational areas, and hospitals in Maryland and the longest period of martial law within the United States since 1877. Many cite it as the birth of the Black Power movement.
Dorothy "Dottie" Miller Zellner is an American human rights activist, feminist, editor, lecturer, and writer. A veteran of the 1960s civil rights movement, she served as a recruiter for the Freedom Summer project and was co-editor of Student Voice, the student newsletter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She is active in the Palestinian solidarity movement.
Martha Prescod Norman Noonan was a civil rights activist who is known for her work within the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and co-editing a 2012 book Hands on theFreedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC.
John Robert Zellner is an American civil rights activist. He graduated from Huntingdon College in 1961 and that year became a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as its first white field secretary. Zellner was involved in numerous civil rights efforts, including nonviolence workshops at Talladega College, protests for integration in Danville, Virginia, and organizing Freedom Schools in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1964. He also investigated the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner that summer.