Those of you at A&M around 69/70 - how did Vietnam affect campus life?

5,655 Views | 33 Replies | Last: 3 yr ago by Smokedraw01
redline248
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I am class of '02, so I can only go by things I've watched or read, but I don't know if there's much out there about what it was like at A&M during the time. Was there much protest on campus? Was the majority opinion of protesters negative?

Had things shifted much from say 65 to 69?
F4GIB71
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There were only about 14,000 in whole school. Corps was predominant and virtually all upperclassmen were under contract. Only Army and AF in those days. Very few D&C and most of those were in Marine or Navy PLC but stayed in Corps for leadership opportunity. The rest of the school was mostly conservative. Majority were in engineering and agriculture which tend to be conservative and patriotic.

Only demonstration I can recall was around 1970, possibly Kent State time. There was going to be a demonstration on main drill field. Corps leadership said not to wear uniforms to prevent escalating. Seems like I recall several hundred which made the news. After subtracting the Corps guys (obvious from haircuts in those days) and Ag student S-kickers, there weren't that many actually demonstrating against the war.

That was at least my recollections. On a related note, I served with a great guy later. He was t.u. '72 ROTC AF commander. He said they couldn't wear their uniforms to class on campus.
F4GIB71
OldArmy71
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To add to F4's memories, a rumor went around that there was going to be some sort of demonstration in front of Sully, probably in the spring of 1969. I know it was during my sophomore year, because the Sergeant Major of the Corps at that time, Matt Carroll, showed up and told those of us in the Corps who had gathered to watch the proceedings to get lost. I suppose he was afraid we would do something that would result in negative publicity. (I vaguely recall that there was a TV crew there.)

I don't remember reading anything about it in the Batt or hearing anything else about it.

I do not remember anyone in class or any professor ever talking about the war at all, and I was an English major who was taking all sorts of Liberal Arts classes.

The only obviously liberal professor I ever had was the one I had for Sociology (which was not an independent department in those days; it was part of the Animal Science department), but he never said a word about the war.
redline248
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Very interesting stuff. Back in those days I imagine profs at A&M either stayed quiet bc of the military tradition or bc they weren't concerned with injecting politics into their classes.

I've been watching the Ken Burns documentary on the war, and it seemed like every campus in America had demonstrations by that point.
OldArmy71
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It's hard for someone who has gone to college in the last 20 years to believe, but the faculty at A&M, and nationwide, was infinitely more conservative in the 60s and 70s than it is now, and not just in engineering and business and so on. The winds of change were stirring--there were progressive and even radical professors at Texas when I was in grad school in the mid 70s--but the tenured faculty were quite conservative, in my experience, even in English, History, and American Studies. There was NO mention of "race, gender, and class" in a single undergraduate or graduate class I took in any of those subjects. No "queer studies," etc.

But as I said, change was coming. I was a TA for a class called "The American Experience" which was taught by three professors (one in English, one in History, one in Government) who had a fairly liberal take on American history. (The students called it the "What's Wrong with America" class.) One of them was a real radical--he had participated in the Chicago riots in 1968. One of the books we taught in the class was The Grapes of Wrath, and the professors had to justify it to their higher-ups every semester, because the department heads and deans all thought it was a Communist tract. Not kidding.
CanyonAg77
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https://blog.chron.com/40yearsafter/2009/11/m-day-1969-millions-gather-in-the-name-of-peace/

Quote:

In Dallas, a rally aimed at middle-class people that promoters expected to draw 5,000 people drew only about 600 "hippie types." At SMU, 100 people took part in an early-morning rally and 600 participated in a demonstration later in the day.

In Arlington, "A few shaggy-haired students" paraded a casket in front of the University of Texas at Arlington student union.

In Denton, 600 marched at North Texas State University campus; 125 tried to break off and march to downtown, but were stopped by police. Nine were arrested.

In San Antonio, a rally at a park near the campus drew 900 people.

Rallies at Texas Tech in Lubbock drew 300 people and at Pan American College in Edinburg, 350 people.

At TCU in Fort Worth and Baylor in Waco, demonstrators read the names of the war dead.

At SFA in Nacogdoches, about 400 students attended an outdoor discussion in which students and faculty spoke.

At Lamar Tech in Beaumont, scores of students were heckled as they met in the college quadrangle to voice their views on the war.

And, although the Chronicle didn't mention it, a handful of Texas A&M students took part in the moratorium by marching from the Unitarian churh to the statue of Sul Ross.

I'm betting that handful weren't students, or they were grad students, at most.
CanyonAg77
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https://newspaper.library.tamu.edu/lccn/sn86088544/1969-10-16/ed-1/seq-1/
OldArmy71
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Bless you, Canyon! I remembered correctly!

I guess Matt Carroll ran off all the underclassmen. All I see is a bunch of white belts. Mostly juniors, a couple of seniors (you can tell by their headgear even though their boots are not visible).

Lots of RVs, too. I bet most of them are Corps Staff.
DustysLineup
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One of my old tenured profs in the 90's told us a story about catching some flack from parents for assigning students to read the Communist Manifesto in the 70's. He said he put them at ease by explaining that we needed to know the enemy.
Tx Ag72
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I was a RA in the spring of 70 and yes there were some outsiders who showed up at the drill field. I was informed by my boss who worked for Gen. Hannigan to discourage attendance. I went, and I don't think the demonstrators were there more than 10 to 15 minutes before a Texas Ranger (Otto Luther ) if I remember correctly escorted the two or three guys off campus without any incident. Luther would later become head of A&M police.
BQ78
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I wasn't at A&M but I do remember a newspaper article in the San Diego Union in the early '70s talking about how A&M was different than other colleges-- no protests, patriotic and military. It interviewed students who were scratching their heads over the behavior of students at other schools.

My dad class of '55 was so proud of his alma mater he cut that article out and put it on the refrigerator, stayed there for years until it curled up and was yellow. It eventually disappeared after I went to A&M.
CanyonAg77
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I seem to recall a magazine article claiming that A&M and one other school were the only ones without anti-war protests. Like your dad, my dad held onto that one a while. Wish I could recall the source.
BQ78
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As I recall the other one was Brigham Young.
CanyonAg77
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BQ78 said:

As I recall the other one was Brigham Young.
Seems highly likely.

Though as we see above, A&M didn't have "zero" protests. But it's up for discussion as to whether anyone in the protest was a student.
Texarkanaag69
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I don't remember any protests, organized or otherwise. I was a non-reg but was 100% in support of the Corps which at that time was responsible for all of the traditions at A&M. It was a very conservative student body but I, a PoliSci major, never encountered a Prof who spoke negatively about A&M or the warriors in the Corps and their service in Vietnam. I recognized the Corps as the heart and soul of A&M and I think the vast majority of non-regs felt the same way, at least the ones I knew. Can't even remember any student who was vocal against the war or critical of A&M's contribution to the war effort. We were, however, aware of what was being said on other campuses in the old SWC.
aggiejim70
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Gonna need some help with this 'cause the mists of time are kicking in. The biggest "demonstration" I remember is my fish year in the spring of '67. As often mentioned, A&M was going through a number of changes in those days, One was "food service". Everybody had to buy a 5 or 7 day "meal plan". That worked just fine for the Corps, but not so much for the non-regs. So one April night a large contingent of non-regs "march" on Gen. Rudders house to demand a change. Doesn't take long for the word to go through the quad, and the Corps falls out to meet them. Fortunately things did not get out of hand. It could have got ugly. Gen. and Mrs. Rudder come to the door of their home to address the students. The General listens to the crowd for a few minutes then says, okay I want you and you and the young lady in third row and the fellow in the cowboy hat in my office Monday at 10a.m. and we'll get this worked out. And that's what they did.
The person that is not willing to fight and die, if need be, for his country has no right to life.

James Earl Rudder '32
January 31, 1945
TexasAggie73
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I was a freshman non reg in fall of 69 and the biggest issue I remember was about guys with long hair, especially from the cowboys. The term highway 6 was very popular for those that didn't like what was going on. Over all it was a very conservative campus. A little story from my junior year and on the first day of economic class, walked in and the professor was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and he look real sloppy for A&M. It was Phil Graham.
chick79
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My brother was class of '73 and in the Corps. We were at one of his final reviews (I think 1971). During the ceremony, some non-regs drive by honked their horn and spouted off some anti-war rant. Only time I ever saw this.
dcbowers
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There is an apocryphal story that soon after the Kent State shootings in 1970, somebody at A&M made a faux scoreboard that said: "National Guard: 4, Kent State: 0".

Unlike Austin, I don't think there were very many Vietnam War protests in College Station.
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bicmitchum
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I was at a&m in 71.the only unrest I noticed was about the football team
Revenuer
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I was a fish in the Corp in the fall of 1969, coming out of the "C" when there was still a post office in a corner of the MSC near where Rudder Tower is now. As I exited the building, a guy with the longest hair I had ever seen, up until then, handed me a flyer. As I stopped to read it an upper classman snatched the flyer out of my hand and told me I did not need to see it. Then I realized that there were maybe three or four other long-haired guys standing around trying to hand out flyers, but no one was interested. I stood around a few minutes to see what would happen. The long-haired guys, that I heard later were not students, got frustrated at getting politely ignored and decided to have a "sit-in" on the grass in front of the MSC. Everything had been quiet and peaceful up till then. Once the guys were on the grass all hell broke loose and a group of upper classmen (CTs) went over and rudely escorted the long-haired guys away. Always wondered what happened to them.

Later, in I guess about the Spring of '72, when the draft lottery was being held live over TV and the radio in the evening, I was walking through the Quad and lot of windows were open. Everyone seemed to be listening to the draft numbers being called out, based on your birthday. I could hear draft numbers being called from windows all over the Quad. When a high draft number was called, meaning they had low chance of being drafted, you could hear excited voices. When a low draft number was called then you heard a raft of expletives. The next morning when we fell out to march to Duncan for breakfast, there were a few Serge Butts and Zips with high draft numbers carrying uniforms to turn in.
bicmitchum
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only lottery I ever won.then Nixon called off the draft
aggiejim70
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My draft number my senior year was 71. I took a little gas on that. Good Times. The Little Red Head even sent me a Red T-shirt with the number on it.
The person that is not willing to fight and die, if need be, for his country has no right to life.

James Earl Rudder '32
January 31, 1945
chimpanzee
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OldArmy71 said:

One of the books we taught in the class was The Grapes of Wrath, and the professors had to justify it to their higher-ups every semester, because the department heads and deans all thought it was a Communist tract. Not kidding.

Late bump, but this is interesting. I had to read The Grapes of Wrath in high school in the 90's.

Even at the time I was puzzled how in the part where they stop at the commune at the Colorado River and magically all of the starved to death dirt-poor migrant tenant farmers had some kind of bountiful camp with all that anyone could ever need and there was peace and harmony, but as a work of fiction wasn't constrained by the need to explain where these resources came from. Naturally they didn't stay there either.

Still better than The Jungle. I read about half of it until it got to the part where they attended a communist party meeting with the text made up of speeches that covered the back half of the book.
OldArmy71
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I have been retired for over a decade but I taught The Grapes of Wrath for several years in college and then for 21 years in an AP English high school class. I'm always happy to derail a thread and chat about literature!

Like many intellectuals and artists of the '30s, Steinbeck was attracted to Communism because it seemed a real alternative to a world gone mad in the Depression. He wrote another novel, In Dubious Battle, in which the main character is literally a Communist who has just joined the Party and is learning how to help lead a strike.

Of course, Steinbeck had no idea what Stalin was doing in the USSR and to my knowledge never joined the Party or even attended a meeting, though he had some connections to Communists through one of his wives and through the union organizers he knew in California.

Steinbeck's "philosophy," if it can be called a coherent thing, drew just as much from the Bible and from Jefferson's agrarianism and from Emerson's Oversoul as it did from Marx. In short, Steinbeck's philosophy is long on idealism and abstract longing and short on practical answers, as are most philosophies.

I think the camp you are referring to is the Weedpatch camp which was established and run by one of the New Deal agencies. The workers are protected from the natives there and are allowed to run their own government (more or less) and so the place represents an ideal of how government can intervene and give people the ability to live as decent individuals. People at the camp do not want handouts; they want their hard labor to be translated into a livable income, as it was on the little farms they have lost to the Dust Bowl.

The problem that the book depicts is that the camp cannot on its own solve the problem of unemployment and low wages, and so the Joads have to move on to a very uncertain future.

Students tended to enjoy the book and we always finished by watching the ending of the 1940 film with Henry Fonda playing Tom Joad:

aalan94
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Quote:

Sociology (which was not an independent department in those days; it was part of the Animal Science department),
This warms my heart, oddly enough.
Smokedraw01
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To build upon this, how did A&M handle integration? Any stories or books to look into?
aggiejim70
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Smokedraw01 said:

To build upon this, how did A&M handle integration? Any stories or books to look into?
We had some growing pains as a southern school. Some things I'm not real proud of, like the night in Duncan when Martin Luther King was killed. On the whole, we had more problems with admitting women than we had with integration
The person that is not willing to fight and die, if need be, for his country has no right to life.

James Earl Rudder '32
January 31, 1945
30wedge
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bicmitchum said:

only lottery I ever won.then Nixon called off the draft
Same here. My lottery number was 12 and I was being teased about it by some veterans I worked with at the time. Then they stopped the draft.
Smokedraw01
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aggiejim70 said:

Smokedraw01 said:

To build upon this, how did A&M handle integration? Any stories or books to look into?
We had some growing pains as a southern school. Some things I'm not real proud of, like the night in Duncan when Martin Luther King was killed. On the whole, we had more problems with admitting women than we had with integration
Thanks.

Can you tell a little more about the night of the MLK assassination?

I'm currently reading Dallas 1963 and it goes into the relationship between Ted Dealey, HL Hunt, Rev. Criswell, and Gen. Edwin Walker and how their attitudes towards JFK is what brought him to Dallas in November. Hunt and Walker appear to have been lunatics but it's hard to tell what is hyperbole and what is accurate. Once Kennedy is killed, they are very sheepish.
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Smokedraw01
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JJMt said:

This is obviously a thread derail, but general Walker was an interesting person. He was my dad's division commander in Germany in the early 60s. He was a very unusual man but also a very competent commanding officer. By unusual, his political views were considered extreme but not all that unusual for the era, but he was also widely believed to be gay in an era where that was intolerable, especially within the Army.


I wasn't trying to derail the thread. It seemed dead to me. Walker was eventually arrested twice for fondling undercover police officers.

I didn't realize he had basically led the riot that took place at Ole Miss when James Meredith tried to enroll.

And would Oswald have been able to kill Kennedy if he had successfully assassinated Walker?
aggiejim70
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Perhaps i shouldn't have brought that up. It would be hard to tell the story without getting awful close to naming names. Educated guess is virtually all the people involved have had a change of heart and mind on various social issues over the past 50 years.
The person that is not willing to fight and die, if need be, for his country has no right to life.

James Earl Rudder '32
January 31, 1945
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Smokedraw01
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JJMt said:

I apologize. I didn't mean to imply that you were derailing; rather, I felt like I was.
I apologize for coming across too strong. That wasn't my intent. The last thing I want to be known for on this board is a thread derailer, so I was probably too defensive.

This board is the island of sanity in the ocean of insanity.
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