Out of the streets and into the classroom? The new left and the counterculture in United States history textbooks

Journal of American History

Volumn 85, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 1527-1533

  Schulman, Bruce J ^a,b  

^a USA   (United States)

^b BOSTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0039606281     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2568271     Document Type: Review

References (69)

1. Rush H. Limbaugh III, See, I Told You So (New York, 1993), 66;
2. Albert Shanker quoted in Gary Putka, "Historians Propose Curriculum Tilted Away from the West," Wall Street Journal, Nov. 11, 1994, p. B8;
3. Newt Gingrich, To Renew America (New York, 1995), 30-31.
4. Forrest McDonald quoted in "The Periodical Observer," Wilson Quarterly, 19 (Autumn 1995), 113;
5. Gary B. Nash, "The Great Multicultural Debate," Contention, 1 (Spring 1992), 1-28.
6. For an overview of these developments, see Peter Novick, That Noble Dream (New York, 1988), 434ff.
7. Nash, "Great Multicultural Debate," 7;
8. Mary Beth Norton et al., A People and a Nation: A History of the United States, 4th ed. (Boston, 1994), xxi;
9. James Henretta et al., America's History, 3d ed. (New York, 1997), xxix.
10. Among the leading textbooks that advertise an emphasis on social history and the experiences of ordinary Americans are the several editions of Paul Boyer et al., The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People (Lexington, Mass.);
11. Norton et al., People and Nation;
12. Henretta et al., America's History;
13. Gary B. Nash et al., The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society (New York).
14. Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, The American Pageant: A History of the Republic, 10th ed. (Lexington, Mass., 1994), viii.
15. For the influence of social history in more traditional political history texts, see the evolution over time of such books as John M. Blum et al., The National Experience (Fort Worth);
16. Bailey and Kennedy, American Pageant;
17. Bernard Bailyn et al., The Great Republic: A History of the American People (Lexington, Mass.).
18. Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics (Princeton, 1968);
19. Gary B. Nash, Red, White, and Black (Englewood Cliffs, 1974);
20. Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible (Cambridge, Mass., 1979).
21. See, for examples of brief coverage, old and recent editions of Norton et al., People and a Nation;
22. Henretta et al., America's History;
23. Nash et al., American People;
24. Bailey and Kennedy, American Pageant;
25. Bailyn et al., Great Republic.
26. A notable exception is Paul Boyer et al., The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, 3d ed. (Lexington, Mass., 1996).
27. Enduring Vision devotes an entire chapter to the "troubled journey" from the Port Huron Statement to the Watergate break-in, including 12 pages on the New Left and the counterculture. James L. Roark et al., The American Promise (Boston, 1998), 127-28. The book also includes another 2 pages on opposition to the Vietnam War: see ibid., 1156-59.
28. John M. Blum et al., The National Experience, 3d ed. (New York, 1973), 784-90.
29. Robert Kelley, The Shaping of the American Past, 5th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, 1990), 755-78;
30. Bernard Bailyn et al., The Great Republic: A History of the American People, 4th ed. (Lexington, Mass., 1992), 549-50.
31. Gary Nash er al., The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society, 3d ed. (New York, 1994), 1034.
32. Some texts shoehorn the New Left and counterculture between sections on Black Power and on the emergence of the feminist or gay liberation movements. See, for example, Norton et al., People and a Nation, 4th ed. (1994), 1002-5;
33. Nash et al., American People, 3d ed. (1994), 1032-39.
34. The other common narrative strategy is to examine the "war at home" as part of a chapter on the war in Vietnam. See Henretta et al., America's History, 3d ed. (1997), 969-73.
35. A prominent example is John Mack Faragher et al., Out of Many: A History of the American People, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, 1997), 936-39.
36. Students for a Democratic Society, "America and the New Era" in Massimo Teodori, The New Left: A Documentary History (New York, 1969), 180.
37. John M. Murrin et al., Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People (Fort Worth, 1996), 959.
38. The exception is Roark et al., American Promise.
39. While this text devotes only half a page to the counterculture, it concedes that "1960s music often carried insurgent political and cultural messages": Roark et al., American Promise. ibid., 1128.
40. In 1968, The National Experience, distinguished between "defectors" and "changers": see Blum et al., National Experience, 2d ed. (1968), 842-43.
41. Bailyn et al., Great Republic, 4th ed. (1992), 549-51;
42. Nash et al., American People, 3d ed. (1994), 1034-36;
43. Faragher et al., Out of Many, 2d ed. (1997), 937-38;
44. Murrin et al., Liberty, Equality, Power, 959.
45. For a suggestion that the New Left "indirectly gave rise to a phenomenon that observers called the counterculture" but nonetheless a treatment of them as distinct entities, see Norton et al., People and a Nation, 4th ed. (1994), 1004.
46. Blum et al. escaped this reductive dualism for one edition: see Blum et al., National Experience, 3d ed. (1973), 784-90.
47. Among the texts reproducing the flowers in rifles photograph are Faragher, Out of Many, 2d ed. (1997), 938;
48. Norton et al., People and a Nation, 2d ed. (1986), 955.
49. Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America (New York, 1984);
50. Berkeley in the Sixties, prod. and dir. Mark Kitchell (Kitchell Films in association with POV Theatrical Films, 1990).
51. David Farber, Chicago '68 (Chicago, 1988);
52. Doug Rossinow, "'The Break-through to New Life': Christianity and the Emergence of the New Left in Austin, Texas, 1956-1964," American Quarterly, 46 (Sept. 1994), 309-40;
53. Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity (Chapel Hill, 1998);
54. David Farber, ed., The Sixties: From Memory to History (Chapel Hill, 1994);
55. Beth Bailey, "Sexual Revolutions," The Sixties: From Memory to History ibid., 235-62;
56. Kenneth Cmiel, "The Politics of Civility," The Sixties: From Memory to History ibid., 263-90.
57. See also Elizabeth Cobbs, "All You Need Is Love": The Peace Corps and the Sixties (Cambridge, Mass., 1998);
58. Michael C. Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze: Underground Radio and the Sixties (Westport, 1997).
59. Bradford Martin, "Into the Streets: Arts Groups and Politics in the 1960s" (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, in progress).
60. Farber, Chicago '68;
61. David Harris, Dreams Die Hard (New York, 1982), esp. 129, 142, passim;
62. Warren Belasco, Appetite for Change (New York, 1989).
63. Farber, Chicago '68.
64. Cmiel, "Politics of Civility," 263-90, esp. 271. The texts also fail to accommodate other important insights and topics of recent scholarship, such as the role of religion in shaping student protest, young conservative activists in the 1960s, and regional variations in the intensity and the nature of the youth rebellion. On regional variation, all four editions of A People and a Nation include a map of "disturbances on college campuses, 1967-69." But it receives an interpretation only in the fourth edition, and that is one line long.
65. (See Norton et al., A People and a Nation, 1st ed. (1982), 943;
66. Norton et al., A People and a Nation, ibid., 4th ed. (1994), 1003.)
67. Are readers seeing geographic differences in the antiwar movement or simply a correlation between populated areas and "disturbances"? The text tells us only that "protests were a popular tactic" and that demonstrations occurred across the nation. On religion and region in the New Left, see Rossinow, "'Break-through to New Life.'"
68. On conservatism, see John A. Andrew, The Other Side of the Sixties (New Brunswick, 1997).
69. Allan J. Lichtman, "History According to Newt," Washington Monthly, 27 (May 1995), 48.