Witness to the revolution: radicals, resisters, vets, hippies, and the year America lost its mind and found its soul

"During the academic calendar year of 1969 and 1970, there were 9000 protests and 84 acts of arson or bombings at schools across the country. Two and a half million students went on strike, and 700 colleges shut down. Witness to a Revolution, Clara Bingham's oral history of that year, brings readers into this moment when it seemed that everything was about to change, when the anti-war movement could no longer be written off as fringe, and when America seemed on the brink of a revolution at home, even as it continued to fight a long war abroad. This unique oral history of the late 1960s tells of the most dramatic events of the day in the words of those closest to the action--activists, organizers, criminals, bombers, policy makers, veterans, hippies, and draft dodgers. These chapters are narrative snapshots of key moments and critical groups that sprung up in some of the most turbulent years of the 20th century. As a whole, they capture the essence of an era. They questioned and challenged nearly every aspect of American society--work, capitalism, family, education, male-female relations, sex, science, and wealth--and many of their questions remain important. A sampling of insights: how the killing of four students at Kent State turned a straight social worker into a hippie overnight; how the draft turned Ivy League-educated young men into fugitives and prisoners; how powerful government insiders walked away from their careers; how Vietnam vets came home vowing to stop the war; how, in the name of peace, intellectuals became bombers; how alienation from the establishment and the older generation compelled people to drop out, experiment with psychedelic drugs, and live communally; and how the civil rights and antiwar movements gave birth to feminism"--