This is America?: The Sixties in Lawrence, Kansas

by R. Monhollon

Overview

Communities across America were thrown into upheaval during the 1960s, when thousands of young people began to publicly question the status quo, particularly in terms of race, youth, and gender. As grassroots social movements sprung up on college campuses (and often spread to surrounding towns) where participants debated race, the role of government, Vietnam, feminism, the Cold War, and other issues of the day, Americans that supported the status quo joined forces to oppose the activists and lend their own voices to the debate on the meaning of citizenship and patriotism. Monhollon uncovers the voices of ordinary people on all sides of the political spectrum in the university town of Lawrence, Kansas, and reveals how Americans from a range of ideological and political perspectives responded to and tried to resolve political and social conflict in the 1960s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312293291
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	08/17/2002
Edition description:	2002
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

Rusty L. Monhollon is assistant professor of history at Hood College.

Table of Contents

Introduction The Homestead of the Free Kansas Must Declare War The Right to These Things The Proper Sense of Values Strength Through Peace or Peace Through Strength? Our Way of Life The American Way This is America? This is Kansas? This is Lawrence? Lawrence Will Become a Police State Epilogue

Editorial Reviews

'Rusty Monhollon provides a useful corrective to the by-now traditional Berkeley/Upper West Side of New York-centric narratives of the 1960s. Dissent and discord shook middle America in those years, just as they did the better known centers of student activism and racial militancy on the two coasts. But it's not just the regional angle that makes this book so interesting. In this dark-hued account we encounter a wide range of fallible human beings, political actors on the left and the right, whites and blacks, young and old.' - Maurice Isserman, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of History, Hamilton College, and co-author of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s

'This Is America? offers us the fullest picture we have of how the Sixties happened proving that it really did happen in the vast stretches of the American prairie. Perhaps its signal achievement is to affirm how much a part of the American mainstream Goldwater-Wallace style conservatism was during the 1960s. This is a story of pitched conflict in the heartland, told sympathetically yet dispassionately.' - Doug Rossinow, author of The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America

'An extensively researched, in-depth account of the 1960s as they played out in one town in the heartland of America. Monhollon brings to light the sentiments of ordinary citizens across the political spectrum.' - Tom Wells, author of The War Within: America's Battle over Vietnam and Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg

'...illuminate[s] in important ways a major part of recent US history.' - K Blaser, Choice

'Monhollon reminds us that the 1960s happened with great ferocity in places other than the Deep South and Berkeley, California.' - Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher

In his first book, Monhollon (history, Hood Coll.) examines Lawrence, KS, during the 1960s. Being the home of the University of Kansas guaranteed that Lawrence would see the same type of student activism that other universities experienced during the decade. However, the population of Lawrence itself was socially and politically conservative. Townsfolk supported the Vietnam War and were unsympathetic to the Civil Rights, antiwar, and feminist movements. Confrontations between student activists and the local authorities grew during the late 1960s, climaxing in July 1970 when police shot two men. These deaths led to weeks of shootings and arson, which forced the governor to send in the National Guard to patrol the city. Monhollon uses interviews, newspaper articles, and other archival sources to present this story. Richly detailed and well written, his book gives an excellent account of how a Midwestern town was affected by a troubled period of American history. For all libraries. Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ. Lib., Parkersburg Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Monhollon (history, Hood College) looks at how citizens of the college town of Lawrence, Kansas, responded to the tumultuous upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on local opinion on both national and local issues, he surveys the voices and actions of civil rights and antiwar activists, hippies, and feminists, as well as conservatives and anticommunists, culminating in the events triggered by police shootings of two men in one week. B&w historical photos are included. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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