Yale women graduating class. Please welcome and gardner perkins. Anne gardner perkins. Can you tell us about your book yale needs women and the history of coeducation in this country, and in the ivy league in particular . Yes. Thank you, mark. Over the next hour, we will all explore together that moment in American History when yale and its peers, when americas most prestigious colleges, finally admitted women students. For those of you who have not read the book yet, that moment was just 50 years ago, close enough that we can touch it, which is why we are so likely tonight to be able to include Elizabeth Vann and Connie Royster, two of yales first women undergraduates. Two facts are in order. Museum,schmidt and the who have been terrific sponsors, it has been delightful to work with you. And to eight cousins bookstore. I know in my community how important the independent bookstore is and independent bookstores have taken a real hit economically over the last three months, so i would really encourage you to support eight cousins books and your local independent bookstores. Theyll have their books available online. A bit of a game plan. Mark, i will give you a brief overview, and then connie and elizabeth and i will talk for about half an hour. Think of it as being able to watch a live interview with two of yales first women undergraduates, and then we will open it up to questions and look to close right on time at 8 00. Goes. L see how that so, lets turn back to 1969, when those first women students arrived at yale. Yale needs women is the story of those first women undergraduates. They arrived to a campus that had been allmale for the previous 268 years. They were outnumbered seven to one by their male classmates, so do not think coeducation is 5050 or even close to it like it is now. Yale put in place a gender quota that limited the number of women graduates. They wanted to be able to admit as many men as possible. Those women students did not have women faculty to look out for them, either. Of yales 400 seven tenured faculty members in 1969, just three were women. Of the dozens of women i interviewed in writing this book, i was struck, really, again and again by their persistence, their courage, and creativity. 1969,think of september, in some ways it has been reminding me of our time right now, when lots of individuals were speaking out against longstanding injustice the vietnam war was raging. As was the protest against it. The black Power Movement was changing how americans saw a race. The stonewall riots had just happened right before those first women students arrived, sort of showing people the discrimination faced by gay and transgender men and women. It is in that moment that connie and elizabeth, those first women undergraduates a yale, arrive. The Womens Movement had barely started just then, so, to give justome of that context, 7 of u. S. Doctors in 1969 were women. Just 3 of u. S. Lawyers. Just 2 of the members of congress. Discrimination against Women College students, faculty, and administrators was perfectly legal, and, if you think yale was the only college that was turning women away at that time, you should think again. It really is the entire top tier of american colleges and universities, with some rare exceptions. Seven of the eight ivy league schools, even public universities. It almost reads like a list of whos who, from amherst, beaudoin, brown, dartmouth, duke, to wellesley, to wesleyan, and of course yale. When it announces it is going coed, the news is so shocking that the New York Times announces it on the front page. Those women students arrived. President yet it feels president had had his way, women would not have been admitted at all. What were those first women students like . The New York Times calls them super women, but most were just teenagers. Somewhere wealthy, but others had to patch together their tuition through summer jobs and financial aid, work on campus. Most were white, but 40 of those first women students at yell were black. At yale were black. They were smart and they were tough. That is how yale picked them. Playedoked at women who on sports teams, who had traveled abroad, who had endured hardship, who had lots of brothers. I interviewed one of the two administrators who selected the first class of women at el and i will never forget what he told me. At yale and i will never forget what he told me. There is no point in taking a timid woman and putting her in this environment because it could crush you. So they were smart and tough and, tonight, you get to hear from two of those women, Connie Royster and Elizabeth Vann. Inh of them arrive at yale the fall of 1969 as a sophomore transfer students. Women, arefreshmen group of sophomore transfers and junior transfer rooms. Graduated on time in 1972, and both went on to become lawyers. Elizabeth worked as the professor of american constitutional law at the new England School of law in boston and lectured broadly, both nationally and internationally, through her career. Connie had a distinguished career in new york city before returning to yale as a Development Director ats divinity school. Connie, why do i not begin with you . Just an observation. For many of the first women students, arriving at yale was like arriving at a foreign planet, between it being allmale, and, for many, the wealth of the place was really overwhelming. And many are coming from small towns or from the west coast, so new haven and yale seemed very foreign. Likeor you, it felt more being at home. Why dont you tell us a little bit about that . Connie it was very much like coming home. Indeed, i was born and raised in new haven. Away, so i had been new haven was hometown to me. Waschurch that i grew up in just a couple of blocks up whaley avenue. I went to new haven public the ninth grade more or less. And then i went away to boarding school. A yearr it wheaton at wheaton in the year in it was like coming home. My family had worked at yell yalernities at fraternities for come at that point, half a century at least. My maternal side had immigrated to new haven in the beginning of the 1900s and immediately started working in the fraternities along Fraternity Row. Many of you are yalies. You will know what i am talking about. Street,ty row on york starting with beta and theta. By myere all managed uncles and cousins so there was a long history of my family being at yale, including my grandfather, who was the chef. I knew new haven and i knew el well i knew yale well. Coming back to new haven, my mother and father, my sister lived just outside new haven. They had moved out to the suburbs when i was away at boarding school. And coming back, my cousins and uncles were still in management at the fraternities, so i would ride my bicycle through Fraternity Row and they would come out and greet me and say how are you doing . It was a very protective feeling and so i was literally coming home and feeling very good about it. Connie, your grandfather was no longer living when you were but what is the story your aunt told you about the hat . Connie as a woman coming to yield, no one thought coming to yale, no one thought women were going to go to yale, and certainly not an africanamerican. When i was accepted, one of my aunts says to me that my grandfather, and i was a favorite granddaughter, said your grandfather is rolling over in his grave thinking about his granddaughter going to yale. As a little girl, i was going parents to help serve meals at big occasions. We would all go, because everybody had to go. Ierybody had to help, so would crawl around on the floor washe kitchen and he grandchildren. He rolling overe is with joy that his granddaughter was at yale. Elizabeth, you and connie elizabeth, you and connie were roommates the first year. You come from illinois. Can you tell about how you met . Dont you want to hear about my background, too . Absolutely. Connie, we could not be more opposite. Alien. An i come from the midwest. I come from a small town in illinois. School, notpublic an elite boarding schedule school. My family did not know i had applied to yale. I thought yale was in boston. My family did not want me to go arrived ind when i was dropped off in the courtyard my one suitcase up the stairs and sat in the same tea room. There was no furniture. I mean, there was not a chair. There was no furniture. In with heromes entourage, her parents, and they immediately begin furnishing the place. Salvation armye and bought used furniture. Connie knew what she was doing. Was safe, and, really, it was we cannot be more opposite, and yet, when we stood in that living room, she walked in the door and it was one of those moments, i think all of us have had them, the french call couer, where you know this is my best friend. I think she has always been my best friend and think shes still is. We became bonded in a way that i do not know how to explain except that i am sure most of you have had that experience. Two opposite people more opposite people, and yet we did bonded, and for that i will be grateful always to yale. Yalennie, you come to interested in the arts, and drama, and you get involved in this theater there, which was unusual because many of the Extracurricular Activities at yale, either women were not allowed at all, or they are sort of given the position against the groups typing up the pamphlets, but not being given leadership roles. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like in the Theater Community . When i came to yale, i did not know that was going to be my place, except that i came with that background. To a boarding school where the arts were very important. It wast of the part of the education that we be educated in all of the arts. Wheaton, i jumped right into the theater. Experience,zing and, in fact, when i applied to yale from wheaton, i did it because, why not . Shot. Give it a it if i had not gotten in, would have been perfectly happy at wheaton. I loved wheaton. Yale, i came with wheatonlth of a year at , immersed in theater activity. I thought theater would be in inurricular extracurricular. It became very much part of my life, out of berkeley, which is where i started, to Jonathan Edwards because that is where my theater and music friends were. Because there really was no undergraduate major and drama in drama, we spent a lot of time in the drama school being byght by and meant toward byfessors mentored professors and practitioners in the drama school, so we became a very close the ad trickle very close theatrical community, and i think that if yale then had a humanities major, a true liberal arts major, that is probably what i would have done. I think they do now have a humanities major, 50 years later, unfortunately, but i did a lot of theater and a lot of art history and a lot of music. It was a wonderfully embracing think,ty, which meant, i that i did not experience some of the Horror Stories that you, i am sure, heard as he wrote the book. About, you know, some of the women in more of the traditional disciplines where women were not particularly welcome or accepted. My experience was really wonderful, actually. Terrific. Connie isizabeth, so, off practicing for this and that y all the time, and whem when you are not working at your campus job, the post office, to earn money, you are involved in politics, and you are one of the two women who founded the yale sisterhood, which is a yales group. Omens can you talk about how different the whole culture of that group was within the culture of yale . It had never occurred to me, coming from the midwest, it never occurred to me that women should not be educated. My mother was a teacher, a college graduate. I arrived at yale and discovered that this was a controversial topic. Wayere still struggling our into the 18th century. There were a lot of people at yield, a lot of minute yale, of all ages, faculty and students, who really did not think women should be getting a yale education, or who said it is ok for them to get a yale education, it will help them raise their sons. So, heavily masculine. At that time, in 1969, there was a lot going on, but the feminist movement was just in its very early stages. There was another woman who may be on call here, kate mcclure, went around and stapled some notices that said lets get together, the women. Because there was no place for us to meet each other. We were scattered around one of had nocolleges and we place. We did not know each other. Many of us, to this day, still do not know each other, although the reunions have helped that. Andarted putting up notices we were just astonished with what an amazing reaction. There were sometimes 60 women would come and sit around and we would talk. Time,ring this period of we worked in a format called consciousness raising groups, where people would take turns discussing things, and we would share our experiences. I can remember hearing, for the first time, from women who had been maybe beaten at home or who had been raped. In the midwest, we just did not talk about those things. I did not know that was going on. We shared some of our experiences, and found out a lot of us were having experiences classroom in the classroom. I male student would make the same point. Dalia radomski was making the same point. It turned out more of us were having this problem. It was not just me. It turned out some of the women were survivors of what we could edw call survivors of rap or insist, but at that time you could not talk about it. Blessing i want to say about the Womens Center is we worked closely together with the new haven womens liberation center. Town, a connection to the to the city of new haven, that i did not find in other yale organizations frequently, although the mayday demonstrations put us together with the town closely. They focused on womens issues that were not limited to yale. It had a much broader context. , other it was the single than meeting connie, the most important, substantive event of my time at yale. Ne it is interesting what you say about the community, because there was really a town gown divide. So the womens sisterhood and the black student alliance, both of those groups sort of violated those taboos against working with townspeople. Just one other thought on what you are saying about midwesterners. Midwesterners didnt talk about it. You all started at yale before the term date rape had even been invented. Sexual harassment, that term had not been invented. There is not even a language yet to talk about that. I did took a case brought by yale and it took a case brought by you women that made Sexual Harassment illegal on college campuses. You brought up mayday and i have been thinking about that a lot. For those of you who do not know the background, in may, 1970, there was a Major National trial at the new haven city courthouse, two blocks from campus. It was a trial of a group of black panthers, erica huggins, bobby seale, a National Black panther leader, and protesters from across the nation, came into yale to protest what was trial, and,umped up indeed, both the charges against huggins and bobby seale were dismissed. It was a very tense time on the yale campus. The National Guard came in. Army tanks driving down the streets right next to new haven dormitories. [indiscernible] liz over you and mayday, and i want you to talk to me about what it is. Connie it was a tense time. It was an extraordinary time. I think some of what is going on right now is really reminiscent of what those times were like, frankly. Right now, it raises a whole anger, andtions and just visceral feeling about what is going on in this country right now, as it did back then, which has a lot to do with racism and the war and people being killed, mercilessly. Were lots of reasons to be demonstrating in support of the panther trial, which is what we called it. Support, as it were, of the University Behind us. It was a moral statement that was made that made us actually feel good about where we were. Left. E people the University Closed down. Classes were canceled for the most part. Pass fail, and i think there were some nuances, i suppose, that 50 years later nobody remembers info detail in full detail, but classes were canceled. Who stated. Le dorms were still open, but every college essentially had a role free to and you were participate in whatever way you felt you could, which ranged from, you know, feeding the thousands of people who arrived in new haven to participating in peace marshals, working on participating in the daycare of children who arrived with parents who were participating in demonstrations too, you know, you still have to have some demonstrations to, you know, you still have to have some form of entertainment, and because i was in the theater part of things, we did a big theater production in the main stage of our university theater, and so there were a group of us, actually a large group of us, made up of undergraduates and a drama school and drama school participants, mostly black, who did the original production relevant to the times. Everybody could participate in however whatever way they felt would be meaningful to them was learningt civics on the ground. It was probably the most significant learning experience of the three years that i was there. It so happened that, in year two of being there, there was another strike. Union havingbor having about you and so, there was a strike the second year, as well. Had an extraordinary two years, some of which were civics lessons, i would say, i had friends who did not stay on campus, very close friends, who chose to leave either because their parents said, you get the hell off this campus and come or because they felt that they could not really relate to what was going on, and so everybody had to make their own decisions. Connie and elizabeth, i am looking at the time now, and, elizabeth, maybe what you can do is tell us about the sisterhood and then we will get some questions from the audience, because that piece marshall role at yale was quite remarkable, and i love the idea of how you were trained. The challenge, and we are seeing this today but the black lives matter protest, the challenge is when you organize peaceful protests that people come in who are intent on disrupting it in a various number of ways, and i will just call them outside agitators, who are simply opportunistic, and they want to rob a liquor store because they want liquor, but more often, the outside agitators are deliberately trying to turn the peaceful demonstration violent in order to discredit it, and this technique was well used. It had been used a lot in the antiwar demonstrations, where peaceful antiwar demonstrations had been disrupted by violence by right wing extremists posing as if they were peace protesters. The panthers had had an even much more serious set of well,ms, which is that erikas husband was murdered by the police. There had been a group of black panthers murdered by the police in chicago while they were asleep in their apartment. They were sound asleep and were just gunned down, so it was quite a violent time, and there were a lot of right wing people who wanted to turn antiwar or in , fair trial,tice peaceful protests into violent protests in order to discredit marshalsthe peace worked very hard. The sisterhood was very active. We knew intuitively, what the data showed, which was that when young women approach armed men and offer them a flower or some kind words, it brings the level of tension and violence down, and so the sisterhood was very active in training the peace had als, and we committee, where we tried to talk some of the men back from their rhetorical embrace of , and i must say we were extremely successful with one major exception, and that was a small bomb was set off right before the may day event the night before at a very large rally at the hockey rink. A small bomb was set off that night. No one was injured. And all of those years, i carried this burden of had we not had we not been successful in making sure that everybody on the protesters side understood how important it was to stay peaceful, and it turned out that john dean, who was counsel to president nixon, had slipped into new haven under an alias, checked into the taft hotel, and he had planted the bomb. To discredit the mayday peaceful protest. So anne four days later was kent state, where people were killed, so it really is a tribute. Elizabeth and jackson state. Thank you. So, mark, we have got a little more than 15 minutes left. Do you want to field questions our way so we can open it up to the audience . How do you want to do that . All, tos and first of the audience, thank you for watching. At the bottom of the screen, you can type them in, and i will read them out loud. Thatt know how we can top john dean story. Did marie know about this . And a question for elizabeth. For all all, well, three of you, how many were in the first class . Were in thatn first class of 1960 nine, and specifically for elizabeth, you said you were scared. What prompted that . A kid away from home, or what went into that . Canabeth i think anne answer the question about data. I do not know that. 575 women arrived at yale that first fall, which sounds like a big number to us, but what you need to understand is what yale decided to do was spread these women out across its 12 residential colleges, which were in a sense for those of you who do not know yale like 12 separate schools, so in each of these residential colleges, there is only about 25 of the class, so connie and elizabeth were two of only college,in berklee which is predominantly male, so 575, but for many, it felt like at times that there was only a handful of women. So that is the numbers. You have the story about why you felt afraid or uncomfortable. Well, one of the many jobs i had to pay for my education was in the dining hall, and the dining hall i was working in, they were not used to having yells students who were women. The male students would bus tables. Having yale students who were women. And mostly black, they stood behind a table and dished out they put me there, and i was standing there, dishing out peas or mashed , and there whatever was a young black woman who first came up to me. Senior older woman who ran the dining hall and said, oh, no, no, no. Student, and he turned to the woman next to me who also was, and took her in the office. I was very young and very naive and did not understand what was happening, but she came out a she waster, and disheveled, and her hair was messed up, and she was crying. And the older woman just embraced her and took her off to the ladies room, and when i asked her, the older, white woman said, you just shut your mouth. This does not concern you, and you are just trouble, so i figured out something bad was going on, and it made me afraid. Also made me feel angry, because when we took it to the yale administration, they did not care. It is one of the reasons i was eager to found two participate in the founding of the yale sisterhood. Anne i have never forgotten one of the things you said to me when i first met you, and you come from a conservative republican family, and you said yale made me a feminist, your experience. Yes, i was a Dwight Eisenhower republican for about in a couple of weeks, i became a feminist, and i remained a film a list a stayed that way. Yale made me a feminist. Connie there are a lot of first women, and i just want to acknowledge all of you and thank you for showing up. It is really wonderful. See some men, at least one man from that era. O thank you for coming you know, if you feel you want to put your name in the chat box that we know you were here, that would be wonderful, so thanks very much. And the University Chaplain is here, too. I love you, sharon. [laughter] great. The support this is what it is about. The support is so fabulous. Yes. Question for a both elizabeth and constance. Who were the people you considered allies, and how did you know that they were allies . How do they express their support of you or your presence at yale . How did you know you could trust them . Connie i will start. You quickly find your cohort, to a persondition that the women felt was our main supporter, she went to bat for us on every issue that she could, even though she was not herself as well treated as she should have been, but we really did not know that at the time. Findso were able to cohorts elsewhere. This is the 50th anniversary of a lot of things. We actually made a mark, we. Omen 2019 and 2020 mark the 50th anniversary not only of mayday but of the africanamerican , theral center, the house ,sian American Cultural Center the latino group. Groups, the music groups. You know, this is how we survived. We found our people, as it were. You find your people and support your people and vice versa in the larger sense, and the good and in the micro sense, you find your friends. That is how you survive. Think, that we to and thee runup the reunionunding of the first women which took place this past september this last september, the 50th anniversary of our arrival at yale, was that we really did not no one another as well as we and part of that is that we were separated out into the residential colleges, and we have not really have the chance in the past 50 years to get to know each other, 575 of , and this reunion was a where remarkable event new relationships, new bonds were made and old ones renewed. Roommates who had not seen each other in 50 years. People who left yale and did not stay came back, because the reunion was open to everyone who put their feet on the yale campus that first day. So it did not matter if you did not graduate. What mattered is you were part of changing history. And that is what we did. We changed history. And we shared some things that there are no other 575 women who did that. There are not. Just us. Think that finding we survived that because we found the people who were our allies throughout it, and we are in the later, still, 50 years anew or again, so that would be my answer to that question. I guess for me, it was a little bit different. I had to make a space where i could build alliances with the Womens Center, what is called the Womens Center now, the sisterhood. But i do not want to state that all of the political groups were women. Most of the political groups were male. Male friendsrful and supporters and allies, from john wilkerson, the dean of yell oflege, on down the dean yale college, a really nice man whose name i have forgotten, and many of our classmates. But i think the main characteristic is the willingness to listen to the stories that people are telling and to believe them. Raped,ey say they were or when they say they were dismissed from a job, or when they say they were threatened by a police officer, the main thing i look at then and now, what i learned, was not necessarily that you believe them in the sense of every single detail, but you believe their truth, and you listen to their truth and share your truth with them, and then we can find a real human connection. For firstebook page women, there are a lot of first women, and that Facebook Page has been wonderful bringing us together, too. Anne, this question is for you. Wondering about the women who were selected in the book and if it would have been different if others were selected. If there are some that did not participate, and if so, why . I firstu know, when started this research way, way back, eight or nine years ago, i thought of it as the experience, singular, of the yale first women undergraduates. And this is because of their background, because of their interest that had a different and that woulde, be with five different women. I really wanted to highlight the stories of five women rather than tell a story from above, because i want to the people who read it to be able to see and feel what it was like to be one of those women, and i could not do that if i did in generalities. I wanted my daughter and their friends to read it and find out what it was like to be a woman in a very, very male world. The women i interviewed initially, for those women, i was looking for a spread across the university in terms of where people were from, the residential colleges they were in, the racial diversity. , had hoped to find, and i did women who were gay to interview. I was trying to capture sort of the breadth of yale, and because my interest is change and change in institutions, i was particularly interested in women who were at the forefront of change, so people like elizabeth, who helped found to the yale sisterhood, or lori, who founded one of the first sports, or kate mcclure, who was in all womens rock band or Shirley Daniels who was involved in the black student alliance, so it was those women on the edge of change that drew my interest, and then part of it was i liked being able to have the connection between connie and elizabeth, with stories that becauset somewhat, and it was not just five women who did not know each other, and then i would say i felt that i connected with the five women who become the heart of the book in a way that they would push back at me as author if i did not get something. Yes. Particularly connie and elizabeth are tough, so if i Say Something that they do not think i have got it right, they will push back, and as an author, that is an incredible gift, because even though i went to yale eight years after they did, my yale was incredibly different from theirs, and it was important for me not to make assumptions. Elizabeth so if i can just jump anne is not only from yale but was elected the first woman ever to serve as editor and chief at the very prestigious yale daily news, and then went on to become the first six or seven years of women who were selected to become rhodes scholars, so anne is as remarkable or more remarkable than any of the yale andn that were in the book it makes my heart glad to see the younger generation. Kind of you. Very i think i would disagree with you that i am more remarkable. I would say the story spoke to me in a way because i had that experience of being a very young woman and having the New York Times writing stories about me, at least for me, that was sort of a disorienting experience, so it was helpful to learn from other women and to listen to them. So, mark, do we have time for more questions, or should we wrap it up . Mark we can extend this problem a little while longer. The network will have no problem with that. That the women were distributed around the college as opposed to being together in one residential college. What did yale do to make it more seamless . Any of you or all three of you. Elizabeth do you guys want to go, or should i go . They propose putting all of the women in one of the residential colleges, and there was a huge rapport of the men on the campus about that, as some of them thinking that was not good for the women, because it would isolate them, like having a womens college, a rack cliff at yale, and the idea was to put them a ratcliffe at yale. They wanted women in their residential college. They did not want the women isolated there, and then the guys protested, because they did not want to have to move to other colleges. So i think what could have been done is, and this is what referred, who connie to earlier, who was given the position of transitioning, wanted to see the women in larger groups in a smaller number of residential colleges, having the other colleges wait until there were more women on the yale campus. Did was goat yale the entire different direction and spread those women out, and then there were never any advanced help to bring the women together, and i think that could have helped, as well. This reunion that connie talked about, and she was really fundamental in helping to organize that reunion, was the very first time for many of these women that they had ever been with any of the other first women undergraduates at yale, and that is really remarkable that it took 50 years for that to happen. Elizabeth and let me just add that not only was connie instrumental in organizing the 50th for us, but she was instrumental in having one session, one panel during this weekend where, for the very first time ever, women in the first classes were allowed to speak, to stand up and speak to each other. We had never we had had reunions before, but with the members of the ministry should, they told us what it was like to coeducate to yale. This is true. And with a little encouragement insist that we have at least one session where we have members of the first womens class who could stand up and tell each other our own stories in our own words, unmediated by a historian or an administrator and talk and listen to each other, and it was the best panel of the weekend, and here is a topical question for all three of you. What elements of your experience would apply to yale or colleges today, and what advice would you give them . Anne well, you know, i was fortunate to spend time giving book talk around the country, and what i tend to tell young women is that they are far more powerful than they know they are and that particularly if they joined together for change, they can make remarkable things happen just as these first women at yale did, and so that is what i tell them. And i would say the personal is political, and sisterhood is powerful. Connie this sounds like something they would say in 1969. Nothing has changed. Elizabeth right on. You have got to speak your truth. Speak truth to power. I am a huge believer in nonviolence, so i was always a forceful protest but always peaceful, because i think the those who oppose whatever change your trying to bring violence tose any discredit the underlying protest cause. And i think we are seeing this again, that the protests are being undermined by people who are using the peaceful protests for their own opportunistic purposes, and it is just hard to control a very large demonstration. My heart goes out to the peaceful protest organizers who are trying to maintain the peace. It is not easy. Mark is that a good note to end on . Anne i think so. Thank you so much, mark, and thank you so elizabeth and connie and all of our zoom participants. Somes good to get to know of these first women at yale. They really are an inspiration to me as i hope they are to you. Mark my thanks to all three of connie, tone, to elizabeth, thank you for being such great hosts and interviewers and interviewees, so please get a copy of this book, yale needs women, at your bookstore, and our next lecture is on thursday night. I hope you join us for that one. Thank you. Anne america. On reel a series of programs on dwight d. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander and the 34th president. First, a 19 623 National Council for the social studies film covering significant events during the eight years of the dwight d. Eisenhower administration. Designed for use in the classroom, the documentary emphasizes major challenges and 1960. 53 the Second Program is the u. S. Army film that traces the military career of dwight d. Eisenhower from his time at west point through the conclusion of world war ii. Then a biographical film produced by eisenhowers president ial campaign that features his accomplishments during world war ii and his role in the formation of nato. The final Program Documents the Funeral Services of former president eisenhower following his death on march 28, 1969