Transcripts For CSPAN3 Kevin Boyle The Shattering 20221007 :

Archives flagship building in washington dc which sits on the Ancestral Lands of the nokache tank peoples. Im david ferio archivist of the United States as a pleasure to welcome you to todays conversation with kevin boyle and Suzanne E Smith about boyles new book the shattering before we begin id like to tell you about two programs coming up soon on our youtube channel. On wednesday, january 26th at 1 pm. David mckean will tell us about his new book watching darkness fall which recounts the rise of the third reich in germany and the road to war from the perspective of four american ambassadors in key western european capitals, london berlin rome paris and moscow. And on tuesday, february 1st at 1pm. Well hear from sarah pollock who will discuss her book fdr in american memory roosevelt and the making of an icon. She analyzes roosevelt as a cultural icon in american memory historical leader who carefully and intentionally built his public image. Kevin boyle begins his look at the 1960s with the story of 8 cahill who in 1961 organized his neighbors to deck their houses with american flags for the 4th of july. Boyle was inspired by a photograph of cahill and his neighbors that he had seniors before in a book published by the National Archives the book which reproduced more than 200 images from our photographic holdings was called the american image boyles book about america in the 1960s. The shattering takes us a decade beyond the american image and focuses on the periods transformative conflicts the New York Times calls the shattering a rich layered account of the 1960s history is not simply the unfolding of events, but it is the story of individuals behind the events in the shattering boil introduces us to the people who propelled the changes the Washington Post reviewed declares that boyle has a gift for synthesizing and translating the often dry arguments and this a formal scholarship into artful and empathetic storytelling. Kevin boyle is the William Smith mason professor of American History at Northwestern University his previous book arc of justice on the National Book award for nonfiction and was a finalist for the pulitzer prize. Hes also the author of the uaw and the heyday of american liberalism and coauthor of muddy boots and ragged aprons. His essays and reviews have appeared in Washington Post New York Times Baltimore Sun Chicago Tribune in Detroit Free Press suzanne e. Smith is a professor of American History at George Mason University and teaches africanAmerican History 20th century cultural history of death in America American popular music and African American religious history. She is the author of dancing in the street motown and the cultural politics of detroit. Now lets hear from kevin boyle and Suzanne E Smith. Thank you for joining us today. Let me begin todays simply by letting you know that professor smith wasnt able to join us the last minute there were complications that made it impossible for her to join us and im very sorry that shes not here at luck be sharing this afternoon with her, but i am honored to be sharing it with you. I just want to say how much i appreciate the National Archives giving me the opportunity to talk with you today. And particularly. I want to thank Susan Clifton for putting together todays program. I want to start today by doing one of those things that i think youre not supposed to do when you talk about your book. I want to start with somebody elses book. An imparticular but i want to do is i want to start with a book by a woman whos been in the news a bit lately because her passing one is start with joan didions second book of essays the white album particularly what i want to do just for a second is i want to read just the start of it. Its a famous start. This is the start the very first essay of the white album, which is a collection of essays that didian wrote in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is what she said at the start. We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images by the ideas with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria, which is our actual experience. Or at least we do for a while. Such a beautiful elegant way of describing what historians actually do what we do as historians is we take all the fragments the complicated pieces of the past. We try to shape them into a coherent story. And then over time we start to wonder whether the story that we shape. Is really the best way of telling the events of the past. And so we start to think that we did ian did whether we need a new story. And thats what the shattering is. Its my attempt to take the phantasmagoria of the 1960s this extraordinary straw of events. And to reshape them into a new story of the 1960s. And a lot of that story. Centers on powerful figures of the 1960s. The book deals do a considerable extent with the president s of the 1960s, which john kennedy with Lyndon Johnson with Richard Nixon and to my surprise really with Dwight Eisenhower who hovered over the 60s to an extent that i hadnt realized. When i first started working on this book. It deals with those people who tried to become president Barry Goldwater Bobby Kennedy Hubert Humphrey George Mcgovern george wallace. Runs too so much of the 1960s talks about Supreme Court justices. It talks about a general or to talks about the towering activists. We associate with the 60s, dr. Martin luther king jr. Malcolm x but if theres one thing that animates my sense of the past my sense of myself as an historian. Is also really believe that ordinary people. Are central to history too . Ordinary people who we dont know help us understand whose names. Weve never heard of help us understand. The past in a new way an ordinary people in the american past change this nation. So alongside all those famous people who run through the shattering. But i also try to do is tell the stories of ordinary people. What i want to do today. So i just want to tell you. Four stories and this is the first one. This is the fourth of july 1961. On the 6100 block of west eddy street in the northwest corner of chicago the day before and cahill and his neighbor Clarence Mitchell draped their block in 38 flags. Thats a lot of flags given that theyre only 36 houses on the entire block. And ed being ed had written to the Chicago Tribune the major one of the major newspapers in chicago to announce what they had done. And the trip decided that they would send a photographer out to take a picture of this block. And so the neighbors all gathered on the lawn right next to ed cahills house. And ed and clarence, of course got pride of place as they should have again. Thats ed right there. And thats clarence right there. And two of eds kids he had three children two of his kids got in the picture too. Thats his son terry. Standing at attention up on the top of the steps. And thats his daughter katie. Way in the back right back there. You can barely see her is eds wife. Stella cahill smiling into the 60s stella had good reason to be smiling stella was born a couple of days after christmas in 1916 deep in the polish ghetto of chicago where she for her parents lived . On what her father who was a tailor managed to bring home from his trade . She had an older brother chester and the four of them lived in a tenement deep inside the ghetto. Just about two years after her birth. Her father died killed by the spanish flu that was then raging through the poorest neighborhoods of american cities. And her mother with two Young Children to raise face the prospect of tumbling into the worst forms of poverty she tried to break the familys fall by getting married again in 1920. She married another polish immigrant this time a man who didnt even have a trade that her now deceased husband had had made his living as an unskilled labor, which meant he made his living. On the power of his back a power that he tended to dissipate it turned out. By drinking he couldnt control. And so all through the 1920s stella her brother and her mother and now stepfather lived. On the edge of poverty. Theres no clearer sign of that. Its in the fact that they moved every single year every single year all the way through the 20s. They lived in this part of town and then they moved to that part of town and then they moved to that part of town the way you poor people do. And then in 1929. The economy collapsed around them by the spring of 1930 stella stepfather was unemployed. And the family was getting by on whatever money her mother could bring home. From her job boxing candies in a candy factory wasnt enough. Within a year or so. Stellas older brother left school to take a factory job that he was lucky to get. That brought in just enough money that they could keep stella in school through the two years of a commercial course he was taking in one of chicagos Public Schools and the minute that course was over they pulled her out and sent her off to work, too. She was 15. Stella meth ed cahill on a blind date in 1938 the cahill family were hardly well to do. But in the working class world of chicago they were a step above stellas family. Considerable step above eds father. Who had been born in downstate illinois of irish immigrant parents . His father worked as a factor is a foreman for Construction Company that did road work for for the city of chicago. And what that meant, especially in the 1920s that work was steady. In a way that had never been for stellas family. And with that steady work he earned enough eds father earned enough that in the late 20s. He was able to buy a house. On the 6100 block of west eddy street the block youre looking at now though in that though is days. It was a half finished Brand New Development going out way on the outskirts of town. It was a completely white neighborhood. Much of the new developments that were going up in chicago in the 1920s were wrapped in restrictive covenants those little clauses that were put a developers put on their deeds to say this property can never be sold to a. And oftentimes to a jewish america. But i have no evidence whatsoever. That when eds family bought that house out on eddie street, they thought at all about race. Chances, are they took it natural as a natural thing that neighborhoods were going to be segregated thats how deeply that Racial Discrimination was written into the fabric of american society. What they saw. Was that they were buying a 900 square foot house of living space with an unfinished attic up above . That they could finish off where the boys could have a place to sleep. But they saw was that they were buying a house with a little backyard and a little front yard. Set in a half finished neighborhood. Six blocks away from a brand new catholic parish that they could join saint ferdinand. It was such a new parish. In fact, it didnt even have a church yet, but it did have a Parochial Grade School or ed and his brothers could go. As part of the commitment to the cahill family the deep commitment to the cahill family to catholicism. And thats where ed grew up. Ed and stella got married in may of 1940 1942 they had their first child a baby girl. They named judy. In november of 1943 for judy was about a year old. Ed got drafted he was gone for two and a half years. Most of that time he spent in europe. In the signal core trailing along behind the front line troops as they marched towards berlin and the end of the war. And stella stayed home with the newborn. Now stella new on some level that ed was safe. She knew that of course from the letters. He wrote home these sweet personal letters that he sent as often as he possibly could. But you got to stop for just one second. And think about this young woman. In chicago in 1943 in 1944 or 1945 . Living surrounded by war living surrounded by death by the gold stars that shed see in the windows as she walked the baby along the streets. For the prayers for those boys who had gone missing. The prayers that sunday mass for the boys that had gone missing from that parish that she was a part of and you got to believe i believe with all my heart. That deep in the night. That fear came creeping up to her too that it would have been impossible for not to imagine. The Western Union messenger coming to her door with that notice. And is that were to happen . That she would become her mother. In 1918. A two young widow its a toddler enter skirts. And her life collapsing around her. Its not what happened. Ed got through the war just fine and he came home in the spring of 1946 as part of the massive demobilization of that year. Within a few months to no ones surprise. Stella was pregnant again. An ed decided that with a new baby coming he couldnt really afford to take all the benefits to the gi bill was providing. I mean he needed to go get a job. He did he got a job as a clerk in the front office of the vacuum can company of chicago. Vacuum can company of chicago made industrial strength coffee urns and one of their major clients, but the United States military us navy really liked their coffee earned as did the army. In 1948. Well their son was born in 47. Thats terry right up here in 1948 this now young family. Ed and stella and their two kids moved into his fathers bungalow. Ive done west eddy street. And they moved in partly to take care of him. His wife had recently died and everybody knew he couldnt take care of himself and i think partly because ed man ed had such a powerful sense of place. He wanted to go home. And so they did in 1948. That neighborhood was still halffinished half the houses on the block hadnt even been built yet because the development that had started back in the 20s had stalled during the depression and then stalled again again during world war two. But over the next few years from 48 on into the early 1950s, the neighborhoods started to fill in as the developers came back to put in no. Small reasonable houses onto the empty lots. Houses that have been sold overwhelmingly to italianamerican and polish americans who are moving out from the center city of chicago . In a process we call white flight. As that neighborhood filled in as the population filled in it became a more prosperous area in the mid1950s developers built. A brand new shopping mall, not that far from eddy street one of the first shopping malls in chicago went in not that far from eddy street. And that catholic parish that was so important to ed. Finally got the church that it had never had a gorgeous Beautiful Church wrapped in marble. A place for families like the cahills to feel a sense of solidity that neighborhood had never had the cahills started to do well for themselves too and slowly started to move himself up in the vacuum can company until by the end of the 1950s. He was the head of sales. They had a third child in 1952. Thats kathy down here. And the cahills cahills were not extravagant people. But they had more money than ever before. So in 1953 54 they bought their first card never had a car before. But now they didnt see the need for ed to take the bus all the way down to the vacuum can company down in the center city anymore. And then 55 about a tv put it in the little living room. And when the kids were old enough judy was certainly old enough they sent them all off to the Parochial School to the grade school that was connected to their parish to saint ferdinand. And then when judy their oldest daughter got of high school age. They sent her to a catholic high school. And when she finished there 1959 they centered to Depaul University one of chicagos two large catholic universities. Now theres no doubt. That this was a parochial world that the cahills lived in they lived inside this tight kind of upper working class lower middle class catholic world. Theres no doubt that this neighborhood out on west eddy street was wrapped around. Racial exclusion and discrimination can see that just in the picture of the folks standing out here in 1961. And the cahills at least. Their prosperity their ability to buy the car to buy the tv to send their kids off to schools. Private schools was paid for in part. By the vacuum cans connection to what Dwight Eisenhower would call the military Industrial Complex. Because the military Industrial Complex wasnt all about Missile Systems and bombers whos also about industrial strength coffee yearns. But you also have to think just for a minute. But what this world looked like for Stella Cahill here was a woman who grew up right on the edge of devastating poverty who never had a stable place to live and now she and ed owned their own home. Out on eddy street here was a woman. Who in their early days of her marriage and her early days of motherhood wasnt sure. Whether husband was going to come home. Now living in this extraordinarily stable familycentered world. Here was this woman who in 1961 had her older daughter. In college when she had to leave school at 15. Said any wonder its still like cahill was smiling into the 1960s. And already that world built around eddie street already, there were cracks in