UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #503
O'BRIEN, SARAH

O'BRIEN, Sarah (1951- )
Undergraduate and Law School Student
At UW: 1968-1974

Interviewed: 1996	
Interviewer: Barry Teicher
Length: 1 hour, 4 minutes 

Background; 1960's culture; Mifflin Street block parties; Leaders of student protest movement; Gender-based tension within movement; Sterling Hall bombing; Law School and politics; Effects of anti-war movement; Alternative newspapers.

November 1, 1996

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:01	SO was born in Stevens Point and grew up in Appleton.  Her father was an advertising agent and her mother was a homemaker.  SO attended Catholic grade and high schools.  She was drawn to Madison because of its active counter-culture.  Both of her parents were liberal democrats, which was unusual for the Appleton area.

00:06:47	When she came to Madison, SO was interested in psychology.  She learned that educationally, the instructor is much more important than the course material itself.  She was politically influenced by Harvey Goldberg’s lectures.

00:12:04	Music played a large role in SO’s experience of 1960s culture, particularly the work of Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seger, Buffalo Springfield, and Janis Joplin.  There were a few prominent local bands, including Soup and Tayles.  SO was married to the lead singer/guitarist of the local band Spooner.  

00:15:32	SO’s appearance changed quickly after her arrival in Madison, due to the influence of her roommate from New Jersey.  Her roommate was shocked to find out that SO was from Joseph McCarthy’s home town.  The most prevalent drugs were marijuana and LSD, and block parties even had booths where joints were sold.  These particular drugs were very much a part of the culture.

00:19:47	The Mifflin Street block parties were created to celebrate the community, but the police denied permission for them.  A party would be planned nevertheless, and the police would dress in riot gear and use physical force and armored vehicles in order to terminate it.  Riots ensued many years in a row.  Many elderly people lived in the area because the neighborhood was very diverse, and a number of them were injured as a result of police use of tear gas.  Other people were severely beaten by police officers with clubs.  SO recalls seeing a police officer try to run over two women with a squad car.  She feels the conflict between the police and the party attendees paralleled the conflict between the United States government and the war protesters in that the citizens were trying to express a powerful political opinion which the administration tried desperately to squelch.

00:26:05	William Dyke was the mayor of Madison at the time and Ralph Hanson was the chief of the campus police.  They were the objects of the students’ scorn.  The campus police acted in similar ways to the city police.  The National Guard, however, exhibited restraint.  The campus administration adopted an “anguished posture” regarding the student protests; they pretended to sympathize with the protestors, but refused to take any action.

00:30:13	Jim Rowen wrote for the Cardinal.  Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had a role in the forefront of the movement.  The movement was more spontaneous than organized.  There were student leaders of various factions, but the movement itself was too large to be orchestrated by designated leaders.  Many demonstrations turned violent once the police arrived on the scene.  The architecture in Madison changed greatly during protest years—buildings were increasingly constructed without windows.

00:36:30	As an undergraduate, SO was not aware of gender discrimination in the classroom.  It became readily apparent in Law School, however.  There was a lot of tension between men and women within the student protest movement.  Women were expected to do the grunt work, while the protest speakers were almost exclusively men.  Anti-Semitism was prevalent in Madison, as the Wisconsin legislature tended to blame the Jewish students from New York for the protests.  The student government had a lot of money at the time, and most of the money went to political causes.  

00:43:38	In February 1969, there was an African American student strike, and while the African American students and the anti-war protestors offered each other support, the movements never joined forces. 

00:45:06	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:45:23	SO relates a story about creating a park out of a vacant lot on Mifflin Street.

00:48:12	SO discusses the bombing of Sterling Hall.  The student protestors demanded that the Army Math Research Center be removed from campus as its purpose was to design weapons of destruction to be used in Vietnam.  What is often forgotten is that fire bombings were common, and no one was surprised when Sterling Hall was targeted.  Given the level of tension and violence, the bombing of Army Math was inevitable.  SO was in Law School at the time and worked on Karlton Armstrong’s defense team.  While the movement settled down after the bombing, SO does not think it was the result of the bombing.

00:52:40	By her junior year, SO was disillusioned with psychology.  She decided to go into law because it seemed like a way to enter into the establishment and make changes from within.  The Law School was in a state of flux and seemed to be five years behind the rest of the University in terms of politics.  

00:56:50	SO started an underground paper called Maggie’s Farm as a forum for complaints against Law School policy.  Near the end of the Vietnam War, a number of the law school students organized a protest at the post office.  The violence police used against the protestors got the Law School students more actively involved in politics.

00:59:36	SO thinks the anti-war movement had an impact on first changing the strategy in Vietnam and then eventually ending the war.  The anti-war movement taught SO that citizens have a moral responsibility to the rest of the world.  

01:02:45	Kaleidoscope and Takeover were two papers that came out of the student protest movement.  The police were among the newspapers’ biggest customers.

01:04:55	End of side.  End of tape.

END