Spring 2010, Buttonball Papers

T H E B U T T O N B A L L P A P E R S : 2010

Spring 2010—$10

D E E R F I E L D A CA D E MY P R E S S

DEERFIELD ACADEMY

THE BUTTONBALL PAPERS A Journal Devoted to Topics in the Humanities at Deerfield Academy Spring 2010

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THE BUTTONBALL PAPERS

The Humanities Journal of Deerfield Academy

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THE BUTTONBALL PAPERS 2010 A Humanities Journal by Students at Deerfield Academy

EDITOR,

ANDREA MOORHEAD MACFADYEN LAYOUT & DESIGN, ROBERT MOORHEAD COPY EDITOR, JANET

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS FOR THIS ISSUE

FRANK HENRY, JR. THOMAS HEISE JOHN PALMER CONRAD PITCHER TIMOTHY TRELEASE PETER WARSAW

© 2010 Trustees of Deerfield Academy DEERFIELD ACADEMY PRESS OLD DEERFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS

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THE BUTTONBALL PAPERS The Humanities Journal of Deerfield Academy FOREWORD

MARGARITA CURTIS

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COMMONWEAL OF CHRIST: THE FAILED MARCH OF JACOB COXEY’S ARMY

JEN MULROW |

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THE NEW ENGLAND FARMER AND THE VALUE OF TRADITION IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY NORTHEAST

JULIA TREHU

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JOHN DEWEY AND EDUCATION IN THE PROGRESSIVE ERA

KATIE WALKER

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TREE REFLECTION

ANGIE HAN

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SELF

NASTASSIA ADKINS

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THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION AND THE ELECTRICITY BUILDING OF 1893

HANNAH FLATO

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THE ALCATRAZ PROCLAMATION

JACK HEISE

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PRELUDE

AARON CLAYTON-DUNN

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MENUET

AKSHAYA AVRIL-TUCKER

A BELOVED MEDEA

JULIANA SAUSSY

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THE NAMES PROJECT: HOW THE AIDS QUILT HUMANIZED THE AIDS EPIDEMIC

CAMILLE COPPOLA

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THE DEATH OF THE SOUL: THE CONSEQUENCE OF FRACTURE IN MRS. DALLOWAY

NATALYA MINOFF

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THE WATTS AND L.A. RIOTS: ASSESSMENTS OF THE AMERICAN PROMISE

CAMILLE VILLA

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TRICKY BUSINESS: COCA-COLA, CONSUMER DECEPTION, AND WILEY’S HYPOCRITICAL ATTEMPT TO LEGISLATE HONESTY

AMANDA BENNETT

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ANDY WARHOL AND HIS MARILYNS: THE ART OF MASS CULTURE

KAYLA CORCORAN

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TWO POEMS

JOSHUA KRUGMAN

HIGHWAYS, ONE WAY

HANNAH DANCER

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FOREWORD Margarita Curtis to have come out of our strategic plan, “Imagine Deerfield,� is the conscious fostering of cross-disciplinary projects and exchanges. The original Buttonball Papers, initiated by Eric Widmer in 1998 to foster excellence in American history and to provide a forum for student work, has served the community well for over a decade. As Deerfield moves more consciously into multi-disciplinary studies and global initiatives, it seems fitting that The Buttonball Papers also move from a single focus to a more inclusive forum.

While the sciences and mathematics at Deerfield continue to thrive in the new Koch Center, the arts and humanities at Deerfield create other venus for excellence. Publishing a humanities journal is the first step towards bringing together what have been traditionally regarded as separate disciplines. The English, History, Philosophy and Religion, and Fine Arts departments share certain approaches to teaching creativity and expression. The Buttonball Papers 2010 brings together students from American Studies, American History, the Cambridge Seminar, AP Music Theory, and Advanced Photography. Clarity of expression and elegance of thought characterize each of the works represented in this volume.

The influence of specialized periodicals on thought and lifestyle, the impact of a single individual on historical events, the evolution of American philosophies of education, the importance of international exchange in architecture and science represent the positive side of American studies. The more difficult and controversial moments of American history are represented by papers on race relations, corporate corruption, and social stigmatization. Twentieth-century cultural icons in the arts, the emergence of modernism in British literature, and comparative studies in contemporary American literature accompany two musical compositions for piano and two cyanotypes with contemporary subjects.

The 2010 volume of The Buttonball Papers invites the reader to share Deerfield students’ explorations and to enjoy the rich variety of subjects and forms represented in this inaugural volume.

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NE OF THE MOST EXCITING INITIATIVES

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COMMONWEAL OF CHRIST: THE FAILED MARCH OF JACOB COXEY’S ARMY Jen Mulrow

ANKRUPTCY, RAILROAD FAILURE , AND ECONOMIC DEVASTATION

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marked the difficult decade of the 1890s in burgeoning America.

Dwindling confidence in the gold standard exacerbated the failure of banks, and agricultural stagnation slowed the growth of railroads. This period of panic and depression left thousands unemployed and unable to support themselves or their families. The national government, dominated by a powerful business elite, chose not to intervene on behalf of the poverty-ridden masses. Instead, it insisted it could do nothing and focused on single issues rather than the larger picture. Seeking political leverage, many unemployed turned to marches and protests. On Easter Sunday 1894, self-taught monetary expert Jacob Coxey led one hundred “commonwealers” on a march to Washington, D.C., joined by separate groups from around the country, totaling five hundred people when they reached the Capitol. While Coxey’s march was meant to inspire the country with hope for positive change, it instead intensified public fear and unrest. Negative publicity from newspapers and periodicals exacerbated public opinion and the protest ended with police intervention and trespassing arrests. So despite its best efforts, Jacob Coxey’s peaceful protest to help the unemployed majority ended up an unfortunate failure rather than an inspiring success.

Jacob Coxey, born in Selingrove, Pennsylvania in 1854, was a self-made businessman who had great concern for helping the unemployed during such a time of economic struggle. In the years leading up to his march on Washington, D.C., Coxey worked on plans that would gain the attention of the national government and help bring thousands of people out of unemployment. According to the Atlanta Constitution in 1894, Coxey’s march was a “demonstration on behalf of the ‘Commonweal of Christ’ in favor of good roads and the repudiation of national obligations to pay interest on bonds.” His solution to unemployment consisted of a $500 million public-works program that was funded by paper money rather than by the gold standard and would open up

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thousands of jobs for the unemployed (Boyer 621).

Coxey’s plan, while it seemed to hold potential for success, was unfortunately too radical for his time. The government favored the handsoff nature of a laissez faire policy, and powerful captains of industry promoted the concept of Social Darwinism, or the survival of the fittest.

As stated in the proclamation of the District of Commissioners in May 1894, rather than marching, protesting, or any other demonstration of physical force, “every desirable end can be more certainly and effectively accomplished by ordinary and lawful methods.” President Grover Cleveland also had issues with Coxey’s plan. Cleveland was extremely focused on defending the gold standard, which Coxey suggested should be replaced. Such differences between Coxey’s ideals and the federal government’s beliefs started off Coxey’s march on the wrong foot.

While the federal government did not favor Coxey’s ideals, the thousands of newly unemployed workers and farmers suffering from the Panic of 1893 did. Coxey recruited an impressively diverse campaign of people, including blacks and whites, men and women, Indians and immigrants. Most of these marchers, recently laid off by railroads or cut from other jobs, joined together in a similar desire for national care, reform, and leverage. Groups of men and women all across the country followed Coxey’s lead and formed their own “armies” in places like Butte, Spokane, Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, and other smaller locations. Ideally, Coxey imagined that one hundred thousand marchers traveling in small groups of forty to fifty people would join him on his protest in Washington, D.C..

While Coxey’s army picked up allies and support on its march to Washington, it also stirred panic among those middle-and upper-class members who feared an insurrection of the unemployed. The thought of overwhelming numbers of idle workers marching on Washington, D.C. caused fear in observers rather than inspiring their sympathy. Newspapers fed this fear by attacking the social make-up of Coxey’s army.

Many newspapers gave derogatory names to Coxey and his men, referring to the general as “Crank Coxey” and his men as “tramps” and “never-do-wells.” In March 1894, the Columbus Daily Enquirer referred to the marchers as “a motley gathering in response to the call of the crank . . . an army of a million or more dissatisfied citizens whose large numbers and desperate character may render the local authorities helpless

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to preserve the peace.” Their form of protesting was attacked by the New York Times, which wrote that “No possible good can come of such a gathering, and with no proper preparation or means of subsistence, suffering and ultimate disorder will certainly ensue. No wrong can be righted, no condition of labor ameliorated, no remedy for any existing evil realized by the contemplated demonstration of physical force.” Newspapers also warned that Coxey would not be able to control his army. On March 15, 1894, the Washington Post published an article addressing this issue, titled “Coxey’s Army Too Big for Him: Letters Indicate the Gathering is Already beyond His Control.”

While the newspapers that excoriated Coxey’s army were not the most ideal form of publicity, the newspapers that chose to see his army as a national joke rather than a serious cause with good intentions could be considered even worse. Coxey hoped that the march would gain national attention and instigate helpful reform. But how could these needs be met if the audience that Coxey was trying to target refused to acknowledge his demands as legitimate? The 1984 New York Times article, “Not Worth Worrying About,” stated that “the President has not been at all anxious about the matter, believing that the embarrassment will simply pass as an illustration of a peculiar form of fanaticism.”

Easing President Cleveland’s anxiety was his confidence in the police force and local authorities near the protest. The 1894 New York Times article, “No Welcome for Coxey Men,” stated there had been “talk in the police office about preparations, with some suggestion of ways and means by which the militia may be brought in to repel the assault of the host.” This same article said that “the laws of the District are sufficient to protect the people against an army of vagrants; the ordinances will keep any crowd away from the Capitol, or put a crowd out if it gets into the building.” Local authorities appeared to be sufficient to handle the protest.

Also, the marchers would eventually run out of provisions and supplies; without enough food, money, clothing, or shelter to continue their protest, an inevitable dissipation would occur. As stated by the 1894 New York Times article, “Coxey’s Army Dwindling Away,” “the Coxey army proper has dwindled to about half its original number, and many members of the Commonweal are growing restive, and desire to get out of camp and look for work.” Coxey and his army finally arrived at Washington, D.C. on May 1, 1894, with a total number of five hundred men. Attempting to deliver a

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speech on the lawn of the Capitol that very day, Jacob Coxey was arrested for trespassing and sent to jail for twenty days. His army of commonwealers quickly dispersed.

Inciting public fear, gaining negative publicity, inspiring no new legislation, and concluding with arrest and dispersal, Jacob Coxey’s 1894 march on Washington, D.C. was a failure. There were multiple factors that led Coxey’s army to its downfall, including the support of a cause too radical for its time, a company of marchers too easily villainized, and a federal government too unreceptive to change. But while Coxey’s vision was not realized in the short run, it did in part become a reality later on in twentieth-century America. During The Great Depression in 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued the New Deal, or a sequence of central economic planning and stimulus programs promoting relief for the unemployed, reform for business and financial practices, and recovery for the suffering economy. This program to help the unemployed very closely resembled the strategy and hopes of Jacob Coxey in 1894. Since Coxey was unable to deliver his speech the morning of May 1, it only seems appropriate that his appeal on behalf of the people later finds a voice in Martin Luther King Jr. who delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on another march on Washington in 1963. So while Coxey’s army essentially ended as a failure of its time, it eventually and satisfyingly had the meaningful impact that it sought out from the start.

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WORKS CITED Boyer, Paul S., et al. The Enduring Vision. 6th ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008.

“Coxey Before Congressmen.” New York Times, May 10, 1894. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/ (accessed February 17, 2009).

“Coxey’s Army Too Big For Him.” Washington Post, March 15, 1894. http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/HistArchive/?p_product=EANX (accessed February 20, 2009).

“Coxey’s Plans Fail.” Atlanta Constitution, May 2, 1894: 1. http://proquest.umi.com/ (accessed February 19, 2009).

Edwards, Rebecca. “1896: Economic Depression.” 1896. 2000. http://projects.vassar.edu/1896/depression.html (accessed February 17, 2009).

“Gen. Coxey’s Army.” Columbus Daily Enquirer, March 24, 1894. 2. http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/HistArchive/ ?p_product=EANX(accessed February 20, 2009).

“Gen. Coxey to Lead Unemployed Army.” New York Times, February 26, 1914. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/ (accessed February 17, 2009).

“Not Worth Worrying About.” New York Times, April 24, 1894. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/ (accessed February 19, 2009).

“No Welcome for Coxey’s Men.” New York Times, April 20, 1984. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/. (accessed 20 Feb. 2009).

White, Thomas. The Western Historical Quarterly. Vol. 16. Western Historical Quarterly, 1985. http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0043-(accessed February 20, 2009).

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THE NEW ENGLAND FARMER AND THE VALUE OF TRADITION IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY NORTHEAST Julia Trehu

A MERICA marked the emergence of a nation increasingly focused on the future and driven by new ideologies that preached expansion, invention, and development. The Crèvecoeurian ideal of a “nation of cultivators” was gradually displaced by cultural and economic shifts towards a unified population with new social precepts and ideals. The New England Farmer, a monthly journal, marked by a traditional mindset, values, and practices, instilled vocational and regional pride and identity by emphasizing the significance and nobility of a time-honored agrarian lifestyle in a rapidly expanding world wrestling with larger issues such as politics, westward expansion, urban growth, women’s rights, and slavery.

The traditional New England farmer’s values were rooted in the vision set forth by St. Jean de Crèvecoeur, whose ideals contained visions of a “land of happy farmers.” Farmers viewed honest, industrious hard work as mankind’s highest calling. A December 1855 article entitled “Work! Work!” emphasized that “work is the motto of life, and he who accomplishes the most by his industry is the most truly great man.” This spirit of diligence was closely accompanied by a disdain for accomplishments solely as means for acquiring fame. “To do anything for the sake of ‘rising to eminence’ is unworthy of a man . . . because that indicates an inherent weakness of character,” chided a December 1852 article.

Importance was placed on the wisdom and experience of past generations, as in the July 1852 “Boy’s Department,” which encouraged young men to “venerate the aged.” Young members of New England society were impressed with the importance of self-improvement in daily life. “Seize the golden ball of opportunity,” encouraged the article “A Word to Young Men” in December 1852, “and improve the hours which can be spared from the laborious duties of life, and consecrate them to the improvement of your minds, and the acquisition of useful knowledge.” “There is no young man in the country, however humble his place in society, to whom

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the gates of honor and learning are closed. If he has the spirit of a man there will be no obstacle,” trumpeted an October 1851 article entitled “Self-Instruction.” Numerous self-made men such as Benjamin Franklin, Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, and Roger Sherman, a drafter of the Declaration of Independence, were cited to encourage young men to work diligently at improving themselves and their lives. Finally, the “good old Yankee motto: Mind Your Own Business” (July 1852) was emphasized, explaining that the “principle of individual, social, and civil liberty and independence . . . were the precepts of our good New England fathers, and they applied them as well to their moral, religious, and political circumstances, as their farming operations.” The ideals of hard work, humility, self-governance, and moral uprightness still held strong in the mindset of the mid-nineteenth century farmer.

The New England Farmer took these traditional values and lifestyle and cited their worth and virtue to instill a sense of pride and honor in the agricultural community. The spirit of productivity was encouraged when, in November 1849, an article entitled “Labor Well Applied is Productive of Profit” reassured that “all things relating to my farm shall be done well . . . surely it cannot be necessary to urge upon the intelligent, the hard-working American farmer further considerations in support of a principle that must, on a moment’s reflection, commend itself to every right-minded, reflecting man.” A diligent farmer reading these words of encouragement would feel assured and satisfied that the road he was following was the right one, and that he was among the “right-minded” men of his profession. Countless articles enumerate the endless benefits of an agrarian vocation. “Remember, you who are tillers of the soil, that your cares and troubles and anxieties are few and far between, compared with those suffered by commercial men,” reminded a June 1853 publication. The agricultural tradition was presented as being the safest and most economically durable profession, while it also “inculcated habits of industry to the youth—while others would predispose them to idleness, dissolution, and crime” (December 1852). A contributor to the New England Farmer, fittingly named W. H. Farmer, encouraged one “to engage in farming if you are an intelligent, enterprising, and industrious man—and being a subscriber to the New England Farmer is indication at least. We want you to engage in the most ennobling calling that occupies human beings—cultivating the earth.” Countless articles instilled honor

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and a sense of purpose in the practice of agriculture. Farming is portrayed as a noble and universal practice, held in high esteem for centuries. The New England Farmer cleverly ties these collective themes closer to home, and connects them to concepts with which their local readership would identify, such as the difficulty of farming in the sandy, rocky region of New England, thus instilling a sense of regional as well as occupational pride. “Had there been no New England,” smugly declared a June 1854 article by Silas Brown, “there would have been no republic in America to boast of. Had the lot of the same men who have subdued the land covered with stumps and stones in New England been cast upon the richest land of the great valley of the west, it is possible they might have been enervated, and their posterity become a degenerate race . . . the residents on the hard soil of New England subscribe more for various benevolent purposes than the inhabitants of all the other states in the Union.” “Excellent!” boomed the editor’s remarks in response to this article. In a time when occupations other than farming were becoming more and more prevalent, self-respect and dignity regarding their profession were becoming increasingly important to New England farmers, who looked for reassurance that their traditional lifestyle was truly the highest calling.

Throughout the New England Farmer, little is mentioned about the current political situation of the United States. The sole mention of the President comes in March 1853, when Millard Fillmore is briefly listed as a member of the United States Agricultural Society. “Agriculture is important in a political point of view,” stated a piece from March 1849. “It is the best foundation of national greatness and power. The farmer identifies his possessions with his country, for which he has the strongest attachment.”

The New England Farmer therefore relates the traditional precept of “mind your own business” to its political views.

During the mid-nineteenth century, industrialism was taking hold in America, a fact which did not go unnoticed in agricultural communities. The New England Farmer strove to present engineering as somewhat compatible with traditional farming practices, but mainly to reassure farmers that their occupation was in no way threatened by changes in society. In December 1848, the “Mechanics Department” guaranteed that “the labor and ingenuity of the mechanic have made vast improvements in agriculture, by furnishing superior implements and machines that not only lighten and expedite the labor of the cultivator, but give more thorough

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culture and better operations in almost every process.” However, in the traditional vein of acquiring knowledge from the past, the article entitled “Science in Agriculture,” also published in December 1848, stated that “we want to compare present views and practices with those of by-gone years, and learn whether actual advancement is proportionate to the changes we witness . . . the continued progress of improvements will be most effectually promoted in critical comparisons of our theories and practices with those of recent and more ancient experimenters.” This would have served to calm the anxieties of a farmer who felt the world spiraling away from his traditional lifestyle. Reassurance about the duration of agriculture was present in almost every issue. In November 1949, an article titled “Farming Will Triumph” heralded “a new era . . . [in which] the cause of agriculture has not been left in the rear. With giant force she has ploughed her way through, and with eagle wings she is fast soaring towards the summit of her glory.” In a time of continuous mechanical change, farmers relied on the hope that their profession was still maintaining its traditional role in a society that would eventually rediscover the true worth and value of the time-honored agricultural practice.

An additional issue at the forefront of many New England farmers’ concerns was the tremendous changes taking place in society as many flocked westward or towards urban areas. The New England Farmer made no attempt to disguise its opinion on these matters. “So far as real legitimate farming is concerned, it will be found that the east compares very favorably with the west, and so far as small farmers are concerned, rather exceed the western,” scoffed a writer in December 1855. In a June 1853 excerpt entitled “Rural Pleasures,” the rural lifestyle is glorified as it explains how “exempt from the many cares which throng the pathway of the professional man, the farmer finds ample opportunity to cultivate his mind and expand his intellect, and even while engaged in labor, may still be a learner from the great book of Nature . . . How many young men who now forsake their rural homes and seek the crowded city, would escape the snares of the tempter and shun the cup of sorrow, if they remained upon the peaceful farms of their fathers?” The opinion of the New England Farmer toward urban expansion can be summed up by a passage from “How Cities Exhaust the Fertility of Land” in August 1850: “Down to this day, great cities have ever been the great desolators of the earth . . . they generate pestilence, and bring millions prematurely to their graves . . .

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their inhabitants violate the laws of nature.” One day, the paper reassured, the world would reestablish these “laws of nature” in their epitome: the farmer.

A prominent topic of the day which affected the New England farmer was women’s rights. The role of a woman in New England was important, as she was responsible for maintaining a happy and healthy household for the entire family. High expectations were placed on the mother, as demonstrated by an article from November 1849 which cautioned that “the domestic circle is always too small to allow of rupture; it is always too precious to make excusable any neglect to prevent or heal disturbance.” Women were regarded as the “cornerstone of virtue . . . the birthplace of every virtuous impulse, of every sacred thought.” However, no mention is ever made of women’s rights events such as the Seneca Falls convention of 1848, or leading figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, showing that the New England Farmer wished women to remain in their proper and traditional “sphere.” Although every issue contained a “Ladies Department,” subjects covered always referred to actions traditionally consigned to women, such as cooking, cleaning, flower arranging, poetry, drawing, and the instilling of morals in children, once again demonstrating the duration of time-honored practices in defiance of social change.

A final matter that was gaining strength leading up to the Civil War was that of slavery. Since the traditional farmer viewed hard work and industry as essential to success and survival, slavery, as demonstrated by the New England Farmer, was looked down upon. The article “Labor is Honorable” from December 1850 laments that “an idea appears to be common in our country, that it is more respectable to live by one’s wits than by the labor of his hands . . . it is kept alive at the present day by the depressed condition of the laboring classes in other countries and by the institution of slavery in our own.” To the conventional farmers of New England, a Southern slave owner who never actually did any work with his own hands was refuting the maxims of self improvement and effort that characterized a New Englander’s lifestyle. In April 1853, the article “New England Housewives” confidently stated that “we have, in this part of New England, neither hunger, nor nakedness, nor ignorance, nor slavery.

We regard labor as respectable for all, both men and women. I have yet to learn that the latter . . . envy the condition of the ladies of the South.”

While little criticism of slavery contained in the New England Farmer is

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based on moral foundations, the publication’s readership clearly looked down on slavery as violating the precepts on which their version of America was founded.

In conclusion, the New England Farmer served as hearty reassurance to a farming population dealing with the predicament of how to translate their traditional way of life into a society which was shifting ever farther away from time-honored practices to an era of industrialization and social reform. The publication venerated these traditions and used them to instill pride in the people of New England, instead of generating anxiety about a developing world. Civilization would eventually see the error of its changing ways and return to its traditional values by recognizing that “as the cultivation of the soil is the most ancient of all employments, so it is the most dignified and honorable, for it was ordained by the Almighty himself� (December 1850).

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JOHN DEWEY AND EDUCATION IN THE PROGRESSIVE ERA Katie Walker

P ROGRESSIVE E RA FROM 1900 TO 1920 in America was a period of social reforms that addressed problems arising from the massive immigration, urbanization, and industrialization of the preceding Gilded Age. The arrival of nearly eleven million immigrants between 1870 and 1900 fueled urban growth and provided factories with new laborers, who were willing to work for as little as $2.50 per ten-hour day. As a result, class and cultural divisions widened in the late-nineteenth century in American society between the immigrant population living in poverty and the upper class elite.1 The authoritarian systems of the industrial revolution and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few challenged American democracy.2 John Dewey believed that education focused around equality and a student’s personal experience was necessary for a democratic society. This novel concept of Progressive education, which he implemented at the University of Chicago Laboratory School, has had a long lasting impact on American society.

As public-school enrollment grew from seven million in 1870 to more than twenty-three million in 1920,3 the debate over the scope and function of public education engaged Americans of all socio-economic levels. As a result of Horace Mann’s crusade for universal public education, most states had public school systems by the end of the Civil War.4 By 1900, thirty-one states instituted compulsory-attendence laws requiring school attendance of all children from ages eight to fourteen. From the 1870s on, middle-class educators, who viewed public schools as an instrument for indoctrinating and controlling the lower class, strove to expand public schooling and centralize control.5 The classroom was structured around strict discipline and rote learning. As Dewey summarized in his book, Schools of Tomorrow, “conventional education trains children for docility and obedience; the careful performance of imposed tasks because they are imposed regardless of where they lead is suitable only for creating a society in which there is one head to care for and plan the lives and institutions of the people.”6 Educators emphasized punctuality, silence,

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and obedience to authority. William Torrey Harris urged teachers to instill a sense of order, decorum, self-discipline, and civic loyalty in their pupils.7 He believed that a modern industrial society depended on citizens’ conforming to the timetables of the factory and the train, and consistent with this principle, he envisioned schools as models of precise scheduling. While all schools functioned with regimented order, the curriculum differed based on socio-economic background.

The curriculum was divided between exclusively academic programs for moneyed whites and vocational programs for poor immigrants and blacks. Dewey believed that over-bookish education for some and over-practical for others brings about a division of mental and moral habits, ideals, and outlooks . . .

Academic education turns out future citizens with no sympathy for work done with the hands and no training for understanding social and political difficulties. Trade training turns out future workers who may have greater immediate skills than without training, but no enlargement of mind and no insight into scientific and social implications of the work they do.8

He insisted that all people should experience all types of education. He felt the formation of fixed economic classes would interfer with the successful conduct of society and principles of democracy. Education should instead facilitate social mobility. Dewey argued, “If we train our children only to take orders and fail to give them the confidence to think and act for themselves, we are putting almost insurmountable obstacles in the way of overcoming the defects of the present system and establishing the truth of democratic ideals.�9 During the Progressive Era reformers came up with multiple solutions to create a better American school system.

While some reformers proposed methods of schooling based on the curriculum, and others focused on the child, Dewey found the most effective method to be a combination of both. At one extreme, the curriculum-centered traditional view of educators such as Harris held that children learned by means of lecture and drilling. At the opposite end, the child-centered view advanced by G. Stanley Hall favored free activity and natural expression over subject matter so that uninhibited growth could

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occur.10 Dewey maintained that these conflicting outlooks displayed an artificial and unnecessary dichotomy. The aim of pedagogy, according to Dewey, should be to correlate impulse and subject matter in a way that proved ideas with concrete experience.11 While Dewey believed that structure was important, he saw the traditional ways of schooling in America as stale and inert. Dewey sought to develop a system of education that would take into account America’s growing industrialization and that would place educational practice in the context of a wider understanding of democracy.

John Dewey saw schools as potent engines of social change and believed that education held a crucial position at the center of all concerns, both individual and social.12 He had great faith in the American public school system as the “only fundamental agency for good.”13 Through education young people could become productive members of a democracy: “Since democracy stands in principle for free interchange, for social continuity, it must develop a theory of knowledge which sees in knowledge the method by which one’s experiences is made available in giving direction and meaning to another.”14 In his book Democracy and Education, Dewey argued forcefully for an American public education system that turned the “ideal of equality of opportunity into reality.”15 He strove for universal education that could bring people to break from habit into creative thought and inspire a passion for lifelong learning based on the individual in a community.16 To Dewey, the ideal school would be an “embryonic community”17 where children would learn to live cooperatively as members of a social group. In Experience and Education, Dewey focuses on the importance of experience with interaction.18 Relationships are necessary because empathy, compassion, and the moral aspects of education are intertwined with the intellectual facets of life.19 A pragmatist, Dewey put these ideas of instrumentalism into practice.

To test his philosophy of Progressive education, Dewey established the first Laboratory School, also known as the University Elementary School, in 1896 in Chicago. Here, Dewey introduced a new model for what was being taught and how. Dewey emphasized field trips20 and hands-on learning through experiments and creative problem solving. He also banished bolted-down chairs and desks.21 In 1903, the Laboratory School merged with the Francis W. Parker School. His

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influence also expanded to the Walden School in New York City, founded

by Margaret Naumberg in 1915. In The School and Society, Dewey discussed the successes and challenges he encountered after three years at the Laboratory School. Dewey stated that his primary goal was “to beak down the barriers which have unfortunately come to separate the school life from the rest of the everyday life of the child,”22 a goal which he accomplished. Dewey’s schools were oriented towards democracy, equality, and building community and experience, from which students could construct their own meaning, instead of coming to the teacher’s conclusion.

John Dewey was an innovator in the field of education and his theories were radically different from those previously employed in America, which brought him to the forefront of the movement known as Progressive education.23 Dewey saw education as the continuous accumulation and assimilation of experience. This concept changed the philosophy of children’s education from an emphasis on lecture, memorization, and drilling to a focus on students becoming more actively involved in the learning process. During his long and prolific career, Dewey’s influence on educational thought and the entire American educational establishment was multi-faceted and profound. The Progressive Education Association conducted the Eight Years Study, which evaluated the effectiveness of Progressive education, and found that graduates of progressive schools performed comparably well academically and were substantially more involved and successful in cultural and artistic activities than graduates from traditional secondary schools.24 Within a few decades, Dewey’s influence continued to spread and his system commonly prevailed in the classroom. Dewey was America’s leading educational theorist in the Progressive Era and his work continues to be a timeless source of insight for educators and progressive schools to the present day.

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NOTES 1. Paul S. Boyer et al. The Enduring Vision. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008.

2. “John Dewey.” Biography Resource Center. 2009. http://galenet.galegroup.com/ servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID= mlin_w_deer&srchtp=name&ca=5&AI=U13033091&NA=dewey%2C+john&s te=4&tbst=prp (accessed February 20, 2009).

3. “John Dewey.” Biography Resource Center.

4. Boyer.

5. “John Dewey.” Biography Resource Center.

6. John Dewey. Schools of Tomorrow. New York: Kessinger Publishing, 1915.

7. John Dewey. Problems of Men. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946.

8. John Dewey. Schools of Tomorrow.

9. Ibid.

10. “John Dewey.” American National Biography Online. Feb. 2008. http://www.anb.org/articles/20/20-00289.html?a=1&n=john%20dewey&d= 10&ss=0&q=1 (accessed February 20, 2009).

11. John Dewey. Intelligence in the Modern World. New York: Random House, Inc., 1939. “ 12. John Dewey.” American National Biography Online.

13. John Dewey. Schools of Tomorrow.

14. John Dewey. Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan Company, 1916. manybooks.net (accessed February 20, 2009).

15. Ibid.

16. John Dewey. Intelligence in the Modern World.

17. John Dewey. The School and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907.

18. John Dewey. Experience and Education. New York: Kappa Delta Pi, 1998.

19. John Dewey. Ethical Principles Underlying Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1903.

20. University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, http://www.uclsuchicago.edu/ (accessed February 20, 2009).

21. Boyer.

22. John Dewey. The School and Society.

23. “John Dewey.” American National Biography Online.

24. Kridel, Craig, and Robert V. Bullough, Jr. Stories of the Eight-Year Study.

Albany, NY: State Univeristy of New York, 2007.

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WORKS CITED Boyer, Paul S., et al. The Enduring Vision. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008.

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan Company, 1916. manybooks.net (accessed February 20, 2009).

Dewey, John. Ethical Principles Underlying Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1903.

Dewey, John. Experience and Education. New York: Kappa Delta Pi, 1938.

Dewey, John. Intelligence in the Modern World. New York: Random House, Inc., 1939.

Dewey, John. Problems of Men. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946.

Dewey, John. The School and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907.

Dewey, John. Schools of Tomorrow. New York: Kessinger Publishing, 1915.

“John Dewey.” American National Biography Online. Feb. 2008. http://www.anb.org/articles/20/20-00289.html?a=1&n=john %20dewey&d= 10&ss=0&q=1 (accessed February 20, 2009).

“John Dewey.” Biography Resource Center. 2009. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID= mlin_w_deer&srchtp=name&ca=5&AI=U13033091&NA=dewey%2C+john&s te=4&tbst=prp (accessed February 20, 2009).

Kridel, Craig, and Robert V. Bullough, Jr. Stories of the Eight-Year Study. Albany, NY: State Univeristy of New York, 2007.

University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, 2008. http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/ (accessed February 20, 2009).

With thanks to Mrs. Baker.

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TREE REFLECTION Angie Han “Tree Reflection” was printed with Cyanotype, a process invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842. It was the first of the salt / non-silver processes and is virtually unchanged today. Angie played with hue / saturation and contrast and created a negative on Pittorico photo-acetate. This negative was placed over cotton rag paper painted with Cyanotype solution (ammonio-citrate of iron and potassium ferricyanide) in a contact print frame and left in the sun for seven minutes before being rinsed in water and hydrogen peroxide.

—Timothy Trelease

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SELF Nastassia Adkins “Self” was created by Natassia as part of the Movement Project in Advanced Photography. She used a tripod, adjusted the aperature and kept the shutter open for twenty seconds as she slowly walked toward the camera. It is not a double exposure, but an inventive use of an extended shutter. This image was printed with the Van Dyke process, which employs a formula of ferric ammonium citrate, tartaric acid, and silver nitrate and is wash-developed in distilled water.

—Timothy Trelease

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THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION AND THE ELECTRICITY BUILDING OF 1893 Hannah Flato

M AY 1, 1893, C HICAGO OPENED THE GATES of the World’s Columbian Exposition, a World Fair commemorating Columbus’ discovery of the Americas four centuries before. In celebration of the beginning of American history as the majority of the population knew it, the World’s Fair was an opportunity to tell a story of American progress, achievement, and legacy. In a time of rapid industrialization, a widening gap between rich and poor, and a departure from the Jeffersonian ideal of an agricultural, self-sufficient and democratic populace, it was also an opportunity to portray where the country was headed in an optimistic light, exposing the quarter million people who would visit the Exposition before it closed in October to an image of America undergoing a modern Renaissance. Consequently, this image attempted to revitalize the national stance on electricity, a power that the American public looked upon with a mixture of fear, hesitation, intrigue, and speculation. The Exposition’s Electricity Building redirected these sentiments, impressing upon the minds of visitors through art, education, and entertainment that the use of electricity and technology could propel an individual into the hassle-free and profitable world of “the modern,” just as it was propelling America into a position of leadership among its European peers.

Early in the Exposition’s planning, Professor John P. Barrett, the chief of the Fair’s extensive Electrical Department, outlined what he considered to be a critical correlation between the power of electricity and the opportunities it presented mankind, noting in a paper he presented to the Directory that electricity was “one of the essentials of civilization and progress” (“Electrical Power”). He added that he needed a “parcel of ground” devoted solely to its celebration so that not only “electrical people” but “visiting capitalists and possible customers” might “[become] interested in the subject itself or in any of the various inventions or systems on exhibition” (“Electrical Power”). To stir some of this interest early, newspapers such as the New York Times generated anticipation two

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years before the opening for an electrical show by Edison, the “wizard of Menlo Park,” that would “create a greater sensation than . . . at the Paris Exposition” (“The World’s Exposition”). Also, although the Directory felt that electrical lighting itself stood without competition “for illuminating purposes,” the display of the power at the Fair would be fraught with competition. It was decided from the beginning that the electrical companies should compete to see who was the fittest, and those who weren’t would receive “condemnation for failure” (“Electrical Power”). However, the display would not be limited just to the Electrical Building; the entire Exposition would be one massive electrical wonder. Already, the Directory was planning how America’s industrial prowess would flow out of the Electrical Palace and throughout the entire fair, reinforcing the birthplace of liberty as “the birthplace and home of electrical science” (“An Electrical Wonderland”). When he opened the Exposition, President Grover Cleveland reasserted Barrett’s premise for the incorporation of electricity into the Fair, saying that “as by a touch the machinery that gives life to this vast Exposition is now set in motion, so in the same instant let our hopes and aspirations awaken forces which in all time to come shall influence the welfare, the dignity, and the freedom of mankind“ (qtd. in Boyer 533).

The Exposition strove to establish the essentiality of electricity and industry to America’s definition of civilization and the strides by which the country had measured up to, even surpassed, its European peers. The strategic location of the Electricity Building between the buildings dedicated to American society’s old core trades, Agriculture and Machinery, and the overall beaux-arts European architecture of the entire White City, formed a foundation for this assertion (Rose, “Reactions to the Fair”). The architecture of the Electricity Building was no exception.

The Corinthian and Ionic style drew a direct parallel to the European Renaissance style, thereby associating America and the Electrical Building with classic success and prowess in art, invention, and betterment of mankind in European history. The World Fair itself was advertised this way; posters such as “The Night Pageant” juxtaposed subtitles such as “the most Significant and Grandest Spectacle of Modern Times” on images of classical splendor (Boyer 532). However, a crucial difference existed between the Renaissances of Europe and the Renaissance that the White City depicted. While the focus of the old “rebirth” of the

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fifteenth century celebrated religion and its heroes, this rejuvenation celebrated electricity and its inventors. Search lights grasped the gilded domes, making the White City beautiful by night, “throwing enormous shafts of brilliant white slowly over the grounds, lighting up first one building, then another” (“An Electrical Wonderland”). Scientific American said that the beaux-art architecture served as an “effective backdrop” to the honorable statue by Carl Rohl-Smith of American hero Benjamin Franklin who, “clothed with all the majesty of the discoverer . . . holds the key with which he unlocked the great science” (“The Electricity Building at the Fair”). In fact, angels and saints didn’t adorn the arches and columns; Scientific American wrote that “most of the detail [was] derived from the science of electricity itself, the conventional detail being relieved by the repetitions of the lamp, electro-magnet, etc.” (“The Electricity Building at the Fair”). With these connotations, the façade alone portrayed a cathedral of inspiration, guidance, and self-improvement in which visitors could find solace amid the wonders of American electrical power.

And the scientific elements didn’t undermine the sublime experience of passing through the “portals of the magnificent temple,” for the Atlanta Constitution wrote that the displays’ “wonderful force would certainly appall any but a god” (“The Electrical Display”). Six hundred and ninety feet long and 315 wide, the Electricity Building contained over 200,000 square feet of exhibition space, with a cross nave 102 feet wide and 110 feet high creating a cathedral-like structure overhead (“The Electrical Display”). In addition to service lights every twenty-three feet, exhibitors packed sixty to eighty lights into their small spaces producing a “positively dazzling effect” (“The Electrical Display”). Massive, mesmerizing pieces included a “tower of light” containing six thousand incandescent bulbs by General Electric and an entire 102 by 70 foot wall covered with a “decorative design” composed of more than twenty-five hundred lights (“The Electrical Display”). These incredible displays created the effect that the Directory was striving for: a transformation of a building’s interior into a fantastical world. There was something for everyone: inventors, investors, mechanics, and especially, for housewives and children. The electrical displays featured household appliances that made “matches, fuel and fire unnecessary articles about the modern home,” advertisements meant to convince the matriarchs of America’s households of the safety and necessity of electricity in their homes (“The

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Electricity Building”). The planners of the Exposition also capitalized on visually intriguing and educational displays that captivated everyone, especially the children that would form the future, sixty to one hundred thousand of whom passed through the fair daily (“Story of the Fair”). One visitor commented that America “should not fail to bestow upon other children the boon of enlightenment and ennobling impressions which this grand spectacle conveys” (Rose, “Reactions to the Fair”).

In addition to capturing a diverse audience, the building had several other objectives. The displays of the primitive and early inventions infused the show with patriotism and legacy, displaying familiar items such as Franklin’s lightning rod, without which Barrett said it would be “impossible to appreciate the greatness of the progress made” (“Electrical Power”). The building also showed through contrasting the primitive and the modern how, despite the tumultuously rapid industrialization of the last half century, the modern, tame version of electricity was not “in its infancy.” In fact, “it had long ago discarded its infantile clothes,” and the displays were “giv[ing] the science its deserved place” (“The Electrical Display”). In order to further dismiss some of the nervousness and fear that had sprung out of the electrical furor, there were demonstrations such as Professor Tesla’s transmission of one hundred thousand volts through his own body without injury, a display that The Youth’s Companion wrote “seems the more wonderful when we recall that the currents made use of to execute murderers at Sing Sing, New York, have never exceeded two thousand volts” (“An Electrical Wonderland”). This is an example of how the science was redirected as fascinating, safe, and “marvelous for [its] power to perform man’s bidding” (“The Electricity Building”). To be sure that America would be known as the leader of this new industry, the home country was allotted 120,000 square feet of exhibition space, easily outdoing Germany, the largest foreign display (“The Electricity Building”).

Finally, by using electricity to enhance almost every exhibition, the Exposition associated electricity with every magnificent element of the White City, the Midway Plaissance, and the famous fountains. So, whatever aspect of the Fair a visitor marveled at and, in the case of writer Hamlin Garland, wrote home that his parents should “sell the cookstove if necessary and come [see],” was almost bound to have been enhanced or made possible by electricity (qtd. in Rose, “A History of the Fair”). With almost a quarter of the nation’s population passing through the gates

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during the seven months that the Exposition was open and with such high overall success rates and popularity, Barrett, the Electrical Building, and the small lights throughout the Fair that “glow[ed] in the dark like fireflies” (“An Electrical Wonderland”) were bound to have obtained some of their objectives and made some sort impact on popular opinion.

Housewives had seen a vision of a sphere involving less sweat, businessmen saw a worthwhile investment, inventors saw that there was no limit to convenience, and America’s youth saw potential literally for a brighter future. The World’s Columbian Exposition had served as an “educator of the people,” familiarizing the American public with the “newest in invention “by juxtaposing historical relics and the “triumphs of modern science” (“Story of the Fair”).

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WORKS CITED Boyer, Paul S., et al. “The Rise of Industrial America, 1865-1900.” The Enduring Vision, a History of the American People. 6th ed. Boston: Houghton Miflin Company, 2008. 533-63.

“The Electrical Display: Much of the Most Complete and the Finest Ever Made.” New York Times, June 10, 1893: 13. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest.

Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://hn.bigchalk.com (accessed February 20, 2009).

“Electrical Power: World’s Fair Exhibit Sketched by Prof. J. P. Barrett.” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 5,1892: 5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest.

Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://hn.bigchalk.com (accessed February 17, 2009).

“An Electrical Wonderland.” Youth’s Companion, May 4, 1893, Vol. 66, Iss. 18 ed.: 19.

American Periodicals Series Online. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest. umi. com/login (accessed February 20, 2009).

“The Electricity Building.” Photograph. 1893. Illinois during the Gilded Era. 29 May 2008. Northern Illinois U. http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/fimage/ gildedage/image.php?id=2217 (accessed February 15, 2009).

“The Electricity Building at the Fair.” Scientific American, October 7, 1893. American Periodicals Series Online. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/login (accessed February 20, 2009).

“The Electricity Building: the Most Wonderful of Them All.” Atlanta Constitution, May 1, 1893: 0-1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://hn.bigchalk.com (accessed February 19, 2009).

“Interior of Electricity Building at Night.” Photograph. 1893. Illinois during the Gilded Era. May 29, 2008. Northern Illinois U. http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/fimage/gildedage/image.php?id=2217 (accessed February 15, 2009).

“Night Exposition Views: How Electric Floodlights Will Be Used at the World’s Fair.”

Chicago Daily Tribune, May 17, 1891. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://hn.bigchalk.com (accessed February 19, 2009).

Night Pageant, the Grand Columbian Carnival. Poster. 1893. The Enduring Vision, a History of the American People. By Paul S Boyer, et al. 6th ed. Boston: Houghton Miflin Company, 2008. 532.

Rose, Julie K. “A History of the Fair.” American Studies at the University of Virginia.

September 6, 2004. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma96/WCE/history.html (accessed February 17, 2009).

—. “Reactions to the Fair.” American Studies at the University of Virginia. September 6, 2004. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma96/WCE/reactions.html (accessed February 17, 2009).

“South Entrance to the Electricity Building.” Photograph. 1893. Illinois during the Gilded Era.

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“Story of the Fair.” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 1,1893: 16. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://hn.bigchalk.com (accessed February 20, 2009).

VandeCreek, Drew. “1892-1895: 1893 Chicago’s World Fair.” Illinois during the Gilded Age Digitization Project. May 29, 2008. Northern Illinois U. http://dig.lib.niu.edu/gildedage/aboutsponsors.html (accessed February 15, 2009).

“Will Open Today. President Cleveland Will Touch the Button and Start Things.” Atlanta Constitution, May 1,1893: 0-1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest.

Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://hn.bigchalk.com (accessed February 19, 2009).

“The World’s Exposition: Scenes of Activity on the Chicago’s Great Fair Grounds.” New York Times, May 9, 1891. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://hn.bigchalk.com (accessed February 19, 2009).

“World’s Fairs.” American Eras: Development of the Industrial United States 1878-1899.

Ed. Vincent Tompkins. Detriot: Gale, 1997. 412-413.

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THE ALCATRAZ PROCLAMATION Jack Heise

MERICAN INDIANS HAVE BEEN MISTREATED throughout American history. Decimated by warfare and disease, by the end of the nineteenth century most had been forced into reservations, desolate, remote parcels of land deemed unusable by settlers and the federal government. Reservation life was distinguished by high rates of poverty and alcoholism, and Indians were encouraged to abandon their traditional lifestyles and assimilate white culture. But in the 1960s, like many other oppressed groups, American Indians began to organize and speak out. The American Indian Movement, or AIM, founded in 1968, was the biggest and most influential organization devoted to the cause of “Red Power” (Prescott). In 1969 they achieved national recognition by invading and occupying Alcatraz Island near San Francisco, California. The Alcatraz Proclamation, written by Adam Fortunate Eagle and delivered by Richard Oakes, reflects the core sentiment of the American Indian Movement in the late 1960s. The Alcatraz Proclamation signaled a rebirth of cultural consciousness, and made use of satire to address current and historical grievances; by making what the federal government considered to be unreasonable demands, they drew attention to the Alcatraz occupation, and the stunt became a successful one, helping to lead to a new public awareness of the plight of American Indians and sparking further activism.

If nothing else, the Alcatraz Proclamation is one of the most entertaining artifacts of the Civil Rights era. Adam Fortunate Eagle, the writer of the proclamation, made use of satire to help enumerate the wrongs inflicted on American Indian society by the United States government and by whites in general. One of the most publicized claims was the group’s offer to “purchase said Alcatraz Island for twenty-four dollars in glass beads and red cloth,” citing “a precedent set by the white man’s purchase of a similar island about 300 years ago” (Fortunate Eagle), referring to Peter Minuit’s acquisition of Manhattan. They also supported the creation of a “Bureau of Caucasian Affairs,” in order to be “fair and honorable in [their] dealings with white men” (Fortunate Eagle).

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Furthermore, they suggested some of their resentment about the reservation system by proclaiming Alcatraz to be “more than suitable for an Indian Reservation, as determined by the white man’s own standards” (Fortunate Eagle), due to the lack of water, sanitation facilities, natural resources, and industry. This satire and irony generated publicity for the movement, one of the main goals of the occupation.

But the Proclamation was more than a publicity stunt. Through the Alcatraz Proclamation, the leaders of the occupation highlighted the serious problems that American Indians faced in the 1960s. Around the time that Alcatraz was invaded, the American Indian life expectancy was over twenty years less than the national average, and the average household income was about $1,500, one-fourth the national average (Winton).

Much of this was due to the state of reservations, which the Proclamation suggested had “no fresh running water, . . . inadequate sanitation facilities, . . . no oil or mineral rights, . . . no health-care facilities, . . . [and] no educational facilities” (Fortunate Eagle). The government did little to improve the conditions; Eisenhower’s policy towards Indians was the “termination of Federal supervision” with the hope that Indians would assimilate into mainstream society (United States, Eisenhower). This policy is in spirit quite similar to the Dawes Severalty Act that cost tribes thousands of acres of land in the late 1800s. But the invaders and occupiers of Alcatraz had no desire to assimilate; they embraced their culture. The Proclamation is addressed to “the Great White Father and his People,” and in it the writer refers to the “victory over Yellow-Hair Custer and his army” (Fortunate Eagle). Such diction reflects the almost stereotypical “old way” of talking; clearly the invaders wanted to hang on to old customs. However, they were willing to reject previous differences among tribes in order to build a more successful movement: they wrote that the Proclamation was from “Indians of All Tribes.” Unity amongst Indians was a key objective, for no single tribal group had enough clout to make a significant impact.

Richard Oakes, a charismatic twenty-seven-year-old Mohawk Indian from New York State who was recognized as the “Chief” of Alcatraz, delivered the Proclamation and helped define the goals of the movement (Johnson). He emphasized unity, hoping to create “an allIndian awareness,” and saw the occupation as “the best way to dramatize the plight of [his] people” (qtd. in Waugh). He also helped fight for the dreams that the invaders had for the future of the island. He spearheaded

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the negotiations with the federal government and demanded that the government not only give them the deed to the island but also that the government fund “A Center of Native American Studies, . . . an American Indian Spiritual Center, . . . an Indian Center of Ecology, . . . [and] a Great Indian Training School” (Fortunate Eagle). These goals reflect Richard Oakes’s leadership and the strategies employed by the movement. Oakes knew that the government was not likely to cave in to the occupiers’ demands, but by negotiating in this manner he was not only hoping to compromise, but to generate further publicity. Furthermore, because these institutions would help preserve their cultural heritage, these goals reflect the movement’s embrace of Indian culture and the rejection of assimilation. Oakes was a key figure in the Alcatraz saga, helping define the goals of the occupation and ensure unity on the island.

The white public’s view of the Alcatraz occupation shifted over time. It was near the end of the Civil Rights era, and the public had by this point begun to grow weary of activism, but this movement was still a novelty. Newspaper articles mentioned that “all that night from the rock the eerie beat of tribal drums drifted out across the bay toward lit-up San Francisco” (Waugh). In the beginning, the media treatment was playful and by and large sympathetic to the occupation. The government reaction was more mixed: Republican Senator from California, George Murphy, said “Most of these claims are so old, and I really don’t think there is any legal basis to it” (qtd. in “Alcatraz Indians”). The occupiers alleged that the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie stipulated that all surplus federal land should go to the Sioux, but the government viewed Alcatraz as well beyond the understood boundaries, and the federal government has never really considered treaties with American Indians to be binding. In any case, the government was a major opponent of the occupation. And before long, the general public began to view the occupation less as a novelty and more of a threat. More often, the media began to report an “arrow . . . fired into the side of [a] boat,” or “a threat by the Indians to firebomb a Coast Guard boat rather than permit the guardsmen to come onto the island” (Caldwell). In short, the Indians appeared to be getting violent and radical, something a society growing weary of activism did not want. The occupation ended on June 10, 1971, when armed government officials forced the final fifteen Indians off the island.

The occupation lasted less than two years, but the effects endured

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for decades. It marked the beginning of the “Red Power” movement, which took an increasingly militant stance to improve Indian standards of living: in 1972, Indians invaded the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Washington, D.C., and held it for a week; in 1973, Indians took over the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, for ten weeks, which involved a shootout with federal troops (Prescott). Russell Means, one of the bestknown members of the American Indian Movement, said that “Alcatraz . . . put Indians and Indian rights smack dab in the middle of the public consciousness for the first time since the so-called Indian Wars” (qtd. in Alcatraz is Not an Island). Wilma Mankiller, another famous activist, said that “[Alcatraz] gave me the sense that anything was possible” (qtd. in Winton). In short, the occupation not only put Indian rights in the spotlight for a brief period of time, but also paved the way for a whole generation of activism. And this movement was successful: President Nixon rejected Eisenhower’s policy of “forced termination,” or assimilation, advocating instead “self-determination,” in the hopes that this policy would “strengthen the Indian’s sense of autonomy, without threatening [his] sense of community” (United States, Nixon). These changes were the result of action

by Richard Oakes and the continued struggle of those who followed.

The Alcatraz Proclamation marked the birth of a new era of American Indian activism, gaining publicity for the movement as well as expressing some of the guiding rhetoric. But though the results of this movement were significant, the debt owed by the government to the American Indian people has not yet been repaid. Though an occasional court case awards a monetary sum to a certain tribe, the fact is that European settlers did systematically subdue and destroy the Native American civilization. These two fundamentally different cultures would have had difficulty coexisting. Russell Means wrote that he “detest[s] writing,” as he considers it “one of the white world’s ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.” The spread of so-called civilization across the world involved the conquest and suppression of indigenous cultures, under the assumption that Western culture is superior. But we must not ignore the traditions and heritage of past cultures; people are people, no matter what continent, and the lessons of their past are just as valuable as ours.

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WORKS CITED “Alcatraz Indians Invite Hickel to Island Powwow.” Los Angeles Times, November 29, 1969. American Periodicals Series Online. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/ (accessed May 13, 2009).

Alcatraz is Not an Island. PBS. http://www.pbs.org///.html (accessed May 12, 2009).

The Alcatraz Proclamation. http://shapingsf.ctyme.com//////.dir/$alcatraz-proclamation-photo.jpg (accessed May 13, 2009).

Caldwell, Earl. “Alcatraz Indians Short of Water.” New York Times, August 16, 1970.

American Periodicals Series Online. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/ (accessed May 18, 2009).

Exploring the West. Stanford University. http://west.stanford.edu/bin/. php?id=88 (accessed May 12, 2009).

Fortunate Eagle, Adam. The Alcatraz Proclamation. http://www.cwis. org///raz.htm (accessed May 12, 2009).

Johnson, Troy. Alcatraz Island Occupation. National Parks Service. http:// www.nps.gov///.html (accessed May 12, 2009).

Means, Russell. “’For America to Live, Europe Must Die.’” http://www. dickshovel.com/.html (accessed May 13, 2009).

Prescott, Nicholle. “American Indian Movement.” American History Online. Facts On File. http://www.fofweb.com/ (accessed May 12, 2009).

“This Time It’s the Palefaces Who Bring Turkey to Indians.” Los Angeles Times, November 28, 1969. American Periodicals Series Online. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/ (accessed May 13, 2009).

United States. Cong. President Nixon, Special Message on Indian Affairs. By Richard M. Nixon. http://www.epa.gov///nixon70.pdf (accessed May 19, 2009).

—. Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill Concerning Termination of Federal Supervision Over the Menominee Indian Tribe. By Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1954. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu//.php?pid=9927 (accessed May 17, 2009).

“U.S. Warns Alcatraz Indians.” Washington Post, August 12, 1970. American Periodicals Series Online. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/ (accessed May12, 2009).

Waugh, John C. “’It’s Our Statue of Liberty.’” Christian Science Monitor, December 18, 1969. American Periodicals Series Online. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/ (accessed May 12, 2009).

Winton, Ben. “Alcatraz, Indian Land.” Native Peoples Magazine, Fall 1999. http://siouxme.com//_np.html (accessed May 14, 2009).

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PRELUDE Aaron Clayton-Dunn

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“Prelude,� for solo piano, was written for the AP Music Theory and Composition class.

For the final assessment of the year, students were asked to write a free composition demonstrating an understanding of something toward the end of later common practice.

A pianist, Aaron gravitated toward Romanticism. —Peter Warsaw

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MENUET Akshaya Avril-Tucker

“Menuet,” for solo piano, was written for the AP Music Theory and Composition class.

For the final assessment of fall term, students were asked to demonstrate mastery of the Classical style by writing a Menuet in the style of Mozart or Beethoven.

—Peter Warsaw

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A BELOVED MEDEA Juliana Saussy

M ORRISON ’ S B ELOVED is rife with references to Biblical passages, historical events, and other works of literature, including Euripides’ Medea. In Beloved, Sethe, a runaway slave who kills her child in an incident reminiscent of Margaret Garner’s filicide, echoes Medea in deed and character. The two share similarities in description and situation, and the community in Beloved parallels that of Medea as well.

But while Medea acts out of complex motives, the foremost amongst which is revenge, Sethe’s reasoning is simple and driven by emotion; she kills her child out of motherly love and a desire to protect her from the greater harm of slavery. Even the titles of the books betray the fundamental difference; where Medea and her concerns revolve around the titular character, Beloved is named for the murdered child to whom Sethe devotes herself. Where Medea is literally a self-centered text, Beloved introduces the theme of parental love and thus sets itself fundamentally apart from its ancient predecessor.

Even in terms of particulars, Sethe echoes Medea in description.

Sethe is “queenly” (Morrison 14) while Medea is literally royal; Medea is a barbaric foreigner to Corinth while Sethe is black, her mother “from the sea” via slave-ship (Morrison 74). Both Sethe and Medea are noted for their resemblance to hard, inanimate objects; another character in Beloved, Paul D, describes Sethe as the “iron-eyed girl” (Morrison 12) and earlier as having “iron eyes and backbone to match” (Morrison 10). Here, the signifier ‘iron’ denotes her strong-willed character. Euripides also compares Medea to inanimate objects: she “listens to her friends as they give advice no more than if she were a rock” (Morwood 2. 29-30), which again indicates strength in will. Later the chorus decries her as being “stone or iron” (Morwood 34. 1279-80), this time pointing to the absence of emotions and heartlessness exhibited by “cruel wom[e]n” (Morwood 34. 1279). Sethe and Medea are also both compared to animals. The Nurse refers to Medea as “agrion” (Elliott 7. 103), given in Liddell-Scott as “wild, savage” and connoting the bestial (Liddell et al. 8). She is also referred to twice during the course of the play as a lioness, having “the

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wild glance of a lioness with young” (Morwood 6. 186) and being a “foul lioness” (Morwood 38. 1408). In all these cases, animalistic behavior is not a point of self identification but rather a projected interpretation.

Sethe, too, is assigned her “animal ones” in addition to her “human characteristics” (Morrison 228), not only by the whites who oppress her but also even by Paul D, who, in reminding Sethe of her humanity, tells her, “You got two feet, Sethe, not four” (Morrison 194), thus implicitly accusing her of animalistic behavior.

Sethe and Medea also share similarities in character. Both stand as examples of strong women who question a patriarchy through their own independence. The strongest indicator of Sethe’s feminine independence lies in her matriarchal household. Sethe, rather than the traditional male, is the provider and bread-winner, and her “self-sufficiency” threatens the status quo (Morrison 202). Even her escape from slavery, at the time “the only thing [she] ever did on [her] own” (Morrison 190), stands as testament to her independence and capability. An exchange between Paul D and Sethe also illuminates her recognition of the oppression of women: “[ . . . ] Feel how it feels to be a coloredwoman roaming the roads with anything God made liable to jump on you.

Feel that.”

“I know every bit of that, Sethe. I wasn’t born yesterday and I never mistreated a woman in my life.”

“That makes one in the world,” Sethe answered.

“Not two?”

“No. Not two.”

In a rare moment, Sethe’s bitterness about the position of a woman in a dangerous world slips through. Baby Suggs, Sethe’s mother-in-law, reinforces this ideology, saying, “A man is just a man” (Morrison 27); through assigning this character “hol[iness]” (Morrison 104), Morrison indicates her own approval of Baby. Medea is more outspoken than Sethe in this regard, saying in her first lengthy address onstage, “Of everything that is alive and has a mind, we women are the most wretched creatures” (Morwood 7. 230-1), going on even to reference childbirth (“I would rather stand three times in the battle line than bear one child,” (Morwood 7. 251-2). Like Sethe, she is effectively the head of the household, given

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that Jason has abandoned the family, and like Sethe, she “never look[s] away” (Morrison 14). As Sethe “[did] not look away [ . . . ] when a man got stomped to death by a mare” or “a sow began eating her own litter did not look away then either” (Morrison 14), Medea too stares death in the face, having “killed the dragon” (Morwood 14. 479-80) and “killed Pelias at the hands of his own children—the most grievous of all ways to die— and destroyed their whole house” (Morwood 14. 484-6). The incident with Pelias, in which she persuades the daughters to cut up their father and throw him into a cooking pot, is interestingly an inversion of Sethe’s experience with the sow; in one the sow cannibalizes the children, in the other the children destroy the father. In both incidents, neither Sethe nor Medea break their gaze.

Elements external to Sethe, too, echo Medea; in Beloved, the surrounding community takes the place of the Euripidean chorus. In Beloved, as in Medea, the community doesn’t interfere at the moment of the murder; in the latter, the chorus questions “Should I go into the house?” (Morwood 34. 1277) but never dares to act, whereas in the former, the “community step[s] back and hold[s] itself at a distance” (Morrison 209). However, Sethe’s community does not direct our thoughts as much as Euripides’ classic chorus does, but it does recall some of the themes touched upon in Medea. The most important dialogue the chorus engages in both Medea and Beloved revolves around the concept of moderation in love. In Beloved, as in Medea (where singular verbs such as “me” for the accusative “me” indicate the presence of a sole speaker within the chorus), single members of the community speak out against the folly of excessive love. Paul D, referring to Sethe, ponders “her toothick love” (Morrison 228), a love that is somehow immoderate. Baby Suggs, meanwhile, “[does]n’t approve of extra” (Morrison 102).

“Everything depends on knowing how much” (Morrison 102), Baby Suggs says, and adds “Good is knowing when to stop” (Morrison 102).

These two tenets of her faith echo not only Medea but also Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and Horace,1 whom Euripides would not have been aware of but who reflected many ideological norms of the classical world.

Aristotle’s Golden Mean, the desirable balance between excess and want, is perhaps the best known example. In Medea, the chorus also upholds the ideal of love that is neither too thick nor too thin. “When love comes too violently to men, / it gives them / no glory for mortal virtue. / But if Cypris

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[Aphrodite] come in moderation, / no other goddess is so delightful,” the chorus sings in lines 627-31 (Morwood 17). Later, “temperance” is described as “the gods’ most lovely gift” (Morwood 18. 637-8). But neither Medea nor Sethe follow these prescriptions; Sethe continues loving her children fiercely and protectively, and Medea seeks her revenge out of slighted love. Sethe sums it up well: “Love is or it isn’t. Thin love ain’t love at all” (Morrison 194).

However, although Sethe and Medea share many similarities, Medea’s motives are fundamentally different from Sethe’s. Medea is a self-centered being, whose concerns revolve around herself, while Sethe designates her children her “best thing” (Morrison 321) and needs to be told by Paul D “You your best thing” instead (Morrison 322). Sethe’s concept of herself is intrinsically entwined with her children, and at one point she declares that she “wouldn’t draw breath without [her] children” (Morrison 239-40). Medea, meanwhile, essentially shows only one moment of attachment (Morwood 28-9. 1023-1081), in which she vacillates between wanting to spare her children and feeling driven to kill them for layered, multiple motives. Her primary motivation is revenge and “seek[ing] to pain [the children’s] father through their sufferings” (Morwood 29. 1046-7), and she calls upon “avenging fiends” (Morwood 29. 1059). Later, shaming Jason is linked with revenge as Medea asks, “Do I want to make myself ridiculous by letting my enemies go unpunished?” (Morwood 29. 1049-50). Revenge becomes a necessary response to perceived slight; Jason “[was] never going to shame [Medea] and get away with it” (Morwood 36-7. 1355, 1357). Only later does Medea introduce the idea of protecting her children, the reason which motivates Sethe.

“It will never come to pass that [Medea] leave[s her] children for [her] enemies to insult.2 There’s no alternative—they must die.” (Morwood 29.

1049-50). The children must die to be protected from ire and cruelty.

Medea “shall not delay and so surrender them to other, crueler hands to kill. There’s no escape from it, none at all. They must die” (Morwood 33.

1238-40). In this respect, then, Medea resembles Sethe, who lives to protect her children from cruelty and harm. Her purpose in killing Beloved and attempting to murder her other children is to “[drag] them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them” (Morrison 192). In her own words, “I took and put my babies where they’d be safe” (Morrison 193). Her intention with Denver and the rest of her

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children is to “protect her while [she’s] live and [ . . . ] protect her when [she] ain’t” (Morrison 54). And at the crucial moment, Sethe is almost without reason; rather, her act is an instinctive one. Her actions are not rational and are instead concentrated to the realm of the physical; “if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew” (Morrison 192). Medea’s cruelty has precedent, such as in her gift to Jason’s other woman of the wedding dress and garland that literally “feed[s] on the wretched girl’s pale flesh” (Morwood 32. 1189-90), but Sethe’s is an isolated incident, born of impulse and the constraints of time.

Their motives also differ in the intensity of personal consequences; Medea faces only the intangibility of shame, but Sethe and her children risk enslavement. While Medea’s motives are many and complex, Sethe’s is simple; her whole intention is to save and protect her children, rather than any yearnings for revenge or honor.

Although her tale echoes the Euripidean drama, Sethe is not a modern Medea, full of hate and spite. Through recasting the vengeful Medea as a figure of protective motherhood, Toni Morrison effectively reshapes the pivotal incident into an understandable event, born of desperation and love, rather than an unnatural tragedy. Rather than standing as a grotesque anomaly of human nature, the event being of divine and irrational origin (“the gods bring many things to pass against our expectation,” (Morwood 38. 1417), the Medea figure becomes a sympathetic character, her actions justified. Medea—Sethe—could be any one of us in extreme and extenuating circumstances. At the end of the novel, we are introduced to “familiar” footsteps (Morrison 324); “should a child, an adult place his feet in them, they will fit” (Morrison 324). Regardless of size, these footsteps fit us all. Sethe’s story is universal.

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WORKS CITED Euripides. Medea. Footnotes by Donald Mastronarde. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Euripides. Medea. Trans. James Morwood; introduction by Edith Hall. Collected in Medea and Other Plays. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2009.

Euripides. Medea. Trans. Arthur S. Way. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964.

Liddell, Henry et.al. A Greek-English Lexicon. Medford: Tufts University, Classics Department, 2002.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. London: Vintage, 2004.

1. Thanks to Mr. Brush for elucidating this point.

2. ‘Insult’—literally kaqubrisai, given by Way as ‘trample on’ (line 1061; 367) and indicating an act of vicious anger.

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THE NAMES PROJECT: HOW THE AIDS QUILT HUMANIZED THE AIDS EPIDEMIC

Camille Coppola

N A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN FROM AN AIRPLANE,

distinct colors blend into a rainbow patchwork of cloth. Individual panels commemorating past loved ones seem almost indistinguishable within the collectively mammoth tapestry. The AIDS quilt began with these intentions—to unify a diverse group of individuals under the single, encompassing tapestry of grief many faced as a result of the 1980s AIDS epidemic. In the spring of 1987, Cleve Jones assembled a quilt composed of mementos to commemorate the recently-deceased Marvin Feldmen. Quilting bees, a traditional American folk custom, inspired Cleve Jones to begin this quilting movement; his idea then spread to other members of the San Francisco Bay Area that summer. Eventually, this quilt-building grew to become a nationwide phenomenon, and was termed “The NAMES Project.” While Jones originally intended for the quilt to unite people during a time of mourning, the folk art symbol inevitably suggested that the AIDS epidemic was a deeply American crisis, entrenched in American culture. As the “quilt movement” gained momentum, the quilt began to take on more political and social implications. The quilt became a symbol for the affected AIDS communities’ activism against the United States government’s apparent negligence of AIDS-related issues, the growing human toll of the AIDS epidemic on American society, and the fear and discrimination surrounding the disease (McLaughlin). The AIDS quilt personalized and Americanized the AIDS epidemic crisis, ultimately reshaping the public’s perception of it. This personalization and Americanization broke stereotypes about AIDS patients, attempted to achieve AIDS-related reforms, and helped assuage the fear associated with the disease.

When the NAMES Project first displayed the quilt in its entirety on the National Mall on October 11, 1987 in conjunction with the National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights, the quilt showed the immense impact it had had on American society thus far (McLaughlin).

An article by Sandra G. Boodman written the day before the quilt’s first display is entitled “Giant Quilt Names 1,920 AIDS Victims; Memorial

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Will Be Unfurled on Mall: Organizers Say AIDS Quilt Represents Pain, Love.” Such a title implies that the number of panels, the political implications of its location, and the humanity the quilt expressed drew the attention of the media, and, subsequently, the public. The quilt, which stretched more than two blocks and told heart-wrenching stories on each panel, illustrated the impact of the epidemic. This same article quotes Mike Smith, an organizer of the NAMES project. He related the project’s goal of humanizing the AIDS epidemic: “We want people to remember that for each of those who died of AIDS there was a family and lovers and friends who supported them” (Boodman). Extensive media coverage of the quilt led to its tour of twenty different cities throughout the course of the year (“Aids Quilt to Be Shown”). Thus, the quilt, after its first year on display in Washington, D.C., did not only unite mourners, but also provoked an enormous increase in the public’s awareness of the disease.

The public began to see AIDS as both an emotionally and physically devastating crisis.

As the media covered news of the quilt, the public received it as a political statement. As a piece of folk art, its seemingly entirely American heritage reminded the people that AIDS victims were also American citizens in need of justice and rights. Displaying the quilt on the National Mall where historical protests and speeches had occurred throughout American history and portraying the homophobia and discrimination surrounding the disease proved to the public that AIDS was, in fact, a political issue. In April 1987, President Reagan addressed the AIDS epidemic publicly, saying that “sex education in schools about the disease should include instruction in moral values and the difference between ‘right and wrong’” (Dickenson). Thus, although Reagan was addressing the AIDS epidemic, he continued to see those afflicted as wrong-doers, and the disease as somewhat dirty and shameful. The quilt illuminated the fear surrounding AIDS and the homophobia prevalent in American society. By humanizing AIDS victims, the quilt ultimately helped temper homophobia and fear. Heather McHugh, in her article, “They Shall Not Go Nameless,” discussed this emotion-provoking “proof” of the fear of homosexuality and the AIDS epidemic that continued to exist, writing that some of the panels work as powerful graphic statements, and even the least sophisticated (perhaps especially these) are very moving. One man’s striking fabric design is disfigured by a roughly scissored hole: his lover’s

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parents cut the last name out when he took them to the memorial he had made for their son; now, as part of the larger quilt, it testifies as plainly to their fear as to his care. Individual stories like this one humanized the disease and seemed to shame society’s fear and discrimination of AIDS patients.

The quilt positioned so close to the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial also seemed to imply that the AIDS epidemic was like a war not only in its large human toll, but also in the neglect victims of the disease faced from government and in the discrimination they faced from society. Thus, the quilt seemed to show that AIDS was just as devastating a crisis as the Vietnam War and an equally important moment in American history. The Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, however, which listed names of the soldiers on granite, avoided individuality. The quilt instead brought its list of names alive, and visitors to the quilt inevitably compared this memorial to the more stoic one of Vietnam veterans. The author of a 1989 Washington Post article entitled “A Fabric of Love, Pain, Anger,” writes about her experience seeing the quilt, compared to seeing the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial: I did not expect to find anybody I knew memorialized in an AIDS quilt . . . I did not expect to cry. I’d been to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall, seen cemeteries filled with rows of cold gravestones, and pretty much figured that there was nothing to do for the dead except pay my respects. But somehow these 10,848 panels of cloth rocked my soul in a way that granite never did.

The quilt, then, was an obvious allusion to that other memorial, and seemed to suggest that AIDS was just as tragic an issue, deserving comparable attention from the public. As this article shows, the public had a deep emotional response to the quilt, and it caused people to see the AIDS epidemic as a national tragedy not unlike an actual war. An article written in 1989 shows that this comparison was still prominent in the public’s mind, and ultimately successful in showing the impact of the epidemic, as it says, “As of this past summer, the number of deaths among Americans with AIDS rose to more than 59,000 higher than the total fatalities in the Vietnam War” (Connor).

When the quilt returned in 1988, and again in 1989, it took on

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more political associations as the NAMES project collaborated with protests and the work of AIDS activists. In 1988, while the quilt was displayed on the Ellipse, for example, protesters echoed Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent protest by blocking the doors of the federal Food and Drug Administration headquarters to protest the “slow pace by which experimental AIDS drugs are approved” (Boodman) Thus, the AIDS quilt became associated with a Civil Rights cause. In 1989, the political focus of the quilt further escalated. Cleve Jones said, regarding the purpose of the quilt’s display, “‘While the tragedy has not lessened, we have a greater sense of clarity and strength. Last year the quilt was the symbol of our pain and our grief. This year it is the symbol of our determination’” (Boodman). Joseph van Es-Ballesteros, an organizer of the NAMES Project, pointed “angrily beyond the quilt toward the White House [and] criticized the federal government’s response to the AIDS crisis,” furious about the “‘inaction and insincerity that comes from the president, as well as Congress” (“A Fabric of Love”). As President Bush came into office, however, the NAMES project unfolded the quilt in 1989 in front of the White House, in hopes of attracting the attention of George and Barbara Bush. Therefore, during the Bush Presidency, AIDS activists felt they still had to urge government to be more active in the curing of AIDS. These activists, however, connected their political work with a goal for publicity, as they invited the president and the first lady to see the quilt for the reason that it “would send an extremely important message to the rest of the country,” Cleve Jones said (Liebert). Therefore, The NAMES Project not only wanted to change the government’s role in the AIDS epidemic, but also wanted to reshape public perceptions of the disease.

The artistic response to the quilt, through movies, songs, and books, were extensions of the quilt’s cause and helped publicize the NAMES project’s goals and illustrated the public’s emotional reaction to the quilt. The documentary “Common Threads,” for example, personalized vast numbers and statistics into individual stories like the quilt itself did with personalized, individual panels. The documentary also alluded to the Vietnam War since one of its producers also produced HBO’s “Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam.” Just as the NAMES project emphasized the American-ness of AIDS through an American folk art quilt, the movie tried to address AIDS victims as American citizens by consistently referring to them as “Americans,” and thus addressed the

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discrimination many AIDS victims continued to face. The movie also addressed what the AIDS-affected communities perceived as negligence and inaction of the government. It told the history, through individual stories, of the entire AIDS epidemic, portraying Ronald Reagan, his assistant Gary Bauer, and the comedian Eddie Murphy as “evil villains” (Connor). Other artistic reactions reflected the public’s reaction to the quilt. The diversity of the quilt’s woven colors struck Cathy Fink, who wrote in 1989 the song “Names” (Geoffrey). This song became the unofficial anthem of the NAMES Project, and its words captured the public’s emotional response to the quilt’s display, as she sang, “I know that my name could be there and I feel the pain and the fear and as human loves and passions do not make us all the same we are counted not as numbers but as names” (Fink). Such an artistic response to the quilt suggests that the public began to empathize with the stories the quilt told, ultimately recognizing the diversity of the people inflicted with AIDS and therefore breaking stereotypes about homosexual or sexually promiscuous AIDS patients.

Each year the NAMES Project displayed the quilt in Washington, D.C., the numbers grew almost exponentially. In 1988, the quilt consisted of 6,368 more panels than the year before, and the 1989 version of the quilt included almost 12,000 panels , nearly six times its 1987 size. Year after year, crowds marched past the tombstone-like quilts, shocked at the amounting diversity of colors, its growing size, and the poignant stories each panel told. The quilt, then, humanized the AIDS epidemic, ultimately shaping the American society’s perceptions of the disease and the people it afflicted, and visually illustrated the vast numbers of people the AIDS epidemic was affecting. As a political symbol, the quilt was a physical form of a non-violent protest—a call for justice and action through love and unity rather than violence and hostility.

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Works Cited “AIDS Quilt to Be Shown in 20 Cities.” New York Times, March 17, 1988: C9. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/login (accessed May 18, 2009).

Boodman, Sadra G. “AIDS Quilt, Larger Than Last Year, Returns to Mall.”

Washington Post (1877-1992), October 7, 1989: A18. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://pro quest.umi.com/login (accessed May 18, 2009).

Boodman, Sandra G. “Giant Quilt Names 1,920 AIDS Victims.” Washington Post, October 10, 1987: A1. American Periodicals Series Online. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=0&did=20740999&SrchMode=2&sid= 2&Fmt=10&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=HNP&TS=124 2397546&clientId=28668 (accessed May 15, 2009).

Connor, John J. “AIDS Quilt and the Stories Behind Its Symbols.” New York Times, October 24, 1989: C26. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=0&did=115146878&SrchMode2&sid= 1&Fmt=1VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=HNP&TS=12425 91132&clientId=28668 (accessed May 17, 2009).

Dickenson, James R. “AIDS is ‘Health Enemy No.1.’” Washington Post, April 2, 1987: A4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/login (accessed May 19, 2009).

“A Fabric of Love, Pain, Anger.” Washington Post (1974-Current file), October 8, 1989: D3.ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/login (accessed May 18, 2009).

Fink, Cathy. “Names.” Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer Himes, Geoffrey. “Spotlight: Anthem for the AIDS Quilt.” Washington Post, September 27, 1989. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/login (accessed May 18, 2009).

Liebert, Larry. “AIDS Quilt to be Shown Across from White House.” Telegram & Gazette 5 Oct. 1989: C9. ProQuest Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/login (accessed May 18, 2009).

McHugh, Heather. “They Shall Not Go Nameless.” New York Times, July 31, 1988: BR18. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/login (accessed May 18, 2009).

McLaughlin, Jeff. “A Living Memorial for AIDS Victims.” Boston Globe, February 22, 1988: 15. ProQuest Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/login (accessed May 18, 2009).

Milloy, Courtland. Washington Post (1877-1992), October 8, 1989: D3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=0&did=735036972&SrchMode =2&sid=1&Fmt=10&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName= HNP&TS=1242591268&clientId=28668 (accessed May 17, 2009).

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Swisher, Kara. “Growing AIDS Quilt to Return.” Washington Post (1974-Current file), March 20, 1989: B7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. ProQuest. Boyden Lib., Deerfield, MA. http://proquest.umi.com/login (accessed May 18, 2009).

Watts, Linda. “AIDS quilt.” Encyclopedia of American Folklore. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2006. American History Online. Facts On File. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE52&iPin=EAFolk573& SingleRecord=True (accessed May 15, 2009).

Woodger, Elin, and David F. Burg. “Beginning of the End: January 1988-January 1989.”

The 1980s, Eye Witness History. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2006.

American History Online. Facts On File. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE52&iPin=EH80sEssay08 & SingleRecord=True (accessed May 15, 2009).

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THE DEATH OF THE SOUL: THE CONSEQUENCE OF FRACTURE IN MRS. DALLOWAY Natalya Minoff

Forced conversation. Boredom. All meaning has run out of everything . . . Emptiness. Inefficiency . . . Yes, it’s an empty, meaningless world now.

—Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary

1925 NOVEL M RS . DALLOWAY , Virginia Woolf superimposes perspectives, fusing disparate narratives with the passage of time and with colliding perceptions of common external events. While the characters are connected by their physical interactions and coexistence in London, they are rarely able to connect with one another on a deeper level; the emotional fracture that exists between them prevents them from realizing their common existential anxiety, nostalgia for the past, and desire for unity. Yet it is the general desperation for unity that brings the various characters together in a superficial bond; they crave the security of company and feel compelled to interact, to exist in networks of equally isolated individuals. The luncheon gatherings and dinner parties, while intended to satiate the characters’ desire for communication and thus affirm their identities, ultimately undermine this aspiration as they create a sense of fracture, separating the soul from the self. The inability for Woolf’s characters to formulate genuine connections with one another— connections rooted in the obscurity of the soul rather than the perceptible, exterior self—results in a universal feeling of isolation and in a loss of identity as they amble mentally between past and present, numbly seeking to define themselves.

Clarissa Dalloway, the novel’s protagonist, struggles with the fragility of her past and present relationships. Upon choosing to marry the conservative, well-off Richard Dalloway rather than the capricious yet genuinely affectionate Peter Walsh, Clarissa sacrifices the self-affirming stability of true love for the security of public approval attained through conversion to conventional expectations. Peter and Clarissa have a “queer

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power of communicating without words” (59), a bond with a strength defined by its very ineffability. They are able to “[go] in and out of each other’s minds without any effort” (61), to dissolve the barriers presented by their physical selves and connect by way of something deeper.

However, Clarissa is drawn to the appeal of the bourgeois lifestyle, the conventionality that comes in the form of Richard. Her compromise of genuine passion for security and upper-class status results in a relationship characterized by external actions rather than internal connections.

Clarissa, Richard, and Peter each capitulate to the ease of external actions; they find comfort in the space separating themselves from one another, shielding them from the intimacy of each other’s souls. Richard feels obligated to buy Clarissa roses as a gesture of affection; however, when he presents her with the flowers, “he could not bring himself to say he loved her” (115). Unlike the ineffability that exists between Clarissa and Peter which serves to confirm their love and ability to truly connect, Richard’s silence demonstrates his fear of emotional attachment.

Clarissa, too, fears deep connections; as she defends her decision to marry Richard rather than Peter, she claims that “in marriage a little license, a little independence there must be between people living together day in day out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him” and resents the fact that “with Peter everything had to be shared” (7). It is this very fear of exposing oneself, this implementation of space as a means by which to preserve the “privacy of the soul” (124) that dooms the characters to their emotional isolation.

The caution and self-consciousness that pervade the interactions between Clarissa and Richard also exist between other characters in the novel, demonstrating the superficiality of their relationships. When Lady Bruton, an upper-class, simple-minded woman, invites Richard Dalloway and Hugh Whitbread to lunch, their meeting is characterized by its lack of earnest relations. Hugh, a pompous, conventional man who “[does] not go deeply” but merely “brushe[s] surfaces” (100), feels compelled to fulfill societal expectations by presenting Lady Bruton with carnations upon his arrival, an action that parallels the need Richard feels to prove his love for Clarissa by giving her flowers. Their lunch meeting is dominated by fracture—despite their physical existence in the same room, Lady Bruton, Hugh, and Richard are mentally and emotionally disjointed from one another. As Lady Bruton waits for the right moment to ask a favor of

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Hugh, Hugh “[thinks] only of his chicken” (104), and Richard is preoccupied by the portrait of the General hanging on the wall. Upon their departure, Lady Bruton subconsciously senses the feebleness of her connections with Richard and Hugh. She feels as if they were “attached to her by a thin thread (since they had lunched with her) which would stretch and stretch, get thinner and thinner as they walked across London” (110).

Suddenly, “the thread snap[s]” (110): the shard of possibility for unity between Lady Bruton and her guests is shattered.

This disconnect between the characters leads to a universal feeling of isolation, suggesting that despite its bustling streets and service as a venue for frequent dinner parties, London is plagued by loneliness.

Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked war veteran trapped in his own psychosomatic reveries, is unable to truly connect with his wife, Rezia.

Because of the fracture that Septimus’ experience in war has imposed upon their relationship, Rezia feels isolated even when in the company of her husband. She cries “I am alone; I am alone!” (23) yet then reminds herself that “there he was; still sitting alone on the seat” (24), as if Septimus’ physical presence is an affirmation of his existence and therefore of his soul, with which she can connect. However, Woolf poses a distinction between the physical self and the “privacy of the soul” (124), demonstrating that the characters’ physical interactions do not perpetuate emotional understanding.

As he walks to Regent’s park after leaving Clarissa’s home, Peter Walsh, too, suffers from “the strangeness of standing alone, alive, unknown” (51). Yet unlike the self-repressing effects that Septimus’ mental isolation evokes, Peter’s solitude causes him to feel as if he “was utterly free . . . escaping . . . from being precisely what he was” (51), free from the pressure to interact with others. However, this initial sensation of freedom lasts “only of course for an hour or so,” and he soon succumbs to the desperation for social contact; he spots a woman, transforms her to his ideal “until she became the very woman he had always had in mind” (51) and follows her to her house. Yet when the woman enters her house, Peter is left feeling just as alone as he had previously.

Clarissa Dalloway’s party is a hub of forced connections and isolated individuals, a futile attempt to rekindle relationships between souls that have long since “drifted apart” (165). Clarissa invites her cousin, Ellie Henderson, to her party simply because “they had always

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known each other” (165). Richard, as a well-mannered Englishman, feels an obligation to converse with her; however, they soon exhaust universal, impersonal topics of discussion and are left with nothing to say. Richard’s assumed responsibility to connect with others creates a sort of fracture between himself and Ellie. They both self-consciously create facades that prevent them from expressing their true emotions; Ellie does not reveal her nervousness and Richard does not reveal his lack of genuine desire to interact with her. Clarissa suffers from a similar self-imposed duty to interact—she feels as if she must speak to Lady Bruton, yet Lady Bruton “could not think of anything to say to Clarissa” (175), indicating the ineffectuality of forcing physical interactions amongst those unwilling to expose their souls.

Clarissa, the coordinator of these forced, superficial connections, loses her true identity in the process of hosting the party, claiming that “she had quite forgotten what she looked like” and that “every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself” (166).

Even before her party, as she strives to maintain relationships with past and present acquaintances, relatives, and lovers, Clarissa feels as if she were “being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best,” that “it spread her ever so far, her life, herself” (9). Her identity is diluted, diffused among her peers as a result of her assumed obligation to achieve unity.

While her shallow connections with past and present acquaintances cause Clarissa to question her true identity, it is her marriage to Richard that first transforms her own self perception. Upon marrying Richard, Clarissa rejects her previous self, the self that admired Sally Seton’s radicalism and Peter Walsh’s passion, as she takes on the traditional role of the housewife. As an adolescent, Sally inspired Clarissa’s intellectualism. Together, they talked “about life, how they were to reform the world” (33); together, they infused Clarissa with a feeling of purpose, a sense that her intellect and ambition gave her worth. Clarissa’s past relationship with Peter also gave her confidence in herself. She did not feel the need to define herself when with Peter; she stated that “she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that” (8). The very lack of urgency to impose an identity upon herself demonstrates the poise that her strong relationship with Peter earned her. However, as she meanders down Bond Street as the wife of Mr. Richard Dalloway, Clarissa questions the

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value of her existence: But often now this body she wore . . . this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing—nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible, unseen; unknown . . . this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway” (10).

In identifying herself as “Mrs. Richard Dalloway,” attaching her self to that of her husband, Clarissa revokes her past individuality that came in form of intellectual curiosity and confidence, the identity that once defined her. Even the title of the novel, “Mrs. Dalloway,” embodies this loss of identity as it displays Clarissa’s conversion to her husband’s surname, her abdication of her own individuality to Richard.

While Clarissa’s physical bonds, such as that between herself and Richard, detract from her individuality, it is the non-physical connections, the deeper relations that exist between those whose paths never cross, that serve to enhance the richness of Clarissa’s life and assist her in deciphering her identity. While Peter and Sally did contribute to Clarissa’s sense of self-value and self-understanding, Clarissa’s relationships with them have been severed by the passage of time, and their confirmation of her identity has thereby been annulled. As Clarissa ruminates at her party about the death of Septimus Smith, she feels a powerful connection to him in spite of the fact that they have never met. Just as the ineffability that permeated her relationship with Peter Walsh confirmed their love, the invisible, posthumous connection that exists between Clarissa and Septimus allows Clarissa to repair the fracture that exists within herself, to reflect upon her own existence and search for meaning in her own life.

Upon hearing of Septimus’ death, Clarissa realizes that “death was an attempt to communicate,” that “there was an embrace in death” (180).

She understands that Septimus killed himself to save his soul from “conversion” (98) to the demands of the repressive Doctor William Bradshaw and thus preserve his identity. The fact that Clarissa “felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself” (182) indicates that she is able to identify with Peter’s claim that Clarissa’s marriage to Richard marked “the death of [her] soul” (57). She realizes that while she sacrificed her soul in marrying Richard, Septimus preserved his by killing himself. This epiphany contributes to Clarissa’s understanding of her own

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life more than any external connections of the self could have.

Another connection rooted in internal understanding rather than imposed external interactions is that between Clarissa and the old lady she observes in the house opposite hers. Clarissa never speaks to the old woman, but she is captivated by her solitary actions: It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming to the window. Could she see her? It was fascinating, with people still laughing and shouting in the drawing-room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed (181).

In observing the old woman in her solitude, Clarissa understands that despite her interactions with the guests at her party, she is just as alone as the old woman. She comes to terms with her own mortality, realizing the futility of communication and the inevitability of her own fate. Watching the woman also solidifies Clarissa’s connection to Septimus as, just prior to his suicide, he sees an old man in the house opposite. Clarissa’s silent interaction with the woman helps her to understand Septimus’ desperation to throw himself out the window—to sacrifice his physical self for the salvation of his soul—as well as her desire for a renewal of her own soul.

As Peter reflects upon his past relationship with Clarissa, he recalls her theory that in order to really know someone, “one must seek out the people who completed them” (149). Throughout the course of the novel, Clarissa realizes that those who complete her are the ones with whom she is able to connect deeply, genuinely, by way of the soul rather than of the exterior self. She believes that “our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide,” that “the unseen [may] even [haunt] certain places after death” (149). Septimus Smith and the anonymous old woman complete Clarissa. Even after Septimus’ suicide and the woman’s “pull[ing] the blind” (181), separating herself even further from Clarissa, Clarissa remains enlightened and enlivened by their existence.

But Peter and Sally also complete—or at least had completed— Clarissa. Although Clarissa has seemingly disregarded her love for them ever since she married Richard, her constant reminiscences and retrospective doubting of her decision to marry Richard indicate that she has retained their influence and is searching for a regeneration of identity.

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After cogitating about the woman’s and Septimus’ mortality, Clarissa feels compelled to find Sally and Peter. However, this impulse is not like the sense of obligation that Richard feels when he decides to talk to Ellie Henderson; rather, it is a response to Clarissa’s realization that she must “seek out the people who completed [her],” the people who were able to connect with her on a deeper than surface level and bring out her true identity. Clarissa seeks to revive the moments of “perfect happiness” (61) that had invigorated her in her youth, her moments of genuine connection: when Sally kisses Clarissa on the lips and she feels as if “the whole world might have turned upside down . . . the revelation, the religious feeling!”

(35), when Clarissa kisses Peter and thinks to herself, “If I had married him, this gaiety would have been mine all day!” (46). However, the moments of “perfect happiness” that Clarissa craves when she feels she must find Sally and Peter are ephemeral; they are consistently interrupted by an external event, and their power dissipates as time elapses, indicating that “perfect happiness” is irretrievable.

Ultimately, like nearly every other character in the novel, Clarissa is left quite alone—the novel ends with the words “and there she was” (190), an image identifying Clarissa’s emotional solitude in the midst of her crowded party. This assertion of being, a state of being “there” physically but trapped in her past mentally—as indicated by the past tense “was”—highlights the fracture between Clarissa’s self and her soul, between her superficial connections at the current party and her memories of her past, deeper connections with Sally and Peter. This concluding phrase also echoes Rezia’s earlier observation of Septimus’ isolation, in which she states, “There he was . . . sitting alone” (24), reinforcing Clarissa’s connection to Septimus due to their common isolation.

However, Clarissa’s loneliness is not representative of a submission to the death of her soul; rather, it demonstrates her realization that external connections will not serve to fuel her regeneration of spirit. Standing there, emotionally alone in the room, Clarissa is ripe for a renewal of her soul—she has discovered the desire for self-preservation that she shares with Septimus, and she has realized that in order to preserve herself, she must seek out those who had completed her and given her life in earlier years.

Mrs. Dalloway is a commentary on fracture—both that which exists between individuals and that which exists within oneself. The

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fracture that separates the characters from one another results from their erroneous belief that physical interactions constitute deeper understanding, and the fracture that exists within the characters individually reflects their inability to reconcile their multifaceted identities. Clarissa Dalloway is affected by both senses of fracture from the time she marries Richard onward, yet ultimately, her connection with Septimus allows her to distinguish between her soul and her self, between internal and external connections. Due to this understanding, Clarissa is able to repeal “the death of [her] soul,” to restore her identity that was lost through forced relationships and conversions to societal expectations.

WORKS CITED

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Orlando: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2005.

Woolf, Virginia. A Writer’s Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf (1973): 305.

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THE WATTS AND L.A. RIOTS: ASSESSMENTS OF THE AMERICAN PROMISE Camille Villa

WATTS DISTRICT OF LOS ANGELES IS SCARRED by two violent memories: the Watts riots of 1965, and the L.A. riots of 1992.

A densely populated neighborhood packed with discontented minorities—historically, African Americans falling far below the poverty line—Watts has been unstable for decades. In both riots, an incident of police brutality served to tip the seething anger and dissatisfaction into a swarm of violence, looting, and arson, eventually only quelled by the presence of the national guard and the military. In both riots, the horrors broadcast through network television penetrated deep into minds of white suburbia, far removed from Watts, and revealed to Los Angles the deep rifts existing at its core. However, the public’s analysis of what constituted those rifts and how best to solve them differed between 1965 and 1992.

In 1965, the public was unwilling to discuss the racial discontent manifested in Watts and other cities across the country. Instead, they pointed condescendingly to conditions of poverty, and then focused on the age’s miasma of violence. In 1992, the public was less keen to discuss the economic conditions in Watts, which had changed little in the intervening generation between 1965 and 1992. People were more eager to discuss race relations and a healing of the conflicts that had become apparent in the multi-ethnic participation and suffering found in the L.A. riots.

In 1965, Marquette Frye, found driving under the influence of alcohol with his friend Ronald Frye (unrelated), was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol. Initially calm and encouraged by his mother, Rena Frye, to go along with the officers, Frye soon grew frenzied and attempted to resist arrest. After an officer struck Marquette with a riot baton in an attempt to subdue him, Rena and Ronald Frye began to grapple with the officer. After arresting all three Fryes, the force departed from Watts, leaving behind an angry mob.1 Starting with the stoning of police cars, a wave of violence, looting, and arson ensued. However, within forty-eight hours, Lieutenant Governor Glenn Anderson authorized the immediate mobilization of 1,336 National Guard troops, which

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eventually expanded to a patrol of 13, 500 troops that quickly suppressed the violence.2 Though the association of violence with African Americans hurt the public image of the civil rights movement, leader Louis Lomax tried to use the L.A. riots to illustrate the rage and dissatisfaction felt by African Americans: “The white people think they can just bottle people up in a place like Watts and then forget all about them. It didn’t work.”3 Others tried to dismiss rioters in Watts as savages on the fringes of society. In a letter to the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles resident Frank Crow declared, What happened in Watts, as savage and pointless as it is, has nothing to do with the civil rights movement. These people . . . represent only a small portion of the Negro community . . . Still, there must be thousands of responsible Negroes who are sickened by the Watts riots and similar events.4

In the wake of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, passed a mere week before the riots, white suburbia was already chafed by race relations. As Jerry Cohen put it in his 1966 book, Burn, Baby, Burn!, “people asked perhaps innocently, ‘What else do they want?’”5 Others were more frank, such as one white businessman who complained to the New York Times, “The civil rights types keep saying these people are bottled up in the slums. First, their slums aren’t all that slummy. Second, they’re not bottled up. There are small Negro areas in many parts of Los Angeles and many are very nice.”6 While it was true that individual African Americans, including three city councilmen and several judges, had made great strides in Los Angeles, it did not erase the statistical evidence that African Americans lagged far behind in economic success.7 Instead of seeing the unequal position of African Americans as the result of a racist economic and social order, critics declared that the poor quality of life for African Americans was largely due to their own shortcomings. Edward D. Canham traces the problem to the civil rights movement, stating “Some of the pressures which brought the granting of rights [to Negroes] were pressures conducive to disregard of the law.”8 Either viewed as a mild racist or a condescending poverty crusader, Canham also described the plight of African Americans as “People

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unadjusted to urban life, ill-educated, ill-equipped for jobs, sometimes bereft of moral restraints, thrown into the freedoms and the problems of a place like Los Angeles.” Los Angeles aside, the Watts riots, along with a series of ghetto riots taking place across America, seemed to exemplify the degeneration of the social order and the “atmosphere of violence which permeates this age.”9 In 1992, Watts would break out once again in the wake of the Rodney King trials. After a video was released of several officers savagely beating Rodney King, an immobile African American drunk driver, a controversial trial convened. The trial, moved from diverse Los Angeles to suburban Simi Valley, involved the acquittal of the officers by a jury composed of eleven white people and one Asian person. Many people, especially minorities unhappy with racial profiling in policing, were infuriated by the verdict. Originating in South Central Los Angeles, close to Watts, violence broke out when a group of officers left an angry mob after attempting to make an arrest. The city was set ablaze again and incidents of savage violence against whites, Latinos, and Asians were caught on camera, notably, the beating of white truck driver Reginald Denny. Hundreds of stores were looted and set on fire. Unfortunately, the arriving National Guard proved ineffective and poorly organized; President Bush soon authorized five thousand federal troops to assist in subduing the violence.10 While some tried to label the riots as “Watts II,” another “black versus white war,” it was clear that the L.A. riots had a multiracial tone, highlighting tensions between African Americans, Latinos, whites, and Asians. Though the Koreatown district had only small concentrations of African Americans or Latinos, Korean shop owners in the area were particularly hard hit.11 The attack on Korean shop owners might have been driven by the tragic killing of young Latasha Harlins by Soon Ja Du, who believed Harlins was trying to rob her store.12 Another curious fact is that, though the riots began as African Americans attacking anyone who was not black at the corner of Florence and Normandie Avenue, fifty percent of rioters arrested were Latino.13 In an editorial by the Los Angeles Times, it was argued that many of Los Angeles’ racial tension stemmed from the presence of new immigrants:

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As historians look back on the ‘American century,’ the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 may come to seem the twin and equal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. At the time, legislators expected neither Latin American immigration nor, much less, Asian immigration to play any great part in America’s future.14

The arrival of skilled, educated, and well-backed Asian immigrants and their relatively quick ascent up the economic ladder must have been particularly frustrating for African Americans. Recent Hispanic immigrants, on the other hand, often competed with African Americans for low paying jobs.15 Aware of this complex living situation existing between the different ethnic groups of Los Angeles, the public called for racial understanding.

In the wake of the L.A. riots, a slew of advertisements arose promoting racial tolerance and understanding in the vein of Rodney King’s plea, “Can we all get along?” One famous Nike commercial, directed by Spike Lee, featured several white and black young men who refuse to play basketball together and exchange a series of racial epithets.

Spike Lee interjects, stating, “If we’re gonna live together, we gotta play together.” Commissioner of New York’s Department of Consumer Affairs Mark Green encouraged advertising agencies and publications to sign a “visual integration pledge.”16 An editorial in the Christian Science Monitor pointed to American exceptionalism and begged America to “wake to the importance of its democratic, multicultural experiment to mankind.”17 American audiences’ unwillingness to address racial issues in 1965 is understandable when taken in context. Faced with the civil rights movement at home and the Cold War abroad, the American government was unwilling to supply the USSR with any acknowledgement of weakness. In 1992, however, the public, building on the civil rights movement, engaged in more open discussions about race. At the end of the Cold War and in the midst of a bloody ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia, Americans were ready to grapple with the question of America’s identity as a melting pot or a handful of separate ethnic spheres. Both riots shattered illusions of America’s progress and forced Americans to assess whether they were truly living up to a promise that all of its people would be equal.

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NOTES 1. Jerry Cohen, and William S. Murphy. Burn, Baby, Burn! (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1966), 30-41.

2. Cohen, 164-165.

3. Peter Bart. “Officials Divided in Placing Blame,” New York Times 15 Aug. 1965.

4. Frank Crow. “No Connection,” Letter, Los Angeles Times 20 Aug. 1965.

5. Cohen, 3.

6. Bart.

7. Cohen, 3.

8. Erwin D. Canham. “Challenge of an Age of Violence: Let’s Think,” Christian Science Monitor 17 Aug. 1965.

9. Canham.

10. Riot! Prod. Gail Eisen, CBS News Productions, 1996, VHS. 11. “Globalization of Los Angeles: The First Multiethnic Riots,” Editorial, Los Angeles Times 4 May 1992.

12. “A Senseless and Tragic Killing, New Tension for Korean-American and AfricanAmerican Communities,” Los Angeles Times 21 Mar. 1991.

13. Riot! Eisen.

14. “Globalization of Los Angeles: The First Multiethnic Riots.”

15. Globalization of Los Angeles: The First Multiethnic Riots.”

16. Paula Span. “Ad Agencies Doing the Right Thing,” Washington Post 19 May 1992.

17. “America a Community,” editorial, Christian Science Monitor 8 June 1992.

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TRICKY BUSINESS: COCA-COLA, CONSUMER DECEPTION, AND WILEY’S HYPOCRITICAL ATTEMPT TO LEGISLATE HONESTY Amanda Bennett

EFORE GOVERNMENT I NSPECTOR J. L. LYNCH seized thirtyseven barrels and twenty kegs of Coca-Cola syrup from a barge travelling up the Tennessee River on October 21, 1909, John Candler—the brother of Asa Candler, the owner of the Coca-Cola Co.— had boasted, “Not once . . . has there been a single state or federal prosecution against . . . Coca-Cola Co.”1 All this would change. In the case United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola, the U.S. government accused the Coca-Cola Company of misbranding and adulterating its product with caffeine. The case was part of a Progressive Era movement to legislate corporate honesty and consumer protection that started with the 1906 Pure Food and Drug and Meat Inspection Acts and muckraking journalism. Under the guise of working for the public good, reformers such as Dr. Harvey W. Wiley fought for stricter food and drug laws. However, benefiting the public through reform was never the goal.

The motive was bureaucratic entrepreneurship, and the aim, lucrative political advancement.

Chief Chemist Dr. Harvey Wiley, who once wrote, “The injury to public health is the least important question . . . the real evil of food adulteration is deception of the consumer,” led the campaign against consumer deception.2 Dr. Wiley “vigorously did attack as a ‘thief and a corrupter of public morals,’ the manufacturers who sell adulterated food and drugs.”3 Wiley’s biographer, Oscar Anderson, wrote that “Wiley had become a crusader, a man with an overwhelming sense of mission . . . He was prone to do injustice in his commendable zeal to protect the consumer.”4 Indeed, Wiley advanced the interests of certain businesses while prosecuting others. He nursed conflicts within the Department of Agriculture and placed his own interests before those of the administration he served, according to his biographers Clayton Coppin and Jack High.5 Although critical of the influence of companies such as Coca-Cola on the federal government, Wiley forged his own alliances, including a symbiotic

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relationship with Sebastian Mueller, owner of the Heinz Company. Wiley fought to add benzoate of soda to the Pure Food and Drug Act list of injurious ingredients, giving Heinz an opportunity to attack its competitors, and in return the Heinz Company hired journalists to publish articles favoring Wiley and slandering his political opponents.6 In fact, when an upset manufacturer asked President Roosevelt to fire Wiley, Roosevelt replied, “You don’t understand, Sir, that Dr. Wiley has the grandest political machine in the country.”7 Desiring more clout and power for his Bureau of Chemistry, a division of the Department of Agriculture headed by Secretary James Wilson, Wiley began inspecting Coca-Cola unofficially in 1907. He used the inspections as a chance to enforce and legislatively interpret the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. Wiley wanted to add caffeine to the law’s list of deleterious substances. He had already taken on the soft drink industry in his prior forays for power. Wiley, through investigation and threat of court action, had already forced Coca-Cola to use sugar instead of saccharin to sweeten its syrup and to remove the words “pure” and “guaranteed by Pure Food and Drug Act” from its advertising.8 But the public remained ignorant of the caffeine content of the soft drink.

Wiley was worried because Coca-Cola did not clearly state on its label that it contained added caffeine. Besides his moral concern, Wiley cared about consumer health; he said to the national Board of Food and Drug Inspection in 1909 that “no more serious menace to the health of children [existed] than drinking caffeine in soft drinks.“ Secretary Wilson, Wiley’s superior, warned him against such dramatic (and hence publicityseeking) tactics. Wilson was displeased by Wiley’s caffeine crusade for other reasons as well. If the chemical compound was proven harmful, the United States would have to stop imports of coffee and tea. In 1909, the United States imported 1.05 billion pounds of coffee valued at $79 million, and 115 million pounds of tea, worth $19 million. These beverages were taxed at a rate of five cents per pound for coffee and ten cents per pound for tea; hence, the government procured $52.5 million from coffee and earned $11.5 million from tea.9 In 1908, Secretary Wilson personally told Wiley to halt his anti-Coca-Cola campaign. Wiley wrote soon after, “As usual, I could see behind [his order] the manipulation of powerful hands.”10 However, Wiley had connections of his own.

Quickly frustrated by his superior’s refusals to back an

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investigation, Wiley contacted Fred L. Seely, who had first proposed prosecuting Coca-Cola. Seely, the editor of the Atlanta-Georgian, a radical newspaper focused on children’s rights, believed that Coca-Cola’s caffeine content made the beverage toxic for young people. Seely visited Secretary Wilson, and gave him an ultimatum: either Wilson would give Wiley the financial and legal backing to challenge Coca-Cola, or Seely would slander Wilson in his paper. Wiley wrote, “It is remarkable what the fear of publicity will do,” as Wilson finally gave the Chief Chemist permission—and funds—to persecute Coca-Cola.11 Company chief defense lawyer John Candler felt betrayed by the government. The Atlanta Constitution reported that “the bringing of a . . . case against the CocaCola Company of Atlanta . . . is said to be in violation of an alleged agreement reached between Secretary Wilson and counsel for the company.”12 Wilson had supposedly promised not to persecute Coca-Cola until a court case it was fighting in 1909 ended; the article reported that Wilson had agreed to postpone the “Barrels and Kegs trial” to give Coca-Cola more time to prepare.

After Inspector Lynch seized the barrels and kegs of Coca-Cola syrup, both sides spent a year and a half preparing for the trial, hiring expert witnesses, and arguing. The case finally opened on March 13, 1911, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, one hundred miles from Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, despite the prosecution’s concern that the jury would be biased.13 Edward Sanford, later appointed to the Supreme Court, presided. The Atlanta Constitution reported on April 7, 1911: The coca-cola case has been one of the most important ever heard in the south, and the cost of the litigation has been enormous. It is said that $200,000 will not cover the expenses. Both sides have had . . . the most eminent scientists. . . . The government has spared no expense in the effort to prove its contentions, and the coca-cola people have been equally liberal in securing expert testimony.

The trial lasted from March 16 until April 6, when Judge Sanford terminated the case because of a motion pushed by Coca-Cola’s lawyers.

Candler claimed that since the government had argued on the basis that Coca-Cola’s caffeine was an added ingredient, the case should be dismissed because caffeine was inherent to the syrup. Sanford agreed. He

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wrote in his ruling, The caffeine . . . in . . . ‘Coca-Cola’ is one of its regular, habitual, and essential constituents and that without its presence . . . the product would lack one of its essential elements and fail to produce upon the consumers a characteristic if not the most characteristic effect which is obtained from its use. In short Coca-Cola without caffeine would not be Coca-Cola.14

The press took an extreme interest in the case. Despite the trial’s length, the Atlanta Constitution wrote, “The case continues to attract large crowds, and the matter produced each day is the all-absorbing topic in the hotels. Chattanooga has been a large consumer of Coca-Cola, and the outcome of the case is anxiously awaited.”15 The popularity of the beverage, the implications of the case for soft drinks, tea, and coffee, and the possibility of setting a precedent for even more extensive government legislation led to significant press coverage. The Atlanta Constitution took a laissez-faire stance: Thus ends another governmental inquiry-fiasco . . . Many thousands of dollars have been lavished only to have the government’s contentions dismissed . . . Animus of a mysterious, elusive, personal nature has been evident in the case since its incipiency16 . . . This is a pretty little game–and the people pay the bills!17

Between March 15 when the case started and April 7, the Atlanta Constitution published twenty-one articles about the Barrels and Kegs case.

Dr. Wiley was bitter about the case’s conclusion, since he believed that Coca-Cola had deceived the public about caffeine’s dangerous effects.

Wiley “consider[ed] that giving people, especially children, doses of caffeine, is very detrimental and ought to be stopped. That is what the coca cola people are doing.”18 Congress antagonized Wiley. In 1912 two bills were introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives which would have added caffeine to the Pure Food and Drug Act’s list of harmful and addictive substances. Both failed due to lobbying by the Coca-Cola Company.19 Wiley was also frustrated by the Department of Agriculture.

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Secretary Wilson was upset that Wiley had coerced him into supporting a failed court case. “Wiley is a consummate hypocrite . . . a mischiefmaking low-bred fellow,” wrote Wilson in a letter to President Taft.20 An article in the Washington Post quotes Secretary Wilson as saying that “another Wiley case would make Wilson resign.”21 The Department charged Wiley with overpaying Dr. H. H. Rusby for testimony in the Coca-Cola case. According to the New York Times, the issue “was used by the anti-Wiley men in the Department of Agriculture as the basis of an effort to oust the doctor.”22 Aggrieved, Wiley resigned. But Wiley’s zeal and his bureaucratic entrepreneurial urge could not be subdued. In September of 1912, Wiley proceeded to publish “The Coca-Cola Controversy,” which included a cartoon showing a smiling scientist observing a cup of Coca-Cola through a magnifying glass etched with a dollar sign.23 Wiley meant the scientist to be one of the witnesses hired by Coca-Cola, but in another interpretation the man could be Wiley himself.

Despite Wiley’s resignation, the case was appealed to a circuit court. On June 13, 1914, Judge Dennison affirmed Chattanooga’s prior decision: Coca-Cola was not an injurious beverage. Dennison wrote in his opinion, “We do not believe it was the intention of the congress . . . in passing the pure food laws to declare all added mixtures as injurious or deleterious.”24 The 1915 government brief of the trial stated that the circuit court had, like Judge Sanford, given a “strained and highly technical construction [to the word] ‘added,’”25 which invalidated the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act’s jurisdiction over Coca-Cola’s caffeine content. The case was then appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard it in 1916.

Justice Charles Evan Hughes delivered their ruling, a reversal: Coca-Cola should be held responsible for labeling its caffeine content, but only if caffeine was deleterious. The case was remanded to the Chattanooga court to decide, before a jury, whether or not caffeine qualified as an injurious food additive.

Coca-Cola and the government had already spent $250,000 each on the trial, and its eight-year duration led to waning interest, especially since Wiley no longer spearheaded the government’s charge. After the Supreme Court decision in 1917, the Coca-Cola Company initiated an alteration of its formula to reduce the caffeine content by about half.26 Still denying the government’s charges, Coca-Cola would forfeit all claims to Lynch‘s confiscation and pay for the costs of the trial. Judge

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Sanford accepted the deal, and thus closed the Barrels and Kegs case.

Coca-Cola escaped the ruin that awaited it had the case concluded that caffeine was deleterious, and the government evaded squandering more money on Wiley’s personal mission. But the results of the case were divisive. An angry article in the Atlanta Constitution published after the conclusion of the first step of the trial said, If the government is willing to endlessly play ‘sucker’ to a personallyconducted confidence game, the tax-payers should not be saddled with the costs . . . When congress sets afoot some of its contemplated departmental investigations, the public will be inquiring next if this is really free America—or do we live again under the Inquisition or the Reign of the Lion’s Mouth?27

Wiley’s successor, Carl L. Alsberg, had resisted Coca-Cola’s settlement lobbying as had Wiley, and only heard of the defrayal after it happened;28 the Department of Agriculture was displeased with being kept in the dark.

Those who believed that Coca-Cola’s caffeine was added and harmful were upset that the beverage company continued manufacture.

In December of 1917, when the case closed, the United States had entered World War I, and progressivism had been replaced by nationalistic concerns. Reform was pushed aside, primarily because the implementation of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, a result of Wiley’s alliances with commercial interests such as Heinz, had followed the lines of these interests and his campaigns against corporations such the CocaCola Company, rather than evolve into a national movement.29 Because Wiley’s personal mission ended with an out-of-court settlement, he did not achieve the publicity he desired, and Coca-Cola continued to produce its beverage. The company did reduce the caffeine content of each serving, but the public remained unaware of the possible danger of caffeine. Wiley’s motive in suing Coca-Cola was not to have the company reduce its caffeine content but to ruin the company altogether, garner fame from a spectacular government win, and earn support from Coca-Cola’s corporate and political opponents. Business and government were still riddled with corruption and unwritten agreements. Because of these clandestine compacts and political strife, food and drug reform was born.

Because of these same contracts and conflicts, it was unsuccessful.

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NOTES 1. Mark Pendergrast, For God, Country, and Coca-Cola, 118.

2. Pendergrast, 113.

3. Atlanta Constitution, September 28, 1911.

4. Anderson, Health of a Nation, 255, quoted in “James Wilson and Harvey Wiley” by Coppin.

5. Bentley, “Review: The Politics of Purity by Clayton A. Coppin and Jack High,” The Journal of American History, March 2001, 1532.

6. Coppin, “James Wilson and Harvey Wiley,” Agricultural History, Spring 1990, 177.

7. Roosevelt to H.H. Rusby, January 7, 1909 (copy) box 72 WP, quoted in “James Wilson and Harvey Wiley.”

8. Pendergrast, 112-113.

9. Irwin, “Table Ee590-611 - Imports of selected commodities: 1790–1989.” Historical Statistics of the United States; U.S. Congress. “Foraker Act.” United States Statutes at Large, 56th Cong., Sess. I, Chp. 191, p. 77-86. American History Online; U.S. Congress. “Dingley Tariff Act.” United States Statutes At Large, 55th Cong, Sess. I., Chp. 11, p. 151-213. American History Online. These figures were calculated using the highest possible taxes.

10. Pendergrast, 116.

11. Pendergrast, 118 (both the Seely information and quote).

12. Atlanta Constitution, February 27, 1910.

13. Pendergrast, 119.

14. Young, “Three Southern Food and Drug Cases,” The Journal of Southern History, February 1983, 17.

15. Atlanta Constitution, April 1, 1911.

16. Wiley’s influence on the trial was not secret. Since Chattanooga is proximate to Atlanta and because the Coca-Cola Company was based in Atlanta, the Atlanta Constitution assumed an anti-Wiley stance. He was, in their minds, unjustly attacking Atlanta’s largest company, whose owner was indeed the city’s mayor. Other newspapers, mostly in the northeast, championed Wiley and demonized Coca-Cola.

17. Atlanta Constitution, April 7, 1911.

18. Harvey Wiley, quoted in the New York Times, August 18, 1911.

19. Pendergrast, 122.

20. Wilson to Taft, August 27, 1909, Series 5, File 1, WHT Papers, quoted in “James Wilson and Harvey Wiley.”

21. “Row Tires Wilson,” Washington Post, August 22, 1911.

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22. New York Times, December 6, 1911.

23. Pendergrast, 122.

24. “Coca-Cola Case Lost by the Government,” Atlanta Constitution, June 14, 1914.

25. The United States, plaintiff in error, v. Forty Barrels, etc. Brief for the United States (1915), Supreme Court Transcripts and Briefs, quoted in “Three Southern Food and Drug Cases” by Young.

26. Young, “Three Southern Food and Drug Cases,” The Journal of Southern History, February 1983, 18.

27. Atlanta Constitution, April 7, 1911.

28. James Harvey Young, “Three Southern Food and Drug Cases,” The Journal of Southern History, February 1983, 18.

29. This is an argument based on that of Clayton Coppin and Jack High, Wiley’s biographers, who argue that pure food and drug reform was not a true Progressive Era reform movement. Amy Bentley details Coppin’s and High’s views in her review of their book published in The Journal of American History, in March 2001.

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WORKS CITED: “Agreement Violated in Coca-Cola Case.” “Another ‘Inspired’ Inquisition Fails.” “CocaCola Case Lost by the Government.”“Coca-Cola Case Won by Defense.” “Value of $540,000,000,000 Fixed on the Health of the Nation.”

AtlantaConstitution (1881-2001) [Atlanta, Ga.] 1909-1914. ProQuest Historical Newspapers Atlanta Constitution (1868-1942). ProQuest. Boyden Library, Deerfield Academy, Deerfield. http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed February 21, 2009).

Bentley, Amy. “Review: The Politics of Purity: Harvey Washington Wiley and the Origins of Federal Food Policy” by Clayton A. Coppin and Jack High. The Journal of American History (JSTOR) Vol. 87, Mar 2001, pp. 1532-1533. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2674835.

Coppin, Clayton. “James Wilson and Harvey Wiley: The Dilemma of Bureaucratic Entrepreneurship.” Agricultural History (JSTOR) Vol. 64, Spring 1990, pp.

167-181. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3743806 (accessed February 21, 2009).

Irwin, Douglas A. “Table Ee590-611—Imports of selected commodities: 1790–1989.”

Historical Statistics of the United States. http://hsus.cambridge.org /HSUSWeb /search/search Table.do?id=Ee590-611 (accessed February 15, 2009).

Pendergrast, Mark. For God, Country, and Coca-Cola. Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1993.

“Row Tires Wilson.” Washington Post (1877-1954) [Washington,D.C.] 22 Aug. 1911, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers Washington Post (1877-1992). ProQuest.

Boyden Library, Deerfield Academy, Deerfield. http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed February 21, 2009).

Special to The New York Times. “Wiley Tells Secret in Corn Syrup Fight.” New York Times (1857-Current file) [New York, N.Y.] 18 Aug. 1911, 2-2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2005). ProQuest. Boyden Library, Deerfield Academy, Deerfield. http://www. proquest.com/ (accessed February 21, 2009).

U.S. Congress. “Dingley Tariff Act.” United States Statutes At Large, 55th Cong, Sess. I., Chp. 11., p. 151-213. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE52&iPin=E08260& SingleRecord=True (accessed February 15, 2009).

U.S. Congress. “Foraker Act.” United States Statutes at Large, 56th Cong., Sess. I, Chp. 191, p. 77-86. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE52&iPin=E03340& SingleRecord=True (accessed February 15, 2009).

Young, James Harvey. “Three Southern Food and Drug Cases.” The Journal of Southern History (JSTOR) Vol. 49, Feb 1983, pp. 3-36. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2209304 (accessed February 21, 2009).

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ANDY WARHOL AND HIS MARILYNS: THE ART OF MASS CULTURE Kayla Corcoran

DEAS ABOUT THE NINETEEN-SIXTIES IN

AMERICA are fraught with the deafening images of acid rock and Jimmy Hendrix, sexual experimentation, and student protests, all blurred together under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs and set against the backdrop of race riots and escalated violence. Derived from resentment that arose as the youth response to the constrained moralities of the nineteen-fifties, the “Counter Culture” in America was a rebellion against mass culture, which had set in during the post-war era. America’s emergence from the Second World War as one of the wealthiest and strongest nations of the world marked the beginning of a new age in American history in which buying became the nation’s favorite pastime. Individuality lost itself among the eerily replicated houses of Levittown and “suburbia” as every family clamored to buy a television set for their home and drive around in new cars. American society was seemingly placid, bloated on material goods and mass culture, drugged by conformity. Awakened to the loss of sincere culture, the Beats, who “romanticized society’s outcasts and glorified uninhibited sexuality and spontaneity in the search for . . . the ultimate authentic experience,” (Boyer 657) scorned the social norms that defined post-war era society.

As the “Counter Culture” began to take root, another movement that arose in art was also sparked by the notion of mass culture. Pop Art was the rebellion against Abstract Expressionism, which “valued the primordial, the ‘spiritual,’ the ‘primitive,’ and the archetypal” (Hughes 467) in its search to create “original” art. Prolific Pop artist Andy Warhol, famously known for “his abolition of the principle of originality,” (The Prestel Dictionary) stood in direct opposition to Abstract Expressionism, claiming that Pop art was “liking things” (Art News). Warhol’s creation of his silkscreened Marilyn Monroe images represents a unique movement towards the radical embrace of American mass culture in which “everybody looks alive and acts alike” (Art News). Thinking about the man that is Andy Warhol, David Bourdon, who once worked with Andy Warhol, offers the following contemplation: “A mirror of his age: that’s what many

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people called Andy Warhol. Why is it, then, that when people peer at the silvery surface he offered, they glimpse indistinct, elusive, and contradictory reflections?” (Bourdon 9).

Warhol’s self, like his art, was completely about surface nature and outside appearance. Warhol’s façade was incredibly deliberate and calculated, “perhaps because the actual facts of his life never seemed glamorous enough to him” (Bourdon 10). The artist, who loved fame and attention, marketed himself by merging his identity with that of his art, eventually making it virtually impossible to distinguish between the two.

But the real Andy Warhol (né Warhola), born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Czechoslovakian immigrants, always considered himself an outsider. Stricken with Saint Vitus’s dance as a young boy, Warhol was bedridden for several months, during which he kept himself occupied with comics, art, and drawing (Bourdon 17). The condition, which caused him to have nervous spasms, also caused the loss of pigment in Warhol’s skin, leaving him with a characteristic paleness that only seemed to contribute to his mysteriousness.

Warhol’s foray into art began with his move to New York City after his graduation from the Carnegie Institute of Technology’s Department of Painting and Design. In the 1950s, Warhol found work as a commercial artist illustrating shoe advertisements. But there was a certain level of dissatisfaction associated with the job, which Warhol addressed in a 1963 interview with G.R. Swenson for Art News, saying, “If they told me to draw a shoe, I’d do it, and if they told me to correct it, I would—I’d do anything they told me to do, correct it and do it right. I’d have to invent and now I don’t; after all that ‘correction,’ those commercial drawings would have feelings, they would have a style” (Art News).

Eventually Warhol opened his own studio in 1962, dubbed The Factory, where he began producing paintings, photography, sculpture, and film; his “best work was done over a span of about six years, finishing up in 1968, when he was shot” (Hughes 539), though not fatally. In August of the same year (1962), Marilyn Monroe died from an apparent drug overdose, catapulting the nation into “an unusually somber and morbid depression” (Bourdon 124). Gripped by the media’s coverage of Monroe’s suicide, Warhol “noted with curiosity how it was sparking a wave of ‘sympathetic’ suicides around the world” (Bourdon 124). Influenced certainly by the massive response to the starlet’s death and his own recent

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success with the serial imagery contained in his Campbell’s Soup Cans show, Warhol purchased a publicity photo of Monroe taken during the height of her career. He cropped the photograph just below Monroe’s chin, focusing directly on her widely recognized facial features and hair. From that image, Warhol produced several of his own creations, most famously Marilyn Monroe, Gold Marilyn Monroe, Six Marilyns, Marilyn Monroe Twenty Times, and Marilyn Diptych.

To say that each one of Warhol’s Marilyn images looks just the same as the next is a blind observation, for though they are all silk screened reproductions of a single image, the small subtleties that exist, as art critic Lawrence Alloway claims, are “‘like Japanese plastic toys, which have irregular joints where they are broken from the mold. In the context of painting, these failures of identical repetition take on gestural vitality; they become the reassurance of . . . casualness’” (Bourdon 126-130).

Ironically, Warhol claimed he wasn’t seeking to instill “reassurances of casualness” in his work, but he lacked the patience to work slowly and precisely to insure exact repetition. But it is almost impossible to imagine that Warhol didn’t delight in the small mistakes. Particularly notable in Six Marilyns and Marilyn Monroe Twenty Times is the quality of the blackand-white “grainy shadows on Monroe’s cheek and neck . . . [which] emulate the low resolution newspaper photographs” (Whiting) and also resemble rows of film, in which each frame is almost identical to its precedent, save for small manipulations (Bourdon 124).

But the multiple repetitions of Monroe’s face in a single piece of work are undeniably the most obvious and pervasive elements of many of Warhol’s Marilyn images. Monroe’s image was ubiquitous in the media, and Warhol capitalized on her fame, drawing on the repetition of her face to reflect the popularity of Hollywood and the mass culture that it promoted. Marilyn Diptych, containing fifty images of Monroe’s face, is simply overwhelming, particularly as garish tensions seem to arise between the black-and-white and colored images that are awkwardly placed side-byside. But Warhol’s radical embrace of consumerism was precisely about the overwhelming nature of mass culture. As art critic Robert Hughes stresses, “There was no point in fighting Gargantua, the vast desire industry of advertising and promotion and mass production. Gargantua was American culture now” (Hughes 524). But Warhol took the embracement of Gargantua to an entirely different level than the other Pop artists

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because he “took on the sheer mind-numbing overload of American mass culture and allowed himself . . . to become an apparently passive conduit for it” (Hughes 539).

Not all of Warhol’s Marilyn images were rendered in black-andwhite. Warhol often silk-screened Monroe’s face onto colored backgrounds that he had prepared in advance. But the contrasts that the blackand-white images offered were not lost in the colored images, which paraded tacky and gaudy oranges and pinks alongside day-glo yellows and blue-greens. Because Warhol often overestimated the area of the colors for the silk screen (Bourdon 124), the makeup on Monroe’s face, most easily seen in Marilyn Monroe, reinforces the over glamorization of celebrities in Hollywood. Monroe’s face is almost mask-like, reflecting the surface nature of America and its celebrities. For though “Warhol apparently intended all of his portraits of Monroe as funereal and commemorative icons” (Bourdon 130), the silk screens transcended the conception of art as a window to another image; the Marilyn images were, in the profoundest of simplicities, about image and creation. Art critic Cecile Whiting, who reviewed both Warhol’s Marilyn images and his images of Elizabeth Taylor for Oxford Art Journal, wrote, Warhol clearly imitated the way the popular press presents movie stars, but he exaggerated the appearance and style of both the subjects themselves and the mass-produced photographic images by which they are known. Warhol’s paintings are not, therefore, about Taylor and Monroe as real people at all, but about their public image in its purest form.

Warhol was familiar with the concept of public image. He had, after all, created and bolstered his own through association of his name with those of more famous people and things: Marilyn Monroe, Campbell’s Soup, the dollar bill, Elvis Presley, Jackie Kennedy, and Mao. The repetition of Monroe’s public image, not just within one work, but in the many works Warhol produced, mimics Warhol’s relationship with his commercial illustrations: “Everybody’s always being creative,” he said in his 1963 interview with Art News. “And it’s so funny when you say things aren’t [creative], like the shoe I would draw for an advertisement was called a ‘creation’ but the drawing of it was not” (Art News). If Monroe’s

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celebrity façade was merely a creation of Hollywood, then Warhol’s Marilyn images are understandably also a creation, despite the fact that the predominant image was not originally Warhol’s work. It was radical notion to create art from another existing piece, but that was the beauty of Pop Art, particularly Warhol’s work—it was easily accessible. Warhol was in love with the idea of sameness, expressing to Art News, “I think somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me . . . I think it would be so great if more people took up silk screens so that no one would know whether my picture was mine or somebody else’s” (Art News).

The expression on Marilyn Monroe’s face is empty and devoid of emotion. The raised, arched eyebrows and her slightly open lips contribute to Monroe’s expression of nothingness, which becomes unnerving when repeated multiple times. But perhaps the most effectively unsettling image is Gold Marilyn Monroe, where Monroe’s face floats starkly and uncharacteristically alone in the midst of a thick, metallic gold background. It is a “distanced and sleazy ephiphany [which] . . . reminds you that, somewhere near the heart of Pop, moribundity lurked” (Hughes 541).

Curiously, though the Marilyn images are about creation, they are effectively about nothing because there are no emotions contained below the surface, which is exactly the way Warhol viewed mass culture in America.

Why, then, was he so quick to embrace mass culture if it was about nothing? Warhol, who said “I think everybody should be a machine,” (Art News) also said: “Those who talk about individuality the most are the ones who most object to deviation . . . some day everybody will think just what they want to think, and then everybody will probably be thinking alike; that seems to be what is happening” (Art News).

Warhol’s views were not traditional; the backlash he received from his critics was extraordinary—“his detractors see him as a flagrant self-promoter, a cynical opportunist, and a heartless manipulator who degraded the seriousness of art through relentless commercialism” (Bourdon 9). But those who criticize Warhol’s seriousness as an artist miss the basic tenets of Warhol’s philosophy: individuality is nonexistent and creativity is purely subjective. Warhol’s Marilyn images are creations that mimic the consumer condition of American culture; if Warhol’s artwork is “relentless commercialism,” then so, too, is American culture.

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WORKS CITED Bourdon, David. Warhol. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989.

Boyer, Paul S. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007.

Frazier, Nancy. The Penguin Concise Dictionary of Art History. New York: Penguin Group, 2000.

Hughes, Robert. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America. 1997. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 2006.

The Prestel Dictionary of Art and Artists in the 20th Century. Ed. Wieland Schmied, Frank Whitford, and Frank Zöllner. Munich, Germany: Prestel Verlag, 2000.

Warhol, Andy. Golden Marilyn Monroe. Acrylic, silkscreen ink, and oil on canvas. 1962.

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Warhol. By David Bourdon. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989. Plate 122. 126.

—. Marilyn Diptych. Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas. 1962. The Tate Gallery, London. Warhol. By David Bourdon. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989.

Plate 125. 128-129.

—. Marilyn Monroe. Acryclic on canvas. 1962. Collection Leo Castelli, New York.

Warhol. By David Bourdon. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989. Plate 121.

24.

—. Marilyn Monroe Twenty Times. Silkscreen ink on canvas. 1962. Private Collection, Paris. Warhol. By David Bourdon. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989. Plate 124. 127.

—. Six Marilyns. Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas. 1962. Collection Emily and Jerry Spiegel. Warhol. By David Bourdon. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989.

Plate 123. 127.

—. “What is Pop Art?” Interview with G. R. Swenson. Art News Nov. 1963: 24-27.

“Warhol, Andy.” A Biographical Dictionary of Artists. Ed. Lawrence Gowing, Sir. Spain: Facts on File, 1995.

Whiting, Cecile. “Andy Warhol, the Public Star and the Private Self.” Oxford Art Journal 1987: 58-75. JSTOR. 2009. http://www.jstor.org/search (accessed May 19, 2009).

Wribcan, Matt. “Andy Warhol Chronology.” The Warhol: Resources and Lessons. 2006.

The Andy Warhol Museum. http://edu.warhol.org /20c_chron.html (accessed May 18, 2009).

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Joshua Krugman

in england the winter rain that loosed the gravel sounded like fire clattering on a wall and in this easy dusk we woke, found the gazebo unlocked, entered while heliotrope unfurled uselessly. like june in japan’s beloved cherrytrees near houses crammed oneonthenext, the unshackled larch leads her pursuers to her rooms where they witness the moon spar with sea-ice and be quickly thwarted.

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a poem in a dream i woke, the bluebells meant for you still in my breastpocket, and you inside your mother’s lights already. a kingfisher scours the cough-opaque riverwater, stabs the shallows the same way i tune the guitar down like a dulcimer.

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TWO HIGHWAYS, ONE WAY

HANNAH DANCER

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TIGER PRESS

NORTHAMPTON MARCH

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MASSACHUSETTS