Bob Parris

Annotation — Civil Rights Songs

The LP "Berkeley Teach-in: Vietnam" (Folkways Records # FW05765) documented the largest Vietnam "teach-in" - an educational forum - which took place at UC Berkeley on 21-23 May 1965, which also crossed into the area of Civil Rights. According to the New York Times, 30,000 people attended the event, organised by the Vietnam Day Committee (VDC). It included speeches by Norman Mailer, who attacked the failure of the national conscience: "the most advanced technological nation in the civilised world was the one now closest to blood, to shedding the blood of Asian peasants....the grimmest truth maybe that half of America is at least willing to have a war in Vietnam". Senator Ernest Gruening (democrat) attacked President Eisenhower for breaching the Geneva Convention (ending the First Indo-China War between Vietnam and France) and the Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) administration for the escalation of the war. Various academics spoke, including the historian Issac Deutscher.

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Notes

Folkways Records FD 5765, "© Copyright 1966 Folkways Records and Service Corporation", 165 W. 46th St., N.Y.C.; "Voices and Documents", recorded at the Berkeley campus of the University of California by Radio Station KPFA, edited, compiled and annotated by Louis Menashe. Cover photo by Bob Randolph, courtesy National Guardian, of the crowd before the speakers' platform; design by Ronald Clyne; the back lists the voices of Staughton Lynd, Aaron Wildavsky, Robert Scheer, Paul Potter, Paul Krassner, Bob Parris, Dr. Benjamin Spock, I. F. Stone, M. S. Arnoni, Norman Mailer, Mario Savio, Dick Gregory, Senator Ernest Gruening and Isaac Deutscher across four sides. The 12-page booklet contains "Ten Theses on the Teach-ins", a chronology of the teach-in movement from the first teach-in at the University of Michigan on March 24-25, 1965 to the National Week of Teach-Ins in March 1966, and a note…

About the artist

Recorded Berkeley, California, USA

Themes

Anti-War · Civil Rights

In collections

Civil Rights Songs · Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs [War Years]