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All right. We're here at Thursday, April 19, 2018 for the second interview and the voices of 1968 oral history project.

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I'm John Caldwell and I'm here with Chris identity. We are interviewing Sean Mullen at the One Button Studio and Morris Library

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at the University of Delaware main campus. So Shawn, could you just tell us where were you in 1968? I was living near whole caisson with

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my family and we lived in one of the first two non farm houses between prices corner and hook up. So we would wake up and there would

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be cows grazing in the front yard. And despite my proximity to the campus, I lived in a dormitory and later illegally in an apartment.

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I was at the university, really a seminal time in the university's history. And so far as when I

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arrived as a freshmen and fall of 1965, young men were expected to wear coats and ties to Sunday night dinner. And by the time I left,

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the first co-ed dorm had opened. So things moved rather quickly. Delaware was still more or less a cow college.

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It had a, an outstanding agricultural school. It had an outstanding or history program that no one knew about. And it of course had a

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nationally regarded to chemical engineering program. It had a pathetic excuse for library and the arts part of Arts and

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Science equation was kind of weak. I would have to say that my education was, was probably not terrific. I was accidentally listed as

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an English major and never bothered to change it. And I ended up taking as many or more history courses

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as English courses. And at some point had cultivated an interest in journalism when I was the editor of

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my high school paper, John Dickinson high school in suburban Wilmington, and began writing sports

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and then moved up and became the Managing Editor. And when 1968 dawned, I was the editor.

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And that was somewhat unusual because I was not yet a senior, but I was I was the editor. And Delaware at that time

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had less than no journalism program. There was no journalism major. There was a single journalism course, E3, 11, I believe,

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called news editing and writing. And it was taught by an elderly about to retire English prof who, who was the stereotypical

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tweety tortoise shell glass wearing English professor. A very dear man by the name of ropes and Bailey.

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And he was the advisor to the review, which came out regularly and was pretty much reflective of the camp. Not very adventurous.

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And in the course of the couple three years that I was involved as the world was changing around the campus,

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and social issues became more pressing and more difficult to ignore. Even in Newark. The review kind of grew up and

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it attracted some really good people. Attracted some really fine photographers, most of whom worked at a freelance basis, like Leo Tammy,

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who is your initial interview? Leo would go shoot something, develop the film and come in with eight by ten glosses and say,

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you want any of this stuff. Do you want any of this stuff from this demonstration? You what any of this stuff from whatever.

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And that's kind of how we operated. None of us, with the exception of myself, who was working summers at the news journal in Wilmington,

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had any hands-on journalism experience. That said, we really caught lightning in a bottle and we're. Living through some extraordinary times.

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The Vietnam War was at its peak. The antiwar movement was growing. The civil rights movement had kind of entered a new phase

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where the Great Society programs were pretty much law. But the hard work of dealing with racism really hadn't begun.

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And as we know today, really has not been notably successful. But that was going on. Delaware was a white bread campus.

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There were a couple of blacks on the football team and there was a stray black hair in there on campus. But I don't think you could have

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filled a bus with the number of non-white students on campus in 1968. So there was the motto

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of the university in 1960, 8 mi as well have been the Latin term in loco parentis. The university administration,

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the Board of Trustees, and many of the faculty felt that their first responsibility was to babysit students.

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They were the parents in local environment for taking care of the undergraduates. And it was a very parochial, very strict,

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very conservative, politically, very nurturing environment. So in addition to the war, in addition to the civil rights movement,

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you had a campus that was really trapped in time and a university administration that was extremely conservative.

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And Board of Trustees dominated by the DuPont family. That was very centered in its ways. The people on the board of

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trustees who were not DuPont dominated, were largely downstate farmers who brought their own particular conservative bent to things.

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And so that became an issue. The administration became an issue. The way students were coddled and disciplined for the slightest infraction

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became an issue. And that's something that the review became swept up in. In addition to the antiwar movement,

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in addition to civil rights, there was a nascent women's movement. And if I told you it was showing itself

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on the Delaware campus, I'd be lying. But it was going on out there. The number of women who became interested in student government

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certainly increased exponentially in 1968. And then as an outgrowth of all those things, there was the radicalization of student government and one of

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the big stories of 1968 on view in the exhibit area. Exhibition that Rebecca and John put together was the increasing power

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of students for a democratic society. As, as a mover and shaker on campus. And the core elements of that included a guy

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by the name of George wool kind, who had gone to Ann Arbor where SDS had been created a few years earlier and kind

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of learned at the knee of the founders, brought their lessons back to campus. And SDS, you know, riding on the Student apathy on campus,

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basically hijacked the student government. And in the spring of 68 basically took over all. But I think one student government seat.

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Now, I'm probably a little factually off, but that will convey what happened. And all of a sudden, you had an extremely conservative Board of Trustees

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and an extremely conservative administration and an extremely conservative faculty senate confronted by student government being run by long hair radicals.

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And that was seismic. Most students barely noticed. Most students could care less about student government.

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Most students could care less about what was going on. Beyond the campus and newer in Wilmington, let alone, you know,

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elsewhere in the greater world. But the inevitable clash occurred between. Student government and the administration, which manifested itself in

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a series of teachings involving what you then as a radical professors. And as a result of that,

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three professors were told her contracts we're not going to be renewed. The reason being they had deigned to express opinions about the war,

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to organize students to better understand what was going on with the war. Remember, this was maybe two or three months after tax,

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which was a big wake-up call for most Americans. And as a result of the faculty senates decision

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to uphold the administration, because these three faculty members had deigned to express opinions that were not in keeping with

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the conservative nature of the administration and the board of trustees. There was a sit in and hauling it Hall. And by the standards of Columbia or

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Berkeley or Kent State or any number of other campuses. It was a rather team of fair. But, you know,

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the state police were called out. I know there was this sense of confrontation when the students who took over

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Holly in and sat down in the hallways outside of the administrators officers refused to leave. And as a consequence of

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that sit in which I think lasted barely a day. But by Delaware standards, was dramatic. Most of the SDS members

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who were in student government were expelled from school. Looking back on it now, it seems incredibly parochial.

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It seems incredibly AAC just seems incredibly backwards. But yet at the time for the University of Delaware in

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Newark, Delaware, it was, it was dramatic and the review was really covering that, you know, every which way.

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And we subscribe to a free national wire service called the Collegiate Press service. When you look through copies of

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the review back then, and it will say Berkeley, California instead of API or UPI, it'll say CPS.

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So we were running stories of what was going on at all these campuses where the demonstrations were substantially

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larger, were often violent. And so the review, you know, in-between covering the young Americans for freedom convention and up

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with people singing at the carpenter field house. And the baseball team winning a double-header against

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haustra was covering all that stuff. And then April of 1968 came around. Quick order. Dr. King was assassinated and number

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of urban centers ignited into flames. Looking back on Wilmington riots, they clearly were something less than what occurred in Newark,

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were in Washington, or in Chicago, or in Gary or any number of other cities. A bunch of kids caused a bunch of trouble. Shots were fired, I think

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two or three derelict buildings in what was called the Valley, which was the black ghetto in Wilmington, were torched

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by any reasonable contemporary standard. It was small beer. But the governor called out the National Guard.

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And we covered that extensively. When we came back to school in the fall of 68, the National Guard was still in Wilmington.

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Why? Because the governor has said that he was getting intelligence reports that there

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was gonna be some kind of a takeover, insurrection or civil disobedience. It was all crap. So the guard was stained.

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That prompted Richard coder who wrote under the pen name mom, to draw that wonderful cartoon that is in the 1960s exhibition of Governor Terry,

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literally sitting on the City of Wilmington. That provoked the second of my two visits to the dean of students with a warning that if the reviewer

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didn't knock it off, that I would be suspended from school. The first visit had occurred after

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our April Fool's issue in 1968, when we ran a photograph on the front page stage of a student falling over one of the chains that they

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kept students from walking on the grass, on the mall. And back then, everywhere you look, you had to stay on the sidewalks

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because there were all these chains. And we post a review staff member sprawled over a chain with one of

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his feet still caught on the chain and wrote a total, total cape. Ridiculous. April Fool's article about how the chains had,

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had, had gotten another victim. Guy called into the Dean of Students office. Yeah, you gotta stop doing that stuff. If you don't stop doing that stuff,

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you know, you're gonna be suspended from school. And in both instances, I just smiled and said yes, sir.

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Yes, sir. No, sir. And life went on. How did you run the news room for the review?

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Did you let the staff kind of do their own thing? Yeah. Yeah. We didn't first of all,

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we didn't know any better. We didn't know how to run a newsroom. And while I was working weekends and summaries at the news journal.

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And I had some idea of how a newsroom was organized. To say that we were organized along professional lines would be misstating it.

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There were a small handful of news reporters, there were a small handful of feature reporters. There were a small handful

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of sports reporters. There was a very small advertising staff that we'd go get Main Street vergence to buy ads.

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And the Student Activities group would always buy ads for the upcoming four tops concert at the field house or whatever it was.

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But it basically was totally passive. The cross-country team would have a mean. There would be an article on it. There would be some touchy-feely

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features story. So somebody would go out and cover it. Student Government would recommend that ROTC no longer be mandatory,

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which it was not by the time I left the university and his story would be written on that. What changed somewhat while I was

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the editor is we began to be more proactive. We began to go after stories, before they happened. Also really infuriated the administration.

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And within our resources, we were first of all students, although my grades were abysmal, we tried to anticipate what might be a story,

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would do something off the beaten track. So in that respect, the review was a little different than it had been

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before then and from what I gather was afterwards. But it was it was more or less. And archi how large

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are the staff was there for the review? Hardcore, maybe 15 to 20 people, hardcore. Ten to 15 people who would kind of come and go.

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They're always would be the small group who would stay up all night to actually put the paper together.

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That was even smaller, four or five people. We were, we were printed at the Cecil wig at

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that time in weekly paper down in Elkton. So as the sun was coming out and everything had been finished, I would jump on the back of

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Eric Smith's 150 cc Honda. We need to hold down Alt and road no matter the weather. And we would go to the Cecil wig

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where they would actually dummy the pages, look over the shoulder of the of the composite. And if something had to be trimmed would

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do the tramps if somebody didn't fit, would make it fit. And then the paper would be run off later that day.

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It was it was pretty much seat of the pants. How often did the review came out? Once a week. And I think it's

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possible that by the time I left, we were coming out Tuesdays and Fridays, but I'm really big on that. Was the review of the only paper in

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town or were there other publications? It was in more ways than one. The news journal was a looming presence. And the News Journal back then was actually

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the morning news and the evening journal. Who, although they had distinctively different looks, the evening journal was essentially recycled

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Morning News news with whatever news had, had occurred overnight and into the morning. Back then, the evening paper was alive and well.

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People had time when they came home at night to sit down and read the paper you think of dad's sitting in the bar code manager with his feet up,

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with a pipe in his mouth, reading the evening paper before mom calls the family to the dinner table. That was still very much

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the way American society worked. The new Cheryl covered the campus extensively, but in a very benign way.

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Sports were big, football was enormous. There was also the New York Post, which was a weekly paper that basically did the minima.

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You would not expect to see anything in the New York Post that you would describe as controversial. Car gets stuck on

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the railroad crossing on North College Avenue and gets hit by a train. You're gonna read it in the New York Post. You're not going to read in

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the New York Post as you did in the review, why these grade crossing accidents continued to occur.

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It wasn't there a better way to deal with this than wiping out a middle-school student every few months or whatever.

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There was one node, One notorious train crash at the North College Avenue crossing, which as you know,

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is still there, where a train carried boxcars of frisbees cached food derailed. And my cats did not need cat food for quite awhile.

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I'll leave it at that. But but the, the, the post it was not called the weekly post. I think it was called the post was,

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was really this kind of decrepit by the book, non-controversial weekly paper. And so the review,

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arguably for all that was going on in 1968 on campus and in Wilmington and in the greater world was the only paper really covering it.

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You could pick up the review at the newsstand, which was really a going concern. And it was really a hub

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for magazines and newspapers. You could get all the out-of-town papers there. You can pick up the review,

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of course, around campus. So it was by default, certainly not by any intention. Really the only paper

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that was even beginning to cover these dramatic societal changes. Did you have any overlap either in staff or an involvement personally?

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With paradoxical voice for SDS. Not really. But we, we, many of the people

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on the heterodox equal voice staff were, were friends. They clearly saw their mission as moving beyond what

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the review could do and unit for all my chest puffing and bad how bold the review was. It's still at heart,

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was rather conserved, even if it was covering the anti war room. Even if it was covering the civil rights movement.

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Even if it did aggressively cover what was going on in Wilmington after the National Guard occupation.

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The heterodox go voice and feel been ascii and George Wolfe, kind and people like that can certainly better address it

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then I can saw its mission as Bringing the War Home to people and making them understand that

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underlying the war was this long history of American imperialism that was resulting in a, an unnecessary war. 13,000 mi away.

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That young American men were being conscripted. Poor, under-educated blacks that are far greater rate than were whites.

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Certainly a fluent whites. Whites who could afford college exemptions. And so its primary mission was to lay bare American imperialism in

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Latin America, in Southeast Asia. It also was a resource for, for poetry. And other forms of alternative journalists in which

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the review really did not have room for, not that it wasn't inclined to review, did not run poems. The commentary in that are

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dots go voice was, was very edgy. The reporting was very raw. When you look back at those 20 or 30 issues in special collections,

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which is a wonderful treasure trove. You have to laugh out loud sometimes at how wildly idealistic and over the top the language was,

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how dreamy a lot of the political views were. But these people, men and they met it in their hearts that they were deeply committed to doing that.

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We're deeply committed to spreading the word which the review was unable to do. Certainly in the way they envisioned. A number of people on

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the staff went to Chicago that summer, were involved in the police riots. A couple of them got beaten up. One guy got beaten up very,

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very badly, was hospitalized. That further radicalize them. So when they came back and school resumed that fall,

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they really had their hair on fire. They had they had been there, they had seen what we're Daley's police did. They had seen how the Convention had,

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had pushed aside Gene McCarthy and nominee Hubert Humphrey. And they were really, really angry. From your time as editor on

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the staff of the review, are there any, is there one or two stories that you're very proud of that really stick out the stories that you recovered.

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Well, I probably should have gone and reviewed review before I came in and did that. I would say our continuing coverage

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of the takeover of student government, of the antipathy of the faculty senate to stand up for academic freedom.

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And this was an academic Freeman issue. Why shouldn't have political science professor like Rob wrestler who was one of

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the three professors whose contracts were not reviewed or renewed. Why shouldn't he have the right to stand up and,

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and, and, and decry the Vietnam War for what it was. Why shouldn't he be allowed under the canon freeman freedom to have

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a teacher at Smith Hall and talk about that stuff. Why, why should he be punished? Why should he lose his livelihood

00:29:40.490 - 00:29:55.050

over something as fundamental as academic freedom? So the review covered that pretty well. They covered the, the,

00:29:55.050 - 00:30:09.190

the collision between the changes in student government and the stuck in the mud Faculty Senate, the conservative administration.

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I would say that probably would stand out as the more outstanding work journalistically, it was man, you know,

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nothing special, nothing flash. But it got covered. And if we hadn't covered it, other than a built-in magnet

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for the news journal like the takeover of holy and Hall, which had covered none of this, would have been publicized.

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It would have happened in a vacuum. How did you get into journalism? Let's arcs that I actually worked for

00:30:49.160 - 00:30:59.600

my junior high school papers. It was, it was mimeograph. And then I got a little more interested in journalism.

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And I became the editor in both my junior and senior year of my high school paper that John Dickinson pen man,

00:31:11.540 - 00:31:22.190

named for John Dickinson, the pen man of the revolution. And it was a pretty sad affair, but it did what high school papers did.

00:31:22.190 - 00:31:31.670

And then between my junior and senior year of college, I won a scholarship to the summer Journalism Institute at

00:31:31.670 - 00:31:40.320

the middle School of Journalism at University, which at the time was probably one of the better Jay schools.

00:31:40.320 - 00:31:54.860

And they took two students to rising seniors from each state and had a bootcamp for journalism there in Evanston.

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And it was a great experience because we've worked with the professors from middle 70 graduate students from a deal.

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And it was a very rigorous hands-on six-week Institute. We were all sitting in the auditorium there, the J School.

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One day when somebody burst through the doors, be chased by someone with a gun, and they shot him dead right

00:32:25.040 - 00:32:36.680

there at the foot of the stage. It was staged, it was a blank. We were told to immediately write our account of what had just occurred.

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And what you ended up with were 100 different versions of the same event. The major point being that you just can't write

00:32:45.050 - 00:32:52.940

what you thought you saw. It involves more than doing that. It involves some rigor. It involves talking to the principles.

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It involves trying to find out why it happened in the first place. And so it was, it was a very,

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very rigorous six weeks. And I came out of that really excited about journalists. And at that time I saw

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journalism is not a whole lot different than social work. We're teaching. It was something where you could give back.

00:33:19.570 - 00:33:38.460

And I wanted to give back. And so I applied much of what I learned that summer at Mendel to how the review was run that year.

00:33:45.010 - 00:33:51.710

Before we wrap up, are there any other thoughts, memories that you had to succeed? It's still sitting here today.

00:33:51.710 - 00:34:06.770

Relationships. Yeah. At that time, I was I was sharing an apartment on Main Street up toward McDonald's with with two staffers,

00:34:06.770 - 00:34:16.970

the managing editor eric smith, and a writer, Tom Davies. And we lived in this dilapidated place that was condemned and torn down

00:34:16.970 - 00:34:27.260

after we moved out that spring. And the old New York Senior Center and we would do things like take the emergent,

00:34:27.260 - 00:34:33.360

plugged down the flagpole and turn it around and run it back up. The sign of distress, the upside down American flag.

00:34:33.360 - 00:34:45.610

Eugene McCarthy kind of set politics on fire that winter By decided he was going to run against Johnson and airy.

00:34:45.610 - 00:34:55.730

And Tom decided to go work for McCarthy in New Hampshire and they got cleaned for g. They both had long hair. But Gene McCarthy said,

00:34:55.730 - 00:35:01.880

if you're going to come work for me, you have to get a haircut. You know, we don't want to scare people. And they canvas door to

00:35:01.880 - 00:35:11.570

door in New Hampshire, McCarthy, against all odds when the New Hampshire primary, through the entire Democratic Party

00:35:11.570 - 00:35:18.710

into an uproar, it eventually lead to Johnson decided not to run again. And so they were sending

00:35:18.710 - 00:35:25.260

back stories and when they came back, wrote extensively about being on the ground with all these students from

00:35:25.260 - 00:35:36.590

all these schools in the Northeast. We're canvassing for Eugene McCarthy. That was pretty cool. That was pretty neat. You were able to integrate McCarthy?

00:35:36.590 - 00:35:45.110

Yeah. Yeah. He came through later that spring. I interviewed him in the scrounge. There's a photo of the front page

00:35:45.110 - 00:35:54.650

of a review of the city and my father's herringbone sport coat. Looking earnest as Eugene McCarthy

00:35:54.650 - 00:36:06.460

leaned over his side of the table looking earnest. And you know, he, he, he really, he really had a chance.

00:36:06.460 - 00:36:15.200

We thought it was naive. We were naive. I guess the biggest lesson from 1968, and this is a good interview closer

00:36:15.200 - 00:36:22.610

is that we felt we could change the world. We didn't. Not only did we not change the world, but when it became

00:36:22.610 - 00:36:31.750

Eric turn to run the world, we screwed up things even worse. Let's quiet enough to end on. Thank you very much.

00:36:31.750 - 00:36:34.470

You're welcome. You're welcome.