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The People of This Generation: The Rise and Fall of the New Left in Philadelphia
At the heart of the tumult that marked the 1960s was the unprecedented scale of student protest on university campuses around the world. Identifying themselves as the New Left, as distinguished from the Old Left socialists who engineered the historic labor protests of the 1930s, these young idealists quickly became the voice and conscience of their generation.
The People of This Generation is the first comprehensive case study of the history of the New Left in a Northeast urban environment. Paul Lyons examines how campus and community activists interacted with the urban political environment, especially the pacifist Quaker tradition and the rising ethnic populism of police chief and later mayor Frank Rizzo. Moving away from the memoirs and overviews that have dominated histories of the period, Lyons uses this detailed metropolitan study as a prism for revealing the New Left's successes and failures and for gauging how the energy generated by local activism cultivated the allegiance of countless citizens.
Lyons explores why groups dominated by the Old Left had limited success in offering inspiration to a new generation driven by the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. The number and diversity of colleges in this unique metropolitan area allow for rich comparisons of distinctly different campus cultures, and Lyons shows how both student demographics and institutional philosophies determined the pace and trajectory of radicalization. Turning his attention off campus, Lyons highlights the significance of the antiwar Philadelphia Resistance and the antiracist People for Human Rights—Philadelphia's most significant New Left organizations—revealing that the New Left was influenced by both its urban and campus milieus.
Combining in-depth archival research, rich personal anecdote, insightful treatment of the ideals that propelled student radicalism, and careful attention to the varied groups that nurtured it, The People of This Generation offers a moving history of urban America during what was perhaps the most turbulent decade in living memory.
The People of This Generation is the first comprehensive case study of the history of the New Left in a Northeast urban environment. Paul Lyons examines how campus and community activists interacted with the urban political environment, especially the pacifist Quaker tradition and the rising ethnic populism of police chief and later mayor Frank Rizzo. Moving away from the memoirs and overviews that have dominated histories of the period, Lyons uses this detailed metropolitan study as a prism for revealing the New Left's successes and failures and for gauging how the energy generated by local activism cultivated the allegiance of countless citizens.
Lyons explores why groups dominated by the Old Left had limited success in offering inspiration to a new generation driven by the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. The number and diversity of colleges in this unique metropolitan area allow for rich comparisons of distinctly different campus cultures, and Lyons shows how both student demographics and institutional philosophies determined the pace and trajectory of radicalization. Turning his attention off campus, Lyons highlights the significance of the antiwar Philadelphia Resistance and the antiracist People for Human Rights—Philadelphia's most significant New Left organizations—revealing that the New Left was influenced by both its urban and campus milieus.
Combining in-depth archival research, rich personal anecdote, insightful treatment of the ideals that propelled student radicalism, and careful attention to the varied groups that nurtured it, The People of This Generation offers a moving history of urban America during what was perhaps the most turbulent decade in living memory.
279 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 15, 2021
This book is very academic and historically detailed and my interest flagged about halfway through. So why did I track down this title in the first place?
I lived through the sixties as a young housewife and mother and therefore missed the excitement of the times. Reading about people who I knew in high school effecting change in Philadelphia during the protests of the Vietnam War and fighting for equality made me realize how much I missed.
I lived through the sixties as a young housewife and mother and therefore missed the excitement of the times. Reading about people who I knew in high school effecting change in Philadelphia during the protests of the Vietnam War and fighting for equality made me realize how much I missed.
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March 5, 2024THE PEOPLE OF THIS GENERATION: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE NEW LEFT IN PHILADELPHIA, by Paul Lyons
JEFF KEITH'S COMMENTS
(four stars on Goodreads) I read this book when it first came out, and have scanned through it again to see if we would want it in our big church library. (The answer to that is a resounding YES.) I started off wanting to give the book five stars for all of the brilliant research that the author did, but then I felt I needed to deduct a little for the typographical errors in the index, and the problems that I saw in his treatment of African American issues.
I definitely loved reading all about the progressive and radical movements in and around Philadelphia during the 1960s and early 1970s. I know many of the people who are mentioned. However, I find it sad that the author is so blatant about concentrating mainly on movements of White (Caucasian) people. His overwhelming emphasis is on events on and around college campuses, and when he brings up African American struggles in Philadelphia, it sometimes feels like kind of a postscript. That is particularly blatant if you look at the book’s index. (See below.)
In any major history text like this, a main concern of mine is whether it has a good index so that a reader can find out what is discussed where. And this book’s index leaves a lot to be desired. A first blatant thing is that the term “African American” gets a trivial entry, and does not mention that the reader ought to turn to other specific entries, such as those that start with the term “Black.”
I appreciated the descriptions of the terms New Left and Old Left, but index entries for those things are sparse. It would help if there were subentries in the index such as “New Left—defined.” I liked all of the attention given to groups such as Students for a Democratic Society and the myriad activist groups on the local college campuses. I remember some of those groups.
I found it difficult that the author uses some esoteric “insider” Marxist terms without adequately defining them. In the first chapter, he just starts talking about “Shachtmanites” and doesn’t tell us very well what that term means. Later he continually uses the basic, important term “Trotskyist,” and assumes that we all know what that means. He doesn’t even give “Trotskyism” or “Trotskyite” entries in the index.
Being a left-wing, progressive Quaker myself, I appreciate that the author gives a lot of credit to the Quaker influence in Philadelphia. However, he sometimes gets the name of the group wrong. He has an index entry for the Quaker-founded Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, but on page 110 he garbles up the name so badly that that discussion is left out of the index. I appreciate all of the talk about the Friends Peace Committee, and that is the name for that group used throughout the book. However, there is no entry for “Friends Peace Committee” in the index; I finally found a rather unusual entry for the same group kind of lost under the term “Peace” in the index.
He has chapters for both the Quaker-founded colleges and the Catholic-founded colleges, but those do not get mentioned in the index at “Quaker” or “Catholic.” There is one kind of cryptic index entry at the term “Roman Catholic,” but it does not refer to the chapter on the Catholic-founded colleges and universities.
A few names of individuals are messed up in the index. One of my favorite long-term activists in Philadelphia was the late Kiyoshi Kuromiya. I’m glad to see mention of him in this book (and spelled correctly), but in the index, his name is misspelled as “Kiromiya,” and alphabetized at KI- rather than KU-.
Also the entry for my late friends, the long-term Quaker peace activists George Willoughby and Lillian Willoughby is kind of odd. It looks improper to me to have a married couple’s names yoked together that way. Three of the entries mention George, and only two mention Lillian, so she deserves to have her own entry, correctly identifying where she is mentioned in the text.
JEFF KEITH'S COMMENTS
(four stars on Goodreads) I read this book when it first came out, and have scanned through it again to see if we would want it in our big church library. (The answer to that is a resounding YES.) I started off wanting to give the book five stars for all of the brilliant research that the author did, but then I felt I needed to deduct a little for the typographical errors in the index, and the problems that I saw in his treatment of African American issues.
I definitely loved reading all about the progressive and radical movements in and around Philadelphia during the 1960s and early 1970s. I know many of the people who are mentioned. However, I find it sad that the author is so blatant about concentrating mainly on movements of White (Caucasian) people. His overwhelming emphasis is on events on and around college campuses, and when he brings up African American struggles in Philadelphia, it sometimes feels like kind of a postscript. That is particularly blatant if you look at the book’s index. (See below.)
In any major history text like this, a main concern of mine is whether it has a good index so that a reader can find out what is discussed where. And this book’s index leaves a lot to be desired. A first blatant thing is that the term “African American” gets a trivial entry, and does not mention that the reader ought to turn to other specific entries, such as those that start with the term “Black.”
I appreciated the descriptions of the terms New Left and Old Left, but index entries for those things are sparse. It would help if there were subentries in the index such as “New Left—defined.” I liked all of the attention given to groups such as Students for a Democratic Society and the myriad activist groups on the local college campuses. I remember some of those groups.
I found it difficult that the author uses some esoteric “insider” Marxist terms without adequately defining them. In the first chapter, he just starts talking about “Shachtmanites” and doesn’t tell us very well what that term means. Later he continually uses the basic, important term “Trotskyist,” and assumes that we all know what that means. He doesn’t even give “Trotskyism” or “Trotskyite” entries in the index.
Being a left-wing, progressive Quaker myself, I appreciate that the author gives a lot of credit to the Quaker influence in Philadelphia. However, he sometimes gets the name of the group wrong. He has an index entry for the Quaker-founded Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, but on page 110 he garbles up the name so badly that that discussion is left out of the index. I appreciate all of the talk about the Friends Peace Committee, and that is the name for that group used throughout the book. However, there is no entry for “Friends Peace Committee” in the index; I finally found a rather unusual entry for the same group kind of lost under the term “Peace” in the index.
He has chapters for both the Quaker-founded colleges and the Catholic-founded colleges, but those do not get mentioned in the index at “Quaker” or “Catholic.” There is one kind of cryptic index entry at the term “Roman Catholic,” but it does not refer to the chapter on the Catholic-founded colleges and universities.
A few names of individuals are messed up in the index. One of my favorite long-term activists in Philadelphia was the late Kiyoshi Kuromiya. I’m glad to see mention of him in this book (and spelled correctly), but in the index, his name is misspelled as “Kiromiya,” and alphabetized at KI- rather than KU-.
Also the entry for my late friends, the long-term Quaker peace activists George Willoughby and Lillian Willoughby is kind of odd. It looks improper to me to have a married couple’s names yoked together that way. Three of the entries mention George, and only two mention Lillian, so she deserves to have her own entry, correctly identifying where she is mentioned in the text.
January 7, 2008
Excellent overview of an overlooked part of radical history. Some key players missing
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews