Madison in the Sixties

by Stuart D. Levitan

Madison made history in the sixties.

Landmark civil rights laws were passed. Pivotal campus protests were waged. A spring block party turned into a three-night riot. Factor in urban renewal troubles, a bitter battle over efforts to build Frank Lloyd Wright’s Monona Terrace, and the expanding influence of the University of Wisconsin, and the decade assumes legendary status. 

In this first-ever comprehensive narrative of these issues—plus accounts of everything from politics to public schools, construction to crime, and more—Madison historian Stuart D. Levitan chronicles the birth of modern Madison with style and well-researched substance. This heavily illustrated book also features annotated photographs that document the dramatic changes occurring downtown, on campus, and to the Greenbush neighborhood throughout the decade. Madison in the Sixties is an absorbing account of ten years that changed the city forever.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

432 pages, Paperback

Published November 19, 2018

Reviews

[Jim Gallen · Rating 5 out of 5]

As one reader pointed out, when you read “Madison In The Sixties” you learn about everything that happened in Madison during that decade. This heavy-weight book is organized by years, from 1960-1969. Each year is subdivided into by categories, such as University of Wisconsin, urban renewal, the ongoing proposals for a civic auditorium, civil rights, law and disorder, highways and transportation, planning and development and miscellanea, to give a sample of one annual entry. The text is supplemented by photos of the Madison landscape, personalities and events, maps of the city limits, extensive notes and an index.

A decade that included three presidential elections, a shifting tide of sentiment over the Vietnam War, civic and campus disturbances and normal occurrences of urban life provide ample material to include. A parade of celebrities and public figures made treks to Madison during the 60s. Entertainers Liberace, Joan Baez, John Denver, Bob Hope, Marian Anderson, Count Basie and Jerry Lee Lewis took stage, Jim Bakken (as a UW football hero, not yet a St. Louis Cardinal), academics Henry Kissinger (then a Harvard professor and special consultant to President Kennedy), UW English teaching assistant Lynne Cheney (who taught her classes during a Teaching Assistants’ Association strike), Robert Frost, political personalities Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Eugene McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and John F. Kennedy and activists Dick Gregory and Mohammed Ali all highlight these pages. As hard as it is to believe, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was heckled so badly at UW that he was unable to complete his speech, spawning a “Kennedy Rule” intended to prevent other “disgraceful” disruptions and Ali argued for black separatism.

For one familiar with Madison, this tome will either be a trip down memory lane or an introduction to events that occurred on the streets down which you walk or classrooms in which you study, actions performed by youths, who you know only as older people and the struggles that shaped the Madison of your time.

Why would this work be of interest to someone, such as me, who has had little contact with Madison? I spent the 60s in grade and high schools in the St. Louis, Missouri area. I had a general idea that Madison was a wild place and the accounts of campus protests and disturbances reinforce my impressions. It is said that the past is like a foreign country and this volume confirms that maxim. We are reminded of days when Sunday sales were banned, women were disqualified from bartenders’ licenses, the Madison Club (not unique in this matter) voted to admit Jews and the Moose defended its whites-only provision, the University of Wisconsin had about 500 blacks in a student body of over 30,000 and the city considered hiring black police officers. The account of a man forcing two others to shave their mustaches at the point of a shotgun is so shocking as to be almost humorous. It does shed light on the radical reversal of attitudes toward facial hair.

Perhaps most interesting is the shift in public opinion from support for to opposition against the Vietnam War and the military and the positions of public official on demonstrations and other issues coming before them.

“Madison In The Sixties” is a fine complement to “The Capitol Times” (see my review). I recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Madison or seeking insights into how a decade was lived in an American city.

I received a free copy of this book without an obligation to post a review.

[Bill Tyroler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most likely, you either have to like Madison -- a lot -- or at least have lived there in the 60s to want to read the book. There are nuggets, such as a pre-famous, wandering minstrel Dylan shuffling out of town with someone else's guitar case, but not enough I don't think for the general-interest reader. There are, to be sure, insights to be mined, but some require a fair amount of digging. Example: George Mosse, highly respected historian, knew much more about the nature of fascism than the next guy. Yet here he is, in 1969, telling a student on a Wilson fellowship that the student was a fascist for supporting Goldwater in 1964 (p. 377). Even more weirdly, that same year Mosse was merely "nonplussed" by disruptions in his classroom in support of a student strike (p. 361). Apparently then, to Mosse political disagreement was enough to tar the opponent as a fascist, while anticipatory Antifa-type disruptions merited only equable bemusement. Goes to show that the rot in the academy set in a long time ago.

Still, for those who know anything about today's Madison, the changes wrought by the 60s are astounding, and you can can see them unfolding as Levitan ploughs through the decade.

[Pauline Rutschow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really interesting book. Though I was in Madison during the sixties, there were several events I wasn’t aware of at the time. It was also interesting to see how many of the plans for the city and the University never came to fruition.