Gordon Lightfoot in a recent publicity shot. He'll be performing at the Michigan Theater on Sept. 21, but has a decades-long history of touring here.

For his part, the 72-year-old singer-songwriter is glad to be returning. “I’m looking forward to it,” he says via telephone from his home in Toronto. “I’ve always gotten good vibes from Ann Arbor.”

Lightfoot first brought his guitar to town almost exactly 45 years ago, to play a three-night stint at a funky Episcopalian coffee house located in a former print shop at 330 Maynard Street. Today the unprepossessing brick building is home to Madras Masala, purveyor of exotic Indian delicacies; but in the ’60s it was Canterbury House, purveyor of coffee, donuts, and a hip spirituality that meshed nicely with the countercultural ethos of the day.

Canterbury House is actually a generic name used by many Episcopal student ministries at colleges across the nation. Ann Arbor’s incarnation was established in the mid-1940s and by the ’60s had become an important feature of the city’s increasingly progressive landscape. It began offering folk and blues music in 1965 as an experiment in reaching youth through the arts. Though mostly local performers were featured, the new program proved phenomenally successful, and the next year it was moved to a bigger location to bring in nationally-known acts.

First to appear at the extensively remodeled Maynard Street venue was the California-born “one-man folk festival,” Michael Cooney – “brandishing guitar, kazoo, banjo, autoharp, microphone, guitar strap, and truck,” according to the ad – who played three sold-out nights in early September.

Next up was a singer-songwriter from Ontario named Gordon Lightfoot, whose first album – the appropriately (if a bit over-exuberantly) titled “Lightfoot!” – had recently been released by United Artists. Although the young Canadian himself wasn’t that well-known in the states, his songs were. Marty Robbins took Lightfoot’s “Ribbon of Darkness” to the top of the country charts in 1965, and Peter, Paul and Mary made a Top 40 hit out of “For Lovin’ Me” that same year.

“If I had not gotten my songs recorded by some other artists very early on,” says Lightfoot, “I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. It was my songwriting, actually, that got me started.”

Which according to Herb David, proprietor of the famous guitar studio that bears his name, made Lightfoot very similar to another famous troubadour of that era, Bob Dylan.

Like Dylan – Except He Could Play

Herb David was a central figure in Ann Arbor’s vibrant ’60s folk scene. He saw all the acts that came through town – including Dylan – and often sold them something from his shop. Sometimes he even joined them onstage. David remembers liking Lightfoot’s music and looking forward to his appearance at Canterbury.

“In Dylan’s case we used to say that he couldn’t play worth a damn, and he couldn’t sing worth a damn, but he sure wrote some nice songs,” explains David. “It was the same thing with Lightfoot – except he could play.”

Gary Rothberger, at the time a University of Michigan senior majoring in American Studies, also remembers Lightfoot’s Canterbury gig. “Not only do I remember it,” he says, “I remember the grass I smoked on the way there.”

Rothberger was one of the leaders of the campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, meaning that his real major was radicalism. By 1966 rock and roll was well on its way to replacing folk music as the soundtrack of the protest movement, but at that point folk was still holding its own. Rothberger liked it all: the Stones, the Beatles, Motown, Dylan, the Dead – and also Gordon Lightfoot.

“The thing about him,” explains Rothberger, “was that his lyrics were incredibly poetic, and his music was relatively complex, not just the strum-strum-strum of a lot of so-called folk singers. Plus he sang great love songs.”

Lightfoot played at Canterbury House for three nights, from Friday, September 23, through Sunday, September 25, 1966, doing three 30-minute sets each night – all for the princely sum of $500.

In fact, Canterbury operated on a razor-thin margin and could barely afford to pay the small fees that it did. With a seating capacity of 150 and tickets going for $1.25, simply breaking even often required a sell-out crowd. Which it had in most cases, including Lightfoot’s. But Canterbury’s goal was never to make profits, and the intimate setting suited both the earnest folk musicians of the mid-’60s as well as their thoughtful audiences.

Are You Gonna Be There (At the Teach-In)?

It was a wholly different affair when Lightfoot next played Ann Arbor four years later as the headline act at the kickoff rally for the University of Michigan’s week-long environmental teach-in.

After slowly gaining momentum throughout the ’60s, the environmental movement all at once exploded into the leviathan-like Earth Day 1970, a nationwide celebration-cum-protest in which millions of people participated. The Ann Arbor teach-in was one of the first and biggest of thousands of ecologically-themed events taking place that spring.

James Swan, a junior faculty member of the UM School of Natural Resources, was part of the teach-in’s entertainment committee. “We wanted Pete Seeger, badly,” he recalls, “but he had other commitments that he couldn’t get out of.”

As a replacement Swan suggested Lightfoot, whom he had helped bring to Canterbury House back in 1966. Lightfoot didn’t have the same name-recognition as Seeger or some of the other possibilities that were kicked around, such as Joan Baez; but his songs expressed a love of the land, of wide-open spaces and natural beauty, that resonated with the themes of the teach-in. The committee was especially pleased to learn that the Canadian was willing to perform for free, asking only to be reimbursed for expenses.

Lightfoot’s chaperone on the day of the concert was Bill Manning, a UM senior and one of the teach-in’s central organizers. When they arrived at Crisler Arena it was to find the nearly 14,000 seat auditorium filled to capacity – and beyond. “The place was jam-packed,” remembers Manning. “Not everybody could get in. We had busloads of kids show up from different parts of the state.”

Three-Ring Circus

In addition to Lightfoot, the evening’s lineup included UM president Robben Fleming, Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson, Michigan governor William Milliken, radio personality Arthur Godfrey, ecologist Barry Commoner, and the Chicago cast of “Hair.” “It was like a three-ring circus,” recalls Manning fondly.

As with much of the teach-in, the kickoff rally was a highly-charged, heavily-politicized event. The crowd was noisy and animated, and many speakers were heckled. But by most accounts Lightfoot’s performance received a good response, especially considering the wide diversity of the audience and that many were probably hearing him for the first time.

James Swan remembers the mostly-Michigander crowd reacting strongly to “Black Day in July,” one of the Canadian’s few overtly political compositions, about the Detroit race riots of 1967. “It upset some ecology folks because it was more racial protest than ecological,” he says.

“I loved ‘Black Day in July,’” recalls Gary Rothberger. “I liked that it didn’t blame the rioters, but condemned the politicians.” Not everyone was so pleased – released as a single in 1968, the song was banned from many American radio stations and reportedly got Lightfoot banished from Detroit for a while.

After wrapping their 11-song set with the perennial favorites “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” and “Early Mornin’ Rain,” Lightfoot and his backup band of Red Shea and Rick Haynes packed up their gear and prepared to depart. But not before handing the surprised teach-in organizers a bill for expenses totaling $2,000.

“We were a bit miffed,” remembers Manning. “I mean, $2,000, at that time – that was real money.” (Adjusted for inflation it comes to about $12,000 today.) Ultimately it wasn’t a significant problem, as the teach-in had in fact raised more money than its organizers were able to spend – all told nearly $70,000, or almost $400,000 today.

“It all worked out in the end,” says Manning. “But at the time it was a little off-putting to think that the expenses would be that high.” Still, Manning is the first to admit that their own lack of experience in the business side of the music world was probably a big part of the misunderstanding.

From Struggling Folkie to Soft-Rock Superstar

The next time Gordon Lightfoot came to town it was not as the struggling folkie he had been in ’66 but as a freshly-minted soft-rock ’70s superstar. His single “If You Could Read My Mind” broke out in late 1970, shooting straight to the top of the Canadian charts and becoming his first U.S. hit, reaching number five in early 1971. Flush with his newfound success, but going through a bitter divorce, Lightfoot returned to Ann Arbor in 1972 to play before a sell-out crowd at the 3,500-seat Hill Auditorium.

Gordon Lightfoot performing at a 1972 Hill Auditorium concert. (Photo courtesy Sara Krulwich.)

Opinion was divided over the quality of the show. In his review for the Ann Arbor News, Doug Fulton wrote, “I can’t remember when I’ve had a better time at a concert,” and noted that Lightfoot received a standing ovation after each of his two sets. But the review in the Michigan Daily, the university’s student paper, was less than complimentary, mocking Lightfoot’s “Dylanesque beard” and “see-through lace shirt,” and interpreting his typical studied performance as lifeless.

Interestingly, the Daily reviewer also noted with some mystification that at the end of the show Lightfoot apologized to the audience for charging $2,000 for his appearance at the Earth Day rally in 1970. (“Good for him,” says Bill Manning upon first hearing of the apology 39 years later.)

Over the next decade Lightfoot would score his greatest successes – the million-selling “Sundown,” which went to number one in 1974, and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which peaked at number two in 1976 – just as the countrified folk-rock sound he favored began to go out of style.

In the ’80s and ’90s he continued to tour and put out albums, stopping off in Ann Arbor every so often to sing for appreciative if aging audiences. When he played at the Power Center in 1981, the Michigan Daily compared him to shredded wheat – a far cry from a review in the St. Petersburg Times a decade earlier, in which adults were urged not to be frightened away from Lightfoot just because the kids liked him.

Goodbye Rat Race – Hello Canadian Idol

When he concluded his recording obligations in 1998, says Lightfoot, “I gave myself the day off.” Since then he’s released only one album of new material, and has no plans to do another. He says he plays only as many live shows as pleases him, exercises regularly, eats right, and is probably healthier than he’s ever been.

Ironically, though, since bowing out of the rat race he seems to be regaining a measure of his old popularity, especially with the younger set. In 2003 there was a tribute album featuring artists like Cowboy Junkies and the Tragically Hip. In 2004 he was treated (subjected?) to the honor of listening to the bubble-headed twenty-somethings of Canadian Idol do an entire show of his songs.

But Lightfoot hasn’t consciously attempted to curry favor with a younger crowd. He’s never really changed his musical style – unlike fellow Canadian and inveterate genre-hopper Neil Young – and remains much the same wand’ring minstrel he was when he first came to Ann Arbor more than four decades ago. He’s not much interested in the technology that so obsesses today’s youth – “I don’t even have a cell phone” – preferring instead to stick with his trusty 12-string acoustic guitar. He doesn’t use the Internet, and the rumors of his death that briefly swept through cyberspace last year bothered him not at all. Nor does the thought of his songs being shared illegally online.

“I’m actually pleased,” he says with a chuckle. “I’m glad people are still that interested.”

Gordon Lightfoot will be performing at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 21 at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. Go to the theater’s website for ticket information.

About the author: Alan Glenn is currently at work a documentary film about Ann Arbor in the sixties. Visit the film’s Web site for more information. While there you can contribute your memories of that time – and read those that others have contributed – in a public forum set up expressly for that purpose.

Owen Gleiberman, film critic for Entertainment Weekly, grew up in Ann Arbor. (Photo courtesy of Owen Gleiberman)

Today, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly enjoys a position as one of the country’s most influential movie critics, his opinions read and respected (and sometimes reviled) by millions. Forty years ago he was a precocious middle-schooler who carried a transcript of the Chicago Seven trial in his pocket as he roamed downtown Ann Arbor, exploring the head shops and hanging with the hippies.

Soon after enrolling at the University of Michigan in 1976, Gleiberman was bit by the movie bug and began reviewing films for the Michigan Daily. He struck up a long-distance friendship with Pauline Kael of the New Yorker, who encouraged him in his writing and helped him to land his first job after graduation as a critic for the Boston Phoenix.

Though he now lives in Greenwich Village, Gleiberman makes regular return trips to Ann Arbor to visit family and friends. Over tea at Café Felix on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, he related what it was like to grow up in the countercultural milieu of Ann Arbor in the late ’60s and early ’70s, how that experience influenced his career as a film critic, and his thoughts and hopes on the future of journalism.

Were you born in Ann Arbor?

No, I wasn’t born in Ann Arbor, but I moved here when I was about five or six.

You were a young kid living here when Ann Arbor was at its radical peak. Were you aware of what was going on? Did the counterculture have an attraction for you, even as young as you were?

I was ten years old in 1969. I don’t know if I can speak for other kids, but growing up in Ann Arbor I very much felt the romance of the counterculture. I remember the first Earth Day in 1970, when I was 11. You felt all this energy burbling around.

Where it really kicked in for me was in seventh grade when I started to get a little older and was able to go downtown by myself. Then I got immersed in it. I still have these incredible memories of going to State Street and seeing underground newspapers, and going into the head shops like Middle Earth, which was then really a head shop. Seeing the black-light posters, seeing the underground comics, and even the beads that you would string. All of this was part of the same thing. It was part of this counterculture that was very, very real to me.

And I was into the politics then. I always say that I went through my radical Marxist-Leninist phase when I was 11, and then was smart enough to get out of it and become a centrist when I was twelve-and-a-half. But I really felt the romance of the counterculture. To me then as a kid it seemed like American culture was being changed in a good way by all of this hippie energy, which I think in a way that it was. It was very, very important to me. It really almost defined Ann Arbor for me, or defined what I loved most about Ann Arbor.

I used to have a transcript of the Chicago Seven trial that I would carry around with me and read all the time when I was in seventh grade. So I knew that by the time I was 12 years old that Ann Arbor was not just this kind of cool, fun, mellow place with a lot of candle shops, but that all of this stuff meant something, culturally – that Ann Arbor was at the forefront of things that were going on nationally. That was true, and I perceived it, and I thought it was really cool about Ann Arbor. It made me very proud of the kind of city it was. It just made me love the place.

My favorite thing to do was to go downtown. There was such a continuity among all these countercultural activities, that you felt like you were sort of participating in the counterculture just by going to play pinball.

Owen Gleiberman's graduation photo from Pioneer High School. (Courtesy of Susan Cybulski.)

When I was in junior high and high school, I really got into going to the city council meetings, after they’d elected the two members of the Human Rights Party. It was such a great weekly human drama in seeing these two Human Rights Party people, Nancy Wechsler and Jerry DeGrieck, be these kind of token hippies on this very straight city council. It was like the Chicago Seven trial every week, in miniature, in the way these people would clash with each other.

That’s as close as I ever got to being politically active. Because I am not an activist. As I grew older I started to develop a sort of disdain for protesters with signs, because I actually am a centrist at heart, and I think that protesters often call attention to nothing so much as themselves. I really am for political action getting done, and finding the middle way, and doing things. And yet, the protests did serve a function back then, and I really identified with it.

Also there was so much about the counterculture that wasn’t about politics. It was about music, it was about fashion, it was about drugs, it was about new ways of seeing. That’s the side of the counterculture that I really identified with.

There was a sense of optimism in those days, even though looking back it seems like it was a dark time for America.

Those were dark times for America. Yet all of that was giving such life to popular culture. That’s one of the reasons that the movies of the ’70s were so vital, and are now so mythologized. It was because popular culture was so vital back then. The incredible music, the incredible movies. How could you look at that stuff and not feel a certain optimism about America?

Yes, we had a corrupt government, we had a corrupt president. But the outrage at that was reflected in our popular culture, and we had a system that worked. We had a system that spat out the bad guys. And we had a press that sort of came to the rescue. So ultimately, although there was a lot of negativity, I don’t think the ’60s and ’70s were a negative time for America.

I think the beginning of the real negative time was the election of Ronald Reagan. I think that was the paradigm shift, because that’s when we went through the looking glass. That’s when we seemed to be moving into this greater optimism, but it was a phony optimism. I think that’s when we moved from the politics of reality to the politics of unreality. And I think that’s what led to where we are today.

Do you think that growing up in Ann Arbor had a significant effect on your later life?

I’ll tell you how I think that I’m totally a product of Ann Arbor. What I loved about the ’60s, and what I still do, is that there was something very hard-headed and no-bullshit about the Ann Arbor view. There’s always been a certain skepticism that the people in Ann Arbor have.

During the counterculture era they were skeptical of the lies being told by government. But I also grew up with a certain skepticism about the Left. I saw the kind of groupthink mentality that was there. It seemed to me that the Ann Arbor point of view that I learned was, don’t trust packaged truths, wherever they come from. Look for your own truth, and stick to that.

That, to me, was the real message of the counterculture. To be true to yourself, and to look at who you were as an individual, and express that. That’s what the ’60s meant to me. And that’s the side of Ann Arbor that I still try to carry into my work today.

Groupthink is what’s killing this country, in every form. There’s a lot of groupthink in my profession, film criticism. Even the mentality now that says you’re supposed to stand up for independent films, you’re supposed to stand up for small films.

Wait a minute – who said you’re supposed to stand up for any kind of film? You’re supposed to stand up for good movies. You’re supposed to stand up for your own individual, idiosyncratic judgments. That’s what I believe film criticism should be about.

Do you come back to Ann Arbor a lot? Is it a second home, or maybe a getaway of sorts?

In some ways I think of it like that. I love coming back here. There is a certain spirit of the place, that I think it still has, that I reconnect to. Everybody likes to reconnect with their roots, but in my case the roots are something I still believe in. They still nurture me.

I don’t know if I would be a film critic if I hadn’t grown up in a place like Ann Arbor. It always inspires me to come back here.

Tell me about your road to becoming a film critic. There was a thriving community of film buffs in town during the ’60s and ’70s. Were you a part of that?

Absolutely. The film culture in Ann Arbor is really what gave me my own start as a movie buff. I was nurtured in that environment. It’s what showed me what love of cinema was all about.

This was an era in which being a movie buff was just part of the atmosphere of the time. There was a phrase around in the ’70s, called the film generation. It was the idea that people who came of age around that time were maybe the first generation that saw film as their literature. That they took film seriously, the way that an earlier generation had taken novels. A lot of people on campuses felt that way. I mean, students were just really into going to the movies, and taking them seriously.

The University of Michigan was a big enough place to support a lot of film societies. And on certain nights you would go and these screenings would be packed. Especially if it was a certain kind of movie. A Woody Allen double feature on Saturday night would have lines around the Modern Languages Building. Screwball comedies, Hitchcock films, they got that kind of response. Other movies were more obscure, but in general there were a lot of people who went to these movies.

It doesn’t seem that surprising for Woody Allen to draw a big crowd at the campus cinema. What does surprise me is that crowds would turn out for a Bogart picture, or even a silent comedy by Chaplin or Keaton.

I think this was the first era where going to see old movies had become kind of cool. I think part of that was that the ’60s were about overthrowing a lot of old stuff, and about only seeing new things as cool.

But by the time the ’70s really settled down, a lot of that was over, and for the first time I think a lot of students started to go back to those earlier models of movie stars, and of romantic comedies, things like that, and realized these were incredible movies, too. And there was something actually quite cool about them.

At some point you started writing about movies for the Michigan Daily, and even took a turn as Arts Editor.

I think one of the things that really got me involved in the Daily is that in my second semester, freshman year, I had really connected with a couple of Robert Altman films that I got very excited about. That semester a student group put together a whole Robert Altman festival, where they showed all his films, and they had all these people from his films come and give talks, like Elliot Gould, and Joan Tewkesbury, writer of “Nashville.”

I decided I wanted to be involved in that, and to cover it for the Daily. It was covering that event over my whole second semester that sort of fused being a movie buff and writing, for me.

The Daily was a first-class newspaper in the 1960s, competing with the professional papers in the area, and often having its stories picked up by the national news media. How was it in your day?

I think it was pretty good. One thing I know for sure is that the attitude we had at the Daily was that, in addition to just wanting to put out a good paper and serve that community, we felt that we were competing with the Ann Arbor News.

Now, the Ann Arbor News wasn’t necessarily the greatest paper, but they were a respectable paper, and they were a real paper, and they were professionally staffed. We just took it for granted that they were our competition, and I think that was a healthy attitude to have. How often did we scoop them, or do better coverage, I don’t know. But I think that was the right attitude to have.

What are your thoughts about the folding of the Ann Arbor News?

Well, from what I’ve read, they did it in part as an experiment. Ann Arbor was considered one of the most wired communities in the United States. So this was an experiment to see if a town that was sophisticated, that had a lot of people that used the Web, like Ann Arbor, could make the transition to getting their news online, as opposed to reading a newspaper. If in fact the experiment – a rather reckless experiment, I’d say – was successful, then it would sort of show how this could happen in other communities.

I believe what’s happened so far – and this is very anecdotal because I don’t live here, but I do know people in Ann Arbor so I try to keep up with this a little bit – my feeling is that if I had to sum it up in one sentence, I would say that the community of Ann Arbor misses the Ann Arbor News. That they still miss it, and it’s not just nostalgia.

What that paper provided, a sense of the information in one place, a sense that everybody would be reading that same information that you read – that gave you something. It gave you a certain feeling of unity about the information in the community, which is what a newspaper provides, and that that has not really been replaced.

If that’s true, then I would say the experiment was not really a success, and may actually aid the preservation of newspapers. Because yes, they’re up against it economically, yes, their business plan has been eroded, yes, it’s going to continue to happen. But if people genuinely like newspapers and continue to find a use for them, then that’s a reason to keep them around.

Would you say then that you’re cautiously optimistic about the future of journalism?

I think that moving into the digital era doesn’t need to affect writing that much. I mean, I’m not sure there needs to be a mystical difference between reading a piece through a digital medium or reading it on dead trees. I don’t know if the definition of a good piece of writing has really changed. I don’t know if people’s hunger for good writing has really gone away.

Now, of course, the big question in journalism is, people seem willing to pay for journalism and writing if it’s on dead trees, and they seem hostile to paying for it digitally. That’s the big question looming for journalists. Will we ever get to a point where people actually want to pay to read things digitally?

My feeling is, maybe yes. Certainly that’s what I think should be. But going forward that’s a great unknown.

About the writer: Alan Glenn is currently at work a documentary film about Ann Arbor in the ’60s. Visit the film’s website for more information.

Black Action Movement protesters on the University of Michigan campus in 1970. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

Except that if you could somehow step back in time exactly four decades you would be greeted by a very different sight: students shouting, marching, and picketing; classes disrupted, canceled, or being held in nearby churches; angry voices calling for the deployment of the National Guard; a campus and community pushed almost to the breaking point. If the events of the Black Action Movement strike of 40 years ago had unfolded only a little differently, today people might speak of “Michigan” rather than “Kent State” as marking the tragic and deadly end of the sixties.

Instead, the BAM strike became one of the few protests of that era in which the students could make a valid claim of victory.

As it turned out, each side would have reason to believe that it had bested the other. The students because the university had been forced to negotiate and had ultimately acceded to the most important of their demands; the university administration because they claimed to be merely going forward with the plan they had proposed at the outset, rather than succumbing to student pressure.

That the protest came to a peaceful conclusion was due most probably to the restraint exhibited by university president Robben Fleming, and perhaps moreover Gov. William Milliken, who unlike other state leaders of that time (primarily Ronald Reagan in California) was not inclined to ruthlessly crush student rebellions; as well as the BAM leadership, who despite their often inflammatory rhetoric were determined to keep the strike non-violent.

The programs instituted as a result of the BAM strike of 1970 represented the first major breakthrough in a decades-long struggle to end discrimination at the University of Michigan. Up until the 1960s there were few black students or faculty at the university. In 1962 a federal investigation concluded that there was considerable racial bias in hiring at UM and urged that steps be taken to increase integration at every level. A committee set up by President Harlan Hatcher recommended that a special program be established to provide additional recruiting of minority students as well as financial aid and support services. The Opportunity Awards Program was started in 1964 and by 1969 black enrollment had increased from 2% to a little over 3%.

To many, however, this modest increase hardly seemed to make a difference. Elise Bryant was a freshman at the university in the fall of 1969. Coming from a mostly black neighborhood in Detroit, she was struck by the scarcity of African-Americans on campus. “You wouldn’t see any black people on the street,” she recalls, “and it became this custom that if you saw a black person on the street you would say, ‘What’s happening?’ And I remember when I would leave Ann Arbor and go to New York for a visit, or go back to Detroit, I’d start talking to every black person on the street, and it wasn’t the same. Sometimes there were weird reactions. People were like, ‘What are you talking to me for?’”

Once accepted at the university, black students continued to face prejudice and discrimination that was deeply entrenched in campus life. “It was that Northern brand of racism that was more subtle, that wasn’t blatant” explains Bryant. “I mean, all my friends were getting jobs as waitresses, and I applied to every restaurant on campus as a waitress and couldn’t get hired.”

Cynthia Stephens, a bright young African-American student who came to Ann Arbor in the fall of 1968 at age 16, remembers being told by her adviser to take a reduced course load. “I’m sitting there staring at her in amazement. I wasn’t Suma Cum Laude from Cass, but I had a 1300 SAT score, which qualified me in those days to make my own schedule without going to a counselor. And I was just like, ‘Are you looking at my record, or looking at me?’”

In the spring of 1968, following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a group of black students locked themselves into the UM administration building to protest the lack of support for minorities at the university. In response, the administration agreed to establish a Martin Luther King scholarship fund and appoint a few additional black administrators. Over the next year President Fleming (who replaced the retiring Harlan Hatcher) held discussions with black students that resulted in the establishment of a Black Studies curriculum and the opening of the Center for Afro-American Studies in the fall of 1969.

A Black Action Movement protest outside the Frieze Building in 1970. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

But for many, the integration of the university was simply not moving fast enough. In late 1969 representatives of most of the black student groups on campus came together and decided that a more proactive approach would be required in order to speed the process. The following January a series of talks were held between black students and university administrators regarding the matter of black enrollment, and a number of the students were invited to dine with President Fleming and further discuss the issues.

When the students arrived at the president’s house on the evening of Feb. 5, however, it wasn’t to have dinner but rather to hold a demonstration on the front lawn in which they presented Fleming with a list of demands. Chief among these was an increase in black enrollment to 10% – the percentage of the state population that was African-American – by the fall of 1973. Other demands included the hiring of additional recruiters for black students, the hiring of additional black faculty, the institution of new support services for black students, the establishment of a Black Student Center, the expansion of the MLK scholarship fund, tuition wavers for disadvantaged students, and a significant increase in the almost non-existent Hispanic student population.

“We do not expect the university to procrastinate and sub-committee these demands,” the statement concluded. “They are for immediate and positive action.” It was signed by “the United Black Population at the University of Michigan,” a coalition of a half dozen or so black groups from the various colleges and departments of the university. Soon they would adopt the much catchier moniker of the Black Action Movement, and bring the university as close to calamity as it would ever be during the entire period of student protest.

University of Michigan President Robben Fleming at a news conference during the 1970 Black Action Movement strike. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

The atmosphere was tense at the regents’ meeting on Feb. 19, when representatives of BAM appeared to present their demands in person. Although tempers occasionally flared, most of the regents expressed sympathy with BAM’s position. They refused to respond directly to the demands, however, and asked President Fleming to prepare an alternative proposal for their next public meeting in March. BAM stormed out of the room and a group of about 25 black students went to the Undergraduate Library and took hundreds of books off the shelves, forcing the building to close while the books were replaced.

The next morning BAM members gathered at the university’s administration building to again demand immediate action. When President Fleming and the regents once more refused, a larger contingent of black students went back to the library and disarranged thousands more books. Fleming responded by stationing Ann Arbor police officers at major university libraries.

In the coming weeks there were further disruptions, such as the interruption of classes to discuss the BAM demands, and the blockading of the Michigan Union snack bar. These actions were upsetting to many, but even so support for the BAM position was growing across campus.

Early in March President Fleming made a public announcement of his alternative proposal. It established 10% black enrollment as a “goal” rather than a commitment, and promised that the university would work toward achieving a number of the other BAM dictates, but only if additional funding could be found. Fleming contended in his 1996 memoir, “Tempests into Rainbows,” that it was primarily lack of funding that prevented the university from granting the BAM demands.

The regents held an open meeting on March 18 to discuss Fleming’s plan. Almost 500 people attended. An exhausting and at times heated debate – in which BAM referred to the administration’s proposal as a “nebulous, weasel-worded proposition” – ended without agreement. The BAM leaders called for a demonstration in nearby Regents Plaza the next day.

Protesters in 1970 marching across the University of Michigan Regents Plaza. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

On March 19, 1970, while inside the administration building the regents voted their approval of Fleming’s plan, outside was an angry rally in which the BAM leadership announced that the university’s black students were on strike and intended to close down the campus until their demands were met. Police were summoned and the gathering became a melee, with scuffles breaking out between law officers and demonstrators. Four students were arrested. Charges of racism were made against the Ann Arbor police because although a good proportion of the demonstrators were white, all of the arrestees were black.

The presence of significant numbers of white students at the March 19 demonstration underscores an important aspect of the BAM strike: the support it was given by the traditionally non-black activist groups on campus, such as Students for a Democratic Society. The participation of white students was crucial to the effectiveness of the strike, if for no other reason than there simply were not enough African-Americans on campus to be able to make a significant impact on the normal operations of the university.

On March 20 a group of about 200 picketers marched outside Hill Auditorium during the university’s Honors Convocation, at which President Robben Fleming was speaking. A party of white protesters entered the concert hall and marched up and down the aisles, fists raised in a Black Power salute, chanting “Open it up or shut it down.” BAM leaders were angry that the disruption of the ceremony had been undertaken without their approval. Through the Michigan Daily, the university’s student newspaper, BAM told its supporters: “If we don’t say do something, don’t you do it.”

Protesters at Hill Auditorium during a University of Michigan Honors Convocation. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

Not everyone in BAM was in favor of accepting help from white activists. But it was eventually agreed that the non-black groups would be welcome as long as they remained in a subordinate role. Cynthia Stephens, who had become a leading figure in BAM – “I was the vice president, because in those days that was what women were” – recalls that many were worried that the white radicals, who were more experienced in managing protests, might try to take over. “In order for the strike to have been successful, whether we perceived it or not, we needed their support,” says Stephens. “But it needed to be support.”

Madison Foster, who was a junior faculty member and one of the leaders of the BAM negotiating team, thinks that to focus on the ethnicity of the strikers is to cloud the most important aspect of the protest. “It wasn’t just a black strike, or a white strike,” he says. “It was a student strike.”

By the following Monday, March 23, the moratorium was having a clear impact – to the surprise of almost everyone, including BAM itself. Picketers marched outside the main classroom buildings and class attendance was noticeably down. A number of professors and teaching fellows joined the strike and canceled their classes, while others held their classes off campus to show support.

The university presented a front of indifference. The Michigan Daily quoted one regent as saying, “The students can strike until hell freezes over as far as I am concerned.” President Fleming added, “As long as classes are being held, we don’t have to care whether people are going or not.”

Picketers block access to a university parking structure during the 1970 Black Action Movement strike. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

This outlook would change as the week wore on and the strike gathered momentum. Class attendance continued to drop. The School of Social Work, the Residential College, and the Institute for Social Research closed down. BAM and its supporters instigated additional disruptions, interrupting classes to talk about the issue of the strike, marching through hallways banging on trash cans, picketing in front of parking garages, and blocking traffic (someone “lost” a contact lens in the middle of State Street by the Michigan Union and a group of strikers spent an hour on their knees looking for it).

By Wednesday, attendance at the College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA) was down an estimated 60%. More and more faculty were coming out in favor of the BAM position, and President Fleming offered to meet with black leaders at the bargaining table. BAM was feeling its power, however, and was not so inclined to make a quick settlement. By Thursday, LSA attendance was down an estimated 75% and the college was considering shutting its doors.

Then on Friday came what may have been the most crucial development, when the American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees announced its support of the strike. University employees who were AFSCME members refused to cross the student picket lines and campus food service came to a grinding halt. “The men and women of AFSCME were incredible,” remembers Cynthia Stephens, now a judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals. “It’s what made me initially decide I really, really, really wanted to be a labor lawyer.”

Elise Bryant concurs. “In my mind it was the union that made us strong. Because I think the administration would’ve let us spin our wheels until the end of the semester, then wait for the next crop of students to come in. Which is what they figured out after that – give them what they want and then they’ll be gone.”

Toward the end of the week the strike increased in intensity, with the disruptions taking on a more physical nature. Windows were being broken and other university property damaged. Some faculty and students were feeling threatened. But neither BAM nor President Fleming wanted violence, and both made great efforts to keep the situation under control.

Black Action Movement protesters on the University of Michigan campus in 1970. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

“We used conflict,” explains Madison Foster, “but we kept some of the hotheads from doing violent things, both black and white. We had to tighten up some people so they understood that there were consequences, if they were talking about blowing up something or doing something destructive, because we would end up being the ones that would be hurt.”

President Fleming was also under increasing pressure to bring the strike to an end, by force if necessary. “I credit Fleming for not escalating the conflict by calling in troopers, or by escalating his rhetoric,” Foster says. “In that sense he handled the situation well.”

But what is not generally known is that at an early point in the negotiations, Fleming – whose reputation as a leader at both the University of Wisconsin and UM rests to a large extent on his disinclination to use force to end student disruptions – threatened to bring in the military. “To me that was a very critical point,” says Foster. “Early on, after maybe the third session, he said flatly that if we didn’t abandon the buildings and do the things he wanted, he was going to call the National Guard. I was telling a friend that I probably made one of the boldest comments of my life, in hindsight. I said, ‘Well, I guess we’ll die,’ and we walked out. I wasn’t going to negotiate under threat.”

Foster’s recollections take on added significance when one considers that a little over a month following the resolution of the BAM strike, 13 student protesters were shot and four killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University in Ohio, less than a day’s drive from Ann Arbor. Tensions were running high on the Michigan campus, and all across the country that spring. If the military had been called out to end the BAM strike, the results could have been tragic. Thankfully, they were not.

“We didn’t realize that people would really ever shoot at students,” says Cynthia Stephens. “It wasn’t real to us. If we had tried to start the BAM strike after Kent State, I don’t know if it would’ve happened. I also sort of wondered whether – and I don’t know this at all, because I didn’t know folk at Kent State – I wondered whether the measured response by the University of Michigan gave encouragement to the students at Kent State to believe that what happened there wouldn’t happen.”

Negotiations continued over the weekend but on Monday, March 30, the strike began to lose momentum. Class attendance was on the rise and food service had resumed. Some may have believed the strike to be over after the university announced on Sunday that agreement had been reached on nearly all points, despite an informal arrangement between BAM and the president that neither side would make public statements until the negotiations were completed. (Fleming claimed that the press release was a mistake, but it could also have been a canny political maneuver.)

Money had been found in the various colleges and departments of the university to support the desired increase in black enrollment, as well as many of BAM’s other demands. The only major point of disagreement remaining was whether 10% enrollment should be a “commitment” or a “goal.” The BAM leadership decided that it was time to settle.

“I think we reached a point where we believed we had gotten what we could get,” explains Cynthia Stephens. “We had achieved maximum victory from that event, and this wasn’t a winner-take-all contest.” Also, the students were becoming restless, she says. “It was getting to the end of the semester. They needed to graduate and finish classes.”

“And ultimately, how long we could keep external forces away” – i.e., the National Guard – “was also an issue.”

On April 1, 1970, it was announced that a settlement had been reached and the strike was over. The university pledged several million dollars toward the “goal” of reaching 10% black enrollment by the 1973-74 term. Programs would be established to recruit black students and faculty, aid and support services would be put in place for minority students, and the Center for Afro-American Studies would receive increased funding. However, there would be no Black Student Center, no tuition wavers, nor any additional funding for the MLK scholarship. Also refused was amnesty for students who would otherwise be disciplined for their actions during the strike.

BAM leaders staged a victory celebration that same evening. In an oral history interview given in 1978, Fred Miller of Students for a Democratic Society recalled the scene in the Michigan Union ballroom on April 1.

The night that they announced the settlement was one of the most incredible political events I’ve ever been at. They had a jazz band. The place was packed and the music sort of builds up to this peak, and in comes the negotiating team. Each member of the negotiating team gave a short speech. They had it really well orchestrated, and they were rousing speeches. The event created a real feeling that the struggle had been essentially won, and it left everyone feeling satisfied.

At the same time, the university administration was presenting the settlement as being in their favor, in that the final agreement seemed little different than the plan they had originally wanted to implement. “To assist a new generation of able, energetic black men and women to move into positions of responsibility and leadership will be an aspiration worthy of our greatest efforts,” said the regents in their official statement. Perhaps both sides’ claims of victory are equally valid.

The struggle to improve conditions for minorities at the university was far from over, however. The goal of 10% enrollment was never achieved. The UM black student population peaked at just under 8% in 1976, then began to decline. (Today it stands at 2,204 out of 41,674, or a little over 5%.) In addition, racial problems on campus caused the reawakening of BAM in the middle ’70s – BAM II – and late ’80s – BAM III.

“The lesson of the Black Action Movement is that we must keep our lamps trimmed and burning,” says Elise Bryant, who is now a professor at the National Labor College. “That the work doesn’t stop. There’s a song, ‘You’ve got to work for it, fight for it, day and night for it, pass it on, pass it on.’ And I think that’s the mistake my generation made, and I think I made, in terms of not reaching back and offering opportunities for the next generation, not giving them the history and the culture – because they’re not going to learn it any place else.”

“You have to leave the place better than you found it,” she says. “That’s what I was taught.”

Alan Glenn is working on a documentary film about Ann Arbor in the ’60s. Visit the film’s website for more information.

UM President Robben Fleming at a press conference during the Black Action Movement strike in March 1970. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

On March 12, 1968, Robben Wright Fleming was inaugurated as the ninth president of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It was a time of great turmoil on college campuses across the country, especially at Michigan, which was in the vanguard of the radical student movement. Fleming had been hired to replace the retiring Harlan Hatcher largely because of the reputation he had built for controlling student unrest while chancellor at the University of Wisconsin.

Fleming’s background was as a labor negotiator, and he preferred to engage students in reasoned discussion and debate rather than send in the riot squad. As he related in his autobiography, “Tempests into Rainbows,” after learning of his interest in taking the top post at Michigan, the regents of the university invited him to the Pontchartrain Hotel in Detroit, where for two hours they talked mainly about how he would deal with student disruptions.

Fleming explained to the regents that he “thought force must be avoided insofar as humanly possible, that indignities and insults could be endured if they averted violence, and that … these problems would last for some unspecified time, but that they would eventually end.” The next day he was offered the presidency.

Fleming assumed the helm in Ann Arbor in 1968 – the most turbulent year yet in an increasingly tempestuous and troubled decade. Over the next three years he would face an escalating series of crises that would severely test his negotiatory approach to student unrest. There were protests against classified war research and the ROTC. There was agitation for the creation of a student-run bookstore. There were three bombs exploded on or near campus. There were three nights of rioting on South University Avenue, a serial killer stalking campus co-eds, and perhaps the most challenging event of his term, the BAM strike of March 1970.

The Black Action Movement was a loose coalition of African-American students and faculty united in the common purpose of expanding the minority presence on campus. BAM called for a campus-wide strike until the university agreed to meet their demands – chief among which was a commitment to increase black enrollment from 3% to 10% over the next four years.

Demonstrators disrupt a ceremony at Hill Auditorium during the Black Action Movement strike of March 1970. President Robben Fleming stands at the podium. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

The BAM strike was led by black students and faculty, and remained so throughout its nearly two-week duration; but white radical groups quickly became involved in a supporting role, and before long the normal operations of the university were being significantly impaired. Negotiations were conducted per the president’s usual style, but as days passed and no agreement was reached, tensions on both sides began to mount. Fleming was under increasing pressure to end the strike by force.

Just as it seemed that the situation might boil over into violence, however, there was a breakthrough at the negotiating table. An agreement was struck, the strike was called off, and bloodshed was averted. Fleming’s handling of the BAM dispute is often counted as one of his finest moments.

In that regard it is interesting to note that praise for Fleming’s presidency at Michigan tends to consist not of positives but of negatives – what he did not do. He did not lose his temper when dealing with student radicals. He did not in general respond to disruptions with force, as others might have done, and as some encouraged him to do. He did not call out the National Guard. He did not escalate conflicts until someone was killed.

Of course Fleming did on occasion use force to resolve standoffs with students. But he seemed to have an earnest desire to avoid conflict whenever possible, and when resorting to force he planned the action so as to minimize violence – for example, working to ensure that demonstrators occupying a building had an opportunity to escape out the back way as the police moved in.

Fleming’s seemingly conciliatory approach – as well as his public statements against the war in Vietnam – tended to give the impression that he sympathized with the student protesters and their causes.

But the president himself was the first to say that he acted as he did not out of sympathy but because of his reasoned judgment that a more extreme response would ultimately be counter-productive. As chancellor at Madison, Fleming drew the national spotlight after using his own personal funds to post bail for 11 student demonstrators who had been arrested following their occupation of a university office. He later explained that he did this not out of compassion but rather to prevent the students from becoming martyrs to their cause.

After Fleming’s death on Jan. 11, 2010, at age 93, many eulogies appeared lauding his tolerant, enlightened leadership during what was probably the most calamitous period in the history of the University of Michigan. Almost without exception these were based on Fleming’s own view of events, as put forth in his memoir, and the recollections of his colleagues and friends in the administration.

Those who faced him from the other side of the fence sometimes remember Robben Fleming a bit differently. A number of former activists who had occasion to interact with the late president provided their thoughts and impressions via phone and e-mail.

Steve Nissen: Human Rights Party

I was very engaged in activism at the University of Michigan when Robben Fleming assumed the presidency in 1968. He came to the job with a reputation for adeptly handling the turbulent student protests while at the University of Wisconsin. I found him more approachable than his predecessors and willing to engage in discussions with student leaders, which distinguished him from the aloof attitudes of other university leaders.

He didn’t make huge changes, but his openness gained him some increased respect and cooperation from the more moderate student elements, which I was not. However, he was not popular with tough-minded student activists because we were all functioning in a highly polarized environment and there wasn’t much room for compromise.

In my case, we disagreed, but our relationship was not disagreeable. He was soft-spoken and never strident in relating to student leaders, but he did not yield much, either. Given the times, he was probably as good a choice as possible as a college president for a troubled era.

Bill Ayers: Students for a Democratic Society

I had an interesting relationship with Robben Fleming and it continued long, long after he was president of the University of Michigan. We reconnected after I became a professor at the University of Illinois. He was in Chicago doing some work with the MacArthur Foundation. We had coffee and that became something we did periodically.

He told me years later that one of the things that was difficult for him was not the heat that he was getting from the students, it was the heat from the trustees [regents]. The trustees looked to people like Clark Kerr [at the University of California] and thought that that was the smart way to go, to hammer these students. Fleming, I think largely because of his background as a negotiator and a labor professor and so on, was more inclined to negotiate. He wasn’t a kind of Neanderthal standing at the gate insisting he had the only view. He always wanted to know what you thought.

The night that I remember most vividly was the last day of March, 1968. Lyndon Johnson had gone on television and announced that he was not going to run for president, and he would work to end the war in Vietnam. And we poured out of our apartments and we had this kind of spontaneous rally that raced through the streets of Ann Arbor and ended up on the steps of his house there on South University.

I had a bullhorn and Fleming came out and he had a bullhorn and what he said that night I remember absolutely vividly. He said, “You’re to be congratulated. You’ve won a great victory. You’ve ended this war.” And I think he believed it that night. I know I believed it. A few months after that it was clear the war would not end, but would escalate. But on that night, March 31, 1968, in the middle of the night, standing outside his house with 1,500 students trampling the rose bushes, he was calm and he was clear and he was congratulatory and that’s the kind of guy he was.

I think he genuinely thought that the war was a mistake. I don’t think he had a critique or an analysis that was against imperialism like we did, but I think that he didn’t think that the war was a good thing. I think the evidence for him of why the war was not a good thing was that it was tearing up the country.

He wrote a memoir about those days and as I remember it, he said at one point that while he and I had differences, we were always fairly civil with each other. It struck me as funny when I read it because I was remembering that night of March 31, 1968, when I was basically shouting, “Fuck you, you motherfucker,” into a megaphone, and he remembers it as I was always reasonable. I don’t think I was always reasonable, but he was a pretty reasonable guy and I think he believed in the power of reason and the importance of evidence.

Madison Foster: Black Action Movement

I have respect for him, that’s the first thing I want to establish. Respect as a scholar, an intellectual, and after I negotiated for the Black Action Movement, I have respect for how he negotiated. And also how things came out, and how he followed up afterwards. When he did make promises when he negotiated, he delivered on them. So in that sense I have nothing but positives to say about Robben Fleming.

As a negotiator Fleming was good. At first he tried some divisive things, but that’s okay, that was the name of the game. It was leaked to the press that the strike was over, and many students heard the news and backed off, and we had to go back and regroup again. Fleming threatened us early on to call the National Guard, and I for one called his bluff by simply saying, “Well, I guess we’ll die,” and we walked out. I wasn’t going to negotiate under threat, so I called his bluff, and he didn’t bring in the National Guard. [This would have been about five weeks prior to the shootings at Kent State.]

From my understanding, one of the reasons Fleming was brought to Michigan was because of the general student conflict at Berkeley and other places, and the left radical organizing that had been going on at Michigan. They were expecting some conflict to come off from white students. They didn’t expect the conflict to be led by black minority students at the time.

I would say the BAM strike probably was one of the few successful, if not the only successful student strike of that period – in the sense that we got about 90% of the demands. But at the same time much of that was because of who Robben Fleming was.

Picketers in front of the University of Michigan's Hill Auditorium during the Black Action Movement strike of March 1970. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

I had the feeling that he was open to having more African-American students enrolled at the university, that he wasn’t opposed to it. I can’t say for sure. If I had to guess I would think he was personally sympathetic. But he was a true negotiator. Don’t forget that. He was all pro.

I would credit him with keeping the lid on generally – there weren’t any casualties at Michigan, in spite of the fact that Michigan was probably the second-most radical activist hotbed after Berkeley, during that period. During the BAM strike, I wouldn’t credit him for keeping the lid on, I would credit the BAM leadership. We used conflict, but we kept some of the hotheads from doing violent things, both black and white. But I credit Fleming for not escalating the conflict by calling in troopers, or by escalating his rhetoric. In that sense he handled the situation well.

I tried to get to him. I got to him a little bit, once. He got angry enough to get up from his chair. We tried to keep him off balance, but he was basically calm. That’s what I mean when I say he was a good negotiator – he was calculating, and he was basically very calm.

Overall, I’d have to say positive things about Fleming. That might not be what some people want to hear me say, but that’s what I would say. I would say it if he were alive, to him. In fact, I did say it to him.

Eric Chester: Students for a Democratic Society

My experiences with Fleming were generally not positive. I found him to be a rigid personality, unwilling and unable to engage in a genuine give and take. Of course, I completely disagreed with his political perspective, but, even given this, I found other university administrators to be more likeable personalities.

During the book store sit-in [of September 1969], I was sent by the sit-in contingent to speak to Fleming. He said he would not negotiate on the issue of a university-run bookstore until we evacuated the building. There was therefore nothing to talk about and I soon left to report back to the sit-in group that Fleming was unwilling to negotiate. We were then arrested, and at a meeting of the regents shortly afterward the administration caved in and created the bookstore. Pointless macho behavior by Fleming, but then I suppose that’s why they hired him in the first place.

I did not find Fleming to be courteous. I met him rarely in an informal, personal context since he made little effort to meet with student activists. When I did meet him, I found him to be a cold, calculating technocrat. I did not like him and I did not find him to be particularly competent in dealing with the issues we raised.

SDS activists were radicals and socialists. We saw ourselves as part of a larger movement for fundamental social change. Fleming was just a cog in the corporate hierarchy. It is difficult to see how we could have had two more different world views. Even on Vietnam, SDS called for immediate withdrawal from the start. Fleming was one of many corporate liberals who began to think it had been a mistake well after it began and were looking for a graceful way out.

Rennie Davis: Chicago Seven Defendant

Robben was a friend of my family. He knew my father, who was an economics professor at Michigan State. We spoke together at Hill Auditorium [in 1969] at a time when I was the “popular” speaker to the student anti-war audience and he came in to speak, did well, but it took a little courage on his part.

A rare president leading a great university from the courage of wisdom is my memory of Robben Fleming. In a time of student passion to change the world, I marveled at his ability to hold and honor the center when side-taking was all the rage. His spirit to see humanity in any side is a legacy that will inspire us always.

James Swan: Environmental Action for Survival

I recall being called to Fleming’s home on the day after the Kent State shootings. President Fleming quickly assembled a group of faculty and students who had been active on campus political events, and he sought their advice and support to prevent something like that from happening on campus. He was genuinely concerned about what had happened, and determined to avert something like that in Ann Arbor. The meeting was a very honest discussion with all people’s perspectives welcomed.

I always found Fleming to be an honest, sincere person who tried to lend a sense of dignity and open-mindedness to his position, as well as the university.

Gary Rothberger: Students for a Democratic Society

Robben Fleming was one of the first of a new type of university president, one hired not for the ability to charm alumni and faculty but rather one who could do crisis management. Whatever he believed personally, as president he acted to stop real change in the university while conveying an image of corporate liberalism. He was fairly good at seeming to want to resolve the issue, if not for the extremists and their unrealistic demands.

To deal with Fleming was to realize that he was a cold dude who didn’t care about anything else other than carrying out his assignment. He clearly disliked SDS, our ilk and our desire for democratizing society. And he clearly was determined to smash the student movement.

Robben Fleming during the June 1969 violent conflicts on South University in Ann Arbor. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

A particular example of both his ruthlessness and willingness to act as the hammer for cooperate liberalism occurred around 1970 or ’71 when one of the first UM lesbian organizations attempted to have a conference on campus. Fleming issued moralistic statements and refused to allow the conference to go on and refused to discuss the issue.

His false and much, much too belated public semi-opposition to the war not withstanding, I have no idea what his own personal views were on anything except that, eventually, you are what you do.

[On the second night of mayhem on South University in June 1969] two or three of us went to the presidential house. He came to the door and we told him that the police were creating a riot and were clubbing people and gassing them for no reason. He said that he did not see any “inappropriate” police behavior and that the cops wouldn’t gas people. I then tossed a gas canister into the foyer and asked whether he thought that was inappropriate. He sputtered and mouthed a few inanities and went back into the house.

A little while later he came out and made some sort on innocuous statement that meant nothing and he certainly was unwilling to call out the police for brutality. I had been in Mississippi, and in Detroit during some of the riots there. I know what extreme police brutality is and I’m not claiming that this was at the same level as some of that stuff. However, they were gassing people and clubbing people, doing it randomly and were obviously enjoying it. Fleming knew it, probably didn’t like it, but clearly was willing to ignore it because he thought to criticize it would have been politically unwise.

You are what you do. He did nothing when he could have spoken out.

Paul Soglin: Students for a Democratic Society (University of Wisconsin)

His greatest strength was his belief in himself and that rational discourse would carry the day. His weakness was accepting the Cold War rationalization that the state must prevail over independent thinking. He should have trusted his own beliefs and instincts.

Jim Toy: Ann Arbor Gay Liberation Front

We started the Ann Arbor Gay Liberation Front in the spring of 1970. Soon thereafter we got a message from the regents: “Will you please come to a regents’ meeting and tell the regents what Gay Liberation wants.” That day there must’ve been an overflow, because when I got there every seat was filled. So I said, “The regents have asked Gay Liberation to tell them what Gay Liberation wants, and I’m Jim Toy and I’m here to do that. Where should I sit?”

President Fleming, at the far end of the table, graciously stood up and said, “Mr. Toy, please have my chair.” So for the first and I would guess the last time in my life, I sat in the president’s chair at a regents’ meeting.

I told the regents what we wanted. Justice, in the sense of, for example, counselors trained to help people with concerns about sexual orientation. Changes in the curriculum. Changes to the university’s non-discrimination policy. And so on. And then they said thank you very much, and off I went. It would take more than twenty years before the regents would add sexual orientation to their non-discrimination policy.

In 1970 Gay Liberation Front requested university space in which to have a statewide conference. We received a formal letter from President Fleming denying use of space. There was a picket outside the president’s house, as I recall, protesting the denial. But a vice president of the Student Government Council said, “That’s okay, I have the keys to the Student Activities Building.” And so we had the conference.

I remember a friend of mine in Gay Liberation went to the Diag and burned a Bible. And President Fleming happened to be walking by, and said, at least by report, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” That was the extent of it.

If he got riled, he continued to be polite. And some people have been reported to say that this was one of his great strengths.

The author would like to thank all those who contributed to the writing of this story, directly and indirectly, with special thanks to Will Hathaway for providing a copy of his invaluable dissertation, “Conflict Management and Leadership in Higher Education: A Case Study of University of Michigan President Robben W. Fleming.”

Alan Glenn is working on a documentary film about Ann Arbor in the ’60s. Visit the film’s website for more information.

Robben Fleming at the groundbreaking for the University of Michigan Power Center in April 1969. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, playing at the 1971 John Sinclair Freedom Rally at Crisler Arena. (Photo courtesy Leni Sinclair.)

The passage of nearly four decades can dim even the keenest of memories. But to Hiawatha Bailey, the events of that winter afternoon in 1971 are as clear as if they had happened yesterday. Bailey was 23 and working at the communal headquarters of the Rainbow People’s Party in the ramshackle old mansion at 1520 Hill Street in Ann Arbor.

“I was doing office duty,” he recalls, “which entailed sitting at the front desk and answering the phone. Some friends were there, and we were sitting around, tripping on acid, probably, and the phone rings. I pick it up and I hear this voice, ‘Hello, this is Yoko Ono.’”

Bailey, of course, didn’t believe it for a second. “I said something like, ‘Yeah, this is Timothy Leary,’ and hung up. We all got a good laugh out of it.” A few minutes later the phone rang again. This time the voice on the other end said, “Hello, can I speak to David Sinclair, Chief of Staff of the Rainbow People’s Party. This is John Lennon of the Beatles.”

“I wasn’t even that familiar with the Beatles then,” says Bailey, now lead singer for the Cult Heroes, an Ann Arbor-based punk rock band. “I was more into the Stooges and the MC5, more radical rock ’n’ roll. But I knew right away that it really was John Lennon.” He put the call through.

“Dave and John talked for quite some time,” Bailey recalls. “Lennon said, ‘I heard about the benefit that you blokes are putting on, and I wrote a little ditty about John Sinclair and his plight. I’d like to come there and perform it.’”

They Gave Him Ten for Two

John Sinclair – poet, pothead, cultural revolutionary, and Chairman of the Rainbow People’s Party of Ann Arbor, Michigan – was at that time confined to the state prison in Jackson. More than two years earlier he had received a nine-and-a-half to ten-year sentence for the possession of 11.50 grains of marijuana – two joints’ worth – following a trial marked by numerous irregularities.

“The powers-that-be in Michigan had it in for me,” says Sinclair, who now lives in Amsterdam. “They didn’t like what we were doing, establishing an alternative community, defying their authority, smoking grass. First in Detroit, then in Ann Arbor. They fixed on me because I was the most outspoken, and also because somehow I was successful in bringing young people around to my way of thinking.”

Even those who weren’t quite as certain of Sinclair’s blamelessness agreed that ten years in prison for possession of two joints was an unusually severe sentence, and probably politically motivated.

John Sinclair, circa 1969. (Photo courtesy of Leni Sinclair.)

“They wanted to put me away,” Sinclair says, “and so they did.” Following the sentencing, a request for an appeal bond was denied, and the 27-year-old cultural activist went directly to a maximum-security prison.

Sinclair’s sudden departure sent the collective into a state of shock. But his wife Leni and brother David quickly assumed leadership roles and began to direct the effort to free their party’s leader.

In the coming months they worked tirelessly, organizing benefit concerts, demonstrations, and rallies. Wherever possible they enlisted the aid of sympathetic movement celebrities – Allen Ginsberg, Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman (whose misguided attempt to win support for Sinclair at Woodstock during the Who’s set earned him a bump on the head, courtesy Pete Townshend’s guitar), Tom Hayden, and others. But after two years of diligent effort they seemed no closer to getting John out of jail.

At some point in the summer of 1971, Sinclair – who was still helping to lead the party from behind bars – decided that what they needed to do was organize one huge benefit rally for the end of the year. With the help of sympathetic student organizations they were able to secure the use of the University of Michigan’s recently constructed Crisler Arena for Dec. 10. (That’s also international Human Rights Day – although no one seemed to realize it at the time.)

A Total Bomb

Utilizing the contacts that they had built up over the years, Leni, David, and the others assembled a list of about a dozen radical speakers and musical performers who agreed to appear at the rally. Then they approached Peter Andrews, an experienced area music promoter who was working as events director at the university. Andrews was a friend of John Sinclair and had previously organized a few small benefit concerts on his behalf. But he wasn’t interested in producing this show.

“I just looked at it and said, ‘This is a total bomb you have on your hands. You’ll get three thousand people tops, and in the fifteen-thousand-capacity Crisler, it’ll only show how little people care about John Sinclair.’”

Andrews, now semi-retired and living in Ypsilanti Township, recalls that the Sinclairs weren’t willing to take no for an answer. “I went to Toronto with my girlfriend just to get away from them for a few days. When I got back, Leni came to see me and she said, ‘John Lennon and Yoko Ono want to play at the rally!’”

Andrews was skeptical, thinking that this might simply be a ploy to get him involved. “I said, ‘Oh, really. And who’s the headliner, Jesus Christ?’”

Leni Sinclair insisted that it was real, however, and explained that Jerry Rubin had talked the Lennons into doing it. Andrews was still doubtful but agreed to fly to New York and meet with John and Yoko. Even today he still marvels at the surreality of that trip to New York with Leni in December of 1971.

Some Time in New York City

“Nobody met us or anything,” he says. “The only thing we had was a telephone number to call. I remember putting a dime in the phone, and dialing the number. John Lennon answered. He said, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve been waiting for ya, come on over, here’s where we’re at, great!’ I hung up the phone and looked at Leni, and I said, ‘We’re hot, we are happening.’”

Sinclair and Andrews took a cab from Grand Central Station to the Lennons’ two-room apartment in the West Village. “They greeted us, they were very friendly, very, very nice,” says Andrews. “I had Lennon sign a contract for $500 to appear, and he crossed it out and put, ‘To be donated to the John Sinclair Freedom Fund.’”

The visitors from Michigan spent about an hour talking with their newfound allies. At one point, Lennon asked Andrews to come into the bedroom and listen to a song he had written to perform at the concert. “He wasn’t sure if the song was appropriate, and he wanted my opinion. He sang the song – ‘It ain’t fair, John Sinclair’ – with that steel guitar he had. I assured him it was totally appropriate, and the lyrics were cool. He was very grateful.”

Andrews shakes his head in wonder at the memory. “I thought to myself, ‘John Lennon’s asking my opinion! Man, this is somethin’ else.’”

After leaving the apartment they had gone only about a block before Andrews realized that even with a signed contract as evidence, no one was going to believe that John Lennon would be at the show. “So we went back, and I asked John if he had a cassette recorder. I wrote a little script out, and he and Yoko read it into the recorder. Now I knew we had it.”

The Magic of John and Yoko

On Wednesday, Dec. 8, two days before the concert, the Committee to Free John Sinclair held a press conference in Ann Arbor. The tape that Peter Andrews had made was played for representatives of the local and national media.

“Hello, this is John with Yoko here,” began the recorded message. “I just want to say we’re coming along to the John Sinclair bust fund rally to say hello. I won’t be bringing a band or nothing like that because I’m only here as a tourist, but I’ll probably fetch me guitar, and I know we have a song that we wrote for John [Sinclair]. So that’s that.”

Tickets went on sale that same day at $3 each. “It sold out in such short amount of time – two or three hours, statewide – that we actually had guards, uniformed guards, to protect the people that got tickets from the ones that didn’t,” says Peter Andrews. “We distributed tickets statewide so that people would have an opportunity – not a big opportunity, but you had a chance if you ran down there and got in line.”

Andrews recalls that they didn’t spend a penny on advertising. It was enough to simply make the announcement of John and Yoko’s participation and let the media take it from there.

From Mop Top to Working-Class Hero

After the breakup of the Beatles, and before his untimely death by an assassin’s bullet in 1980, John Lennon performed in public on only a handful of occasions. In retrospect it may seem odd that one of these was a benefit for a jailed longhair in the cultural backwater of Michigan. But at the time it made perfect sense.

Ann Arbor was in the forefront of the radical movement of the late ’60s and early ’70s. That same period found the famously outspoken Beatle becoming deeply involved in political activism – denouncing war and injustice, attending demonstrations, concocting peace-themed “happenings” with Yoko, encouraging his fans to “Imagine no possessions,” advising them that “A working-class hero is something to be.”

In the summer of ’71 John and Yoko moved to New York on a more-or-less permanent basis and quickly became close with Yippie activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. Rubin was committed to speaking at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally in December, and encouraged John and Yoko to appear, as well.

It wasn’t difficult to get Lennon interested. He’d been toying with the idea of doing a series of all-star concerts combining rock music with radical rhetoric. After long discussions with Rubin, this morphed into an “anti-Nixon tour” that would travel across the U.S. during the summer of ’72 and wind up in San Diego at the Republican National Convention in August.

The rally in Ann Arbor would serve as a trial run.

Not in Kansas Anymore

John and Yoko arrived with little fanfare in Detroit on Friday, Dec. 10, the day of the concert. Peter Andrews picked them up at the airport in a borrowed limousine and drove them to the Campus Inn in Ann Arbor, where a number of the evening’s musical acts were staying. Andrews had booked the Lennons into the presidential suite.

The crowd at the 1971 John Sinclair Freedom Rally in Crisler Arena. (Photo courtesy of David Fenton.)

“I thought it was funny to put them up in the presidential suite,” he says, “because this was basically all anti-Nixon. I remember stopping over there to make sure everything was cool. I couldn’t stay, but boy, I wish could have. They were all jamming up in Lennon’s suite. I thought, ‘Damn, this is too much.’”

The event had grown so big so fast that to many of those involved it felt like a waking dream. “It was madness, all of these people, all the music and the politics,” says Hiawatha Bailey. While working backstage at the rally he felt a sudden need for a few minutes away, and walked over to the nearby football stadium.

“I’m sitting there, in this huge, empty stadium,” Bailey recalls. “All of a sudden this whirling dervish picks up a pile of trash, goes around the stadium, and drops it right next to me.” He smiles and shakes his head. “I’m thinking that I’d better get out of there, before Dorothy and Toto show up!”

But for Bailey the unreality wasn’t quite over. “I go back to the arena, and up comes this limo, and John Lennon, Yoko Ono, David Peel and the Lower East Side and all those scalawags that he hung out with, all start piling out. John says to me, ‘You look like someone I can trust, mate, come with me.’”

Bailey became an impromptu bodyguard, helping to hold back the fans as the Lennons and their entourage entered the arena. “These people were ready to rip me apart to get to John Lennon,” he says. “They had their albums they wanted signed, and they were very vehement about it.”

After escorting the company to their dressing room, Bailey recalls, “John turns to me and says, ‘Watch the door.’ Then he hands me a bag of coke, and says to enjoy myself. So I’m leaning up against the door, holding a bag of John Lennon’s blow, and behind me he’s teaching David Peel and those guys the chords to ‘John Sinclair.’ And I’m just like, ‘Man, this is far out.’”

A Long Day’s Night

Peel would have plenty of time to learn the song – John and Yoko didn’t end up taking the stage until around three in the morning, more than two hours behind schedule. They were preceded by nearly eight hours of speakers and musical performers that included Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin, Bob Seger, Phil Ochs, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, poet Ed Sanders, Black Panther Party chairman Bobby Seale, Chicago Seven defendant Rennie Davis, radical priest Father James Groppi, and jazz legend Archie Shepp.

The dramatic high point of the evening was a surprise telephone call from the imprisoned John Sinclair that was broadcast live over the arena’s loudspeakers. Voice choking with emotion, Sinclair spoke to his wife and daughter, conveying his belief that they would soon be reunited. “You could almost see the tears flowing down the aisles,” remembers Peter Andrews.

According to many reports, the other non-musical portions of the program did not appear to have a great impact on the audience. The singers, however, seemed to go over somewhat better. According to the Michigan Daily, Bob Seger was “dynamite,” Commander Cody “kept the audience pretty satisfied,” and Phil Ochs was “good and clever.”

But the big musical hit of the evening – possibly even bigger than the Lennons – was a performer that most people didn’t even know would be there.

A few days before the concert, Peter Andrews was working in his office when the phone rang. It was Stevie Wonder.

After his meeting in New York with John and Yoko, Andrews thought nothing could faze him. But now here he was listening to the wunderkind of soul tell him that, even though he wasn’t in favor of marijuana, he was dismayed by what had happened to John Sinclair, and wanted to be part of the show.

“I’m going, ‘Holy shit.’ I didn’t need a draw, so I decided that Stevie Wonder would be a surprise act. I told him over the phone that I didn’t want anybody knowing about this, and not to make any announcements or anything. There were only about three people other than me that even knew about it until he showed up with his equipment.”

Stevie Wonder performing at the 1971 John Sinclair Freedom Rally. (Photo courtesty of Stanley Livingston.)

The Wonder of Stevie

Twenty-two-year-old Jane Hassinger was elated when she learned that Stevie Wonder would be appearing that night. As a member of Drug Help, a local grassroots counseling service for youth with drug and alcohol issues, she was working in one of the arena’s two “drug tents” when Wonder took the stage. “I’d been on the job almost the whole time and didn’t really have an opportunity to watch the show,” she recalls.

“But I said to my co-workers, ‘I’m leaving for Stevie Wonder.’ I went up close to the stage. And he was extraordinary. It was as magical as anything I can think of. There was a roar when he came on.”

“We’d all grown up on Motown,” explains Peter Andrews. “When Stevie came out the crowd went bananas. I just loved it, as the promoter of the show. I still almost tear up when I think of the emotion people had.”

It wasn’t just the crowd that went bananas, either. “When Stevie was about to go on, I thought I should tell the Lennons,” says Andrews. “Well, John just flipped. He goes, ‘Stevie Wonder! I gotta see him!’”

Andrews didn’t think that was a good idea, as the ex-Beatle was certain to be mobbed. But Lennon was insistent. “He said, ‘Peter, don’t you understand? Stevie Wonder is my Beatles!’ He’d never seen Stevie perform. So I agreed. We got like ten security guys, and John Lennon and myself were in the middle of the circle, and we went to the back of the stage to watch.”

Yoko Ono and John Lennon performing at the 1971 John Sinclair Freedom Rally at Crisler Arena. (Photo courtesy of David Fenton.)

Gimme Some Truth

Stevie Wonder wasn’t there simply to dazzle the audience with his music, however. Like all the performers he was also there to make a political statement.

“Before coming here today,” he said at one point, “I had a lot of things on my mind, a lot of things that you don’t have to see to understand. We are in a very troublesome time today in the world. A time in which a man can get 12 years in prison for possession of marijuana, and another who can kill four students at Kent State and come out free.”

“What kind of shit is that?” he asked the crowd, which responded with a roar.

The audience had also cheered earlier in the evening when Phil Ochs delivered the refrain of his song about the White House’s resident paranoiac:

Here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of

Richard Nixon, find yourself another country to be part of

But of all the performances that night, it was that of the star attractions which was the most overtly political.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono took the stage at around three in the morning. Backed by an improvised band that included David Peel and Jerry Rubin, they sang about the Attica uprising, about the conflict in Northern Ireland, about women’s liberation, and, finally, about the man of the hour, without whom none of it would have been possible:

It ain’t fair, John Sinclair

In the stir for breathing air

Won’t you care for John Sinclair?

In the stir for breathing air

They gave him ten for two

What else can Judge Colombo do?

Gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta set him free

Then abruptly the Lennons were gone, and the show was over.

Don’t Let Us Down

Monday’s edition of the Detroit News contained a review of the rally that ran under the headline, “Lennon Let His Followers Down.”

Of course, not everyone in the audience was disappointed with Lennon’s performance. But it’s easy to see how many would have been somewhat less than impressed. The ex-Beatle’s set was entirely acoustic, long before going “unplugged” became fashionable. He played only four songs, none of which were familiar to the audience. And he left the stage after about 15 minutes.

“Yeah, I was disappointed by John and Yoko’s ‘street art’ performance,” says Jeff Alder, then an eighteen-year-old aspiring musician. “I mean, the great Beatle jamming with Jerry Rubin playing bongos or congas or something he had no idea how to play, along with David Peel and the freakin’ lousy Lower East Side. But I was still impressed that John came to support our guy.”

Alder, who today works as a studio technician at the University of Michigan, remembers being much more affected by Stevie Wonder’s performance. “Like John L., it was real impressive that he even came to play. Only Stevie actually came to play!”

But Alder admits that these are minor points. The bigger goal was to show support for John Sinclair. “The coolest thing of all was that it worked,” he says. “Regardless of any critiques of the performances and all the yapping, it worked.”

“We got John out!”

Bring Him to His Wife and Kids

Seventy-two hours after the commencement of the rally, John Sinclair was free.

For a brief moment the state penitentiary in Jackson became the backdrop for a scene out of some sort of freaky countercultural version of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” As flashbulbs popped and movie cameras rolled, the burly, long-haired revolutionary enjoyed a tearful reunion with his tiny wife Leni and their young daughter Sunny after almost two-and-a-half years apart.

This was no miracle, however. Rather, it was the result of years of concerted effort on the part of hundreds of people, not just to free John Sinclair but also to reform what many felt were the state’s draconian drug laws.

The day before the rally, the Michigan State Senate passed a bill that drastically reduced penalties for marijuana possession. Three days after the rally, the Michigan Supreme Court granted Sinclair bail pending appeal, after having denied six previous such requests.

The question remains about how much of an effect the event itself had on winning Sinclair’s freedom. The timing is, of course, very suggestive. The justices, however, maintained that their decision was made solely in light of the passage of the new drug bill.

Peter Andrews thinks that even without the spectacle of the rally, Sinclair would have eventually been released. “What it did,” he suggests, “was say, ‘How about right now!’”

However it happened, John Sinclair was out, and all who had struggled so long rejoiced. But the denouement wasn’t wholly Capra-esque. Peter Andrews believes that he lost his job as a result of the rally, which was simply too extreme for university administrators.

Disaster also struck John Lennon, who subsequently found himself under intensive FBI surveillance and threat of deportation. The anti-Nixon tour was canceled, and the former Beatle shied away from political activism for the rest of his life.

But Leni Sinclair, for one, remains grateful for John and Yoko’s efforts on behalf of her ex-husband, and is still tickled to have been mentioned in one of Lennon’s songs.

“Just knowing that we’re part of history is a good feeling,” she says.

John Lennon Sat Here

Walking the peaceful, tree-lined streets of Ann Arbor today, one sees little that evokes the time when John Lennon and Yoko Ono came to town to sing for the freedom of John Sinclair. It is difficult to conjure up the passionate, volatile milieu of that bygone era – the demonstrations, the sit-ins, the marchers with their protest signs, the smell of tear gas in the air.

There are a few reminders of the city’s radical past still to be found here and there: Ozone House, the People’s Food Cooperative, the Ecology Center, the Ann Arbor Film Festival – and the Herb David Guitar Studio on the corner of Liberty and Fourth. There the connection to Lennon’s visit is particularly strong – in the back amid rows of guitars sits a chair that Liverpool’s favorite son once occupied nearly 40 years ago.

“He just roamed into the shop that day,” remembers Herb David. “Nobody knew who he was. He was this little red-headed guy who didn’t look like anything you thought John Lennon looked like.”

A chair that John Lennon sat in 38 years ago, at Herb David Guitar Studio in Ann Arbor. (Photo by the author.)

David recognized him, however. “I said, ‘Hi, John.’ He said, ‘I’m not John.’ So I asked who he was. He said, ‘I’m his cousin.’ I said, ‘OK – hello, cousin.’ Then I let him go, and he just roamed around and we talked.” At some point during his visit Lennon felt like taking a load off, and ended up creating an instant curio for David’s shop.

“It’s fun to have,” he says. “It has a mystique. People get excited about sitting down in the chair. I say, ‘Sit in that chair, you’ll feel different.’”

When asked if he really believes that, David grins mischievously.

“You never know,” he says.

Could it be possible? Could the chair somehow be imbued with the spirit of the John Lennon who came to Ann Arbor 38 years ago?

The John Lennon who asked only that we “Give peace a chance,” and who every holiday season wishes all a “Happy Xmas” and assures us that “War is over, if you want it?”

The John Lennon who stood on the stage in Crisler Arena and said to the assembled thousands, “We came here not only to help John [Sinclair] and to spotlight what’s going on, but also to show and to say to all of you that apathy isn’t it, and that we can do something. OK, so flower power didn’t work. So what? We start again.”

Could the spirit of that John Lennon somehow inhabit the chair?

If so, maybe we all should take a minute to sit in it.

Alan Glenn is working on a documentary film about Ann Arbor in the ’60s. Visit the film’s website for more information.

This snapshot of Del Rio's staff was taken in the early '70s. Co-owner Ernie Harburg is in the back row, far right, wearing glasses. His wife, Torry Harburg, is in the middle of the back row, wearing a red shirt. In the front row, far right, is chef Sara Moulton. Just behind her, with a moustache and glasses, is co-owner Rick Burgess. (Photo courtesy of Larry Behnke.)

Some time in the mid-1970s, waiter Larry Behnke pinned a large sheet of paper to the bulletin board that hung in the kitchen of the Del Rio Bar. Behnke, also an artist, had written at the top in bold, psychedelic lettering: “What the Del Rio Means to Me.”

After a few days the sheet was filled with responses, ranging from the thoughtful to the droll to the pitiable – with some that were just plain wacky.

“A nice corner bar that suffers from delusions of grandeur.”

“A place where you get paid to have fun, where you can be crazy without being committed, and where customers and employees are more important than money.”

“It’s my substitute home where people are nice to me.”

“The Del Rio means a million things to me, which I refuse to limit to the narrowness of words and the confines of space.”

“The Del Rio is benevolent despotism.”

Probably a majority of Ann Arborites never walked through the door of the funky old saloon that used to sit at the northeast corner of Ashley and Washington. But for plenty of those who did, the Del Rio was more than just a bar. It was a state of mind, a way of life, a second home – a tiny world unto itself.

Born of the idealistic spirit of the late 1960s, the Del Rio was a combination bohemian sanctuary and bold socioeconomic experiment that somehow survived racketeers, recessions, and Reaganism to become a three-decade-plus Ann Arbor tradition whose passing in 2004 is still mourned by many.

Here now to help assuage those feelings of loss is “Liberty, Equality, Consensus and All That Jazz at the Del Rio Bar,” a history of the idiosyncratic watering hole published this month by Huron River Press. The book is a dream-come-true for all those longing to return to their favorite old hippie hangout – if only for a time, and only in their minds. But even those who never set foot inside the Del Rio will find it an absorbing read.

The book’s primary author is Ernie Harburg, one of three partners who founded the Del Rio nearly 40 years ago. But as Harburg freely acknowledges, he had “a little help from his friends” – especially Larry Behnke, an authentic Ann Arbor hippie who worked at the Del from 1972 to 1983, and for six years lived in a 1969 Chevy Step-Van that was often parked by the back door of the bar.

During his stint at the Del Rio, Behnke kept a regular journal. “After work I would usually write a page about the night’s events,” he says. “I felt like the historian of the place.” Later he turned his voluminous journal entries into an anecdotal chronicle of the bar. The resulting manuscript was never published, but Ernie Harburg has included a healthy crop of excerpts in “Consensus.” Behnke’s appealing and often amusing yarns add an extra dimension to Harburg’s more journalistic approach, making the book something of an artful mélange – much like its colorful subject.

Mirroring Ann Arbor

The story of the Del Rio is in many ways the story of the transformation of Ann Arbor from the heterogeneous, real-world community of yesteryear to the gentrified yuppie playground of today. In the late ’60s, the small business district west of Main Street was a rough-and-tumble working-class neighborhood where violence and vice were part of the everyday routine. Ernie Harburg remembers that, in the first year or so that he was operating the Del, he could read a book by the flashing lights of police cars.

But the arrival of three classy new bars – Mr. Flood’s Party, the Del Rio, and the Blind Pig – in the early ’70s would begin to change all that. Mr. Flood’s was opened in the summer of 1969 by youth-savvy entrepreneurs Ned Duke and Robert “Buddy” Jack, and the arty décor and live jazz, country, and blues music soon attracted a different sort of crowd – younger, hipper – and wealthier.

A year later came the Del Rio. Ernie Harburg, his wife Victoria (“Torry”), and friend Rick Burgess bought an existing blue-collar bar of the same name and proceeded with an extreme makeover. Out was the Naugahyde and Formica; in were antique wooden tables and chairs and the original brick walls. Out was the yellowed drop-panel ceiling; in was the elegant hundred-year-old pressed-tin ceiling that had lain hidden underneath. Out was the ’50s-era jukebox; in was a state-of-the-art sound system and an eclectic collection of hundreds and hundreds of homemade eight-track tapes, from Charlie Parker to the Beatles to Bach. And every Sunday night, Rick Burgess and others would play live jazz – at no charge.

Despite the mighty effort, however, success would not come overnight to the new and improved Del Rio. It would take time before the crew cuts made way for the longhairs. Plus, there were all the usual difficulties involved in starting up a new business venture. Such as the disastrous choice the partners made for the bar’s first manager, who had previously managed Mr. Flood’s. He was there for only a short time during the first year, and was hired because neither Burgess nor Harburg knew management, recalls Larry Behnke. But he didn’t bother to pay taxes or keep accurate books, Behnke says, and almost killed the new bar.

A New Way of Managing

Ironically, however, it was this debacle that paved the way for what was perhaps the Del Rio’s most distinguishing feature: management by consensus. When that first manager was let go, managerial duties were assumed by the rank-and-file workers, who eventually came to the conclusion that there didn’t need to be a manager. The owners agreed, and turned the day-to-day running of the bar over to the employees. Eventually this would evolve into management by consensus, with owners and employees having equal say.

It was not an arrangement that the Harburgs and Burgess entered into lightly. The Del Rio was like a family; and they vowed to abide by the family’s decisions, even if it didn’t always go their way.

Luckily – and perhaps a little surprisingly – the system turned out to work exceedingly well. The mostly young, nonconformist workers created the sort of environment they felt most comfortable in, which also happened to be a powerful attraction for the younger, hipper crowd that was starting to frequent the Main Street area.

Take as an example the relaxed attitude toward drug use during the Del Rio’s early years. This was a consequence of the time (the swinging ’70s) and the place (back then Ann Arbor was known to some as “the drug capital of the Midwest”) as well as the managerial power wielded by the staff. And it wasn’t only the customers who were high – often it was the employees, too.

“If our evening shift began at 7 p.m.,” recalls former waiter Larry Behnke, “we would all gather at the wait station and do a shot of tequila together at 9 p.m. By 10 or later we would gather at the pizza oven exhaust vent to share a joint.”

“I can remember only a couple of times when someone came to work tripping on acid,” he adds, “but we discouraged that because the customer would get poor or no service. We could give great, happy service when we were buzzed on pot or beer, since our customers were similarly altered. It was like we were all partying together.”

At one point Behnke worked with an editor from New York on his Del Rio manuscript. “She didn’t believe we functioned as well as we did, considering all the weed and booze and acid we consumed.”

Although in general the owners shared the workers’ lack of concern with regard to drugs such as alcohol, marijuana, and even LSD – as long as it didn’t get out of hand – they took a “hard line on hard drugs” (as a notice posted in the bar was titled). Anyone involved with hard drugs like cocaine or heroin on the premises would be banned from the Del Rio. In this the employee-managers were in (mostly) complete agreement with the owners.

But consensus didn’t always work perfectly. It was very difficult to fire anyone, because the employees were reluctant to take such drastic steps against one of their own, even when someone was caught outright with a hand in the cookie jar. Ernie Harburg also remembers one instance in particular where he feels that collective governance worked against the common good.

“I was deeply frustrated that we were unable to reach consensus about forbidding smoking in the bar,” he says, “because half of the staff smoked.” This included Harburg’s wife Torry. After much debate the group did agree to get rid of the cigarette machine and establish a small non-smoking section. But on the whole Harburg still feels that the battle over smoking represents a failure of the consensual decision-making process. That failure must have been all the more painful when Torry passed away in 1981 from lung cancer.

There were also other problems with the Del Rio’s lack of management. While it contributed greatly to the laid-back atmosphere that many Ann Arborites loved, it could also make the bar seem cliquish to infrequent patrons, and would sometimes turn workers and customers into adversaries. For instance, bartenders had absolute control over the music, both in what was played and how loud. No one – not even the owners – could force them to change either.

But in most respects the Del Rio’s system of collective management was quite successful. Compare, for instance, the traditional way that bars have dealt with troublemakers to the method employed at the Del. Instead of a bouncer instigating a confrontation that could lead to violence, the communally-minded staff (occasionally joined by a few customers) would all gather round the miscreants and quietly order them to go. Not even the toughest muscle-bound, bar-hopping badass could bear the disapproving stares of so many people for long. The rowdies would soon leave, almost always peacefully.

Changing Times

As the years passed and the countercultural scene faded away, the Del Rio kept as close to its hippie roots as was possible during the Reagan-led return to conservatism and materialism that epitomized the ’80s and ’90s. Ann Arbor was changing – whether for the better is open to debate – and the Del resisted as best it could. As Harburg explains in his book: “The local downtown restaurant and bar scene grew, with most of the newcomers part of a national chain. But the Del – defiantly true to its unconventional underpinnings – stayed open, holding a sort of monopoly on the glory days.”

Over the decades the Del Rio had acquired a loyal group of followers – “an irreverent, bohemian mix of artists, poets, musicians and working folk,” wrote Laura McReynolds in a 1994 Ann Arbor News article, “who don’t simply frequent the place, they help define it” – and became something of a local institution. Those who weren’t so into the free-spirited atmosphere would go for the fresh, cheap, and flavorful food. One of the Del’s offerings even earned a measure of national recognition. The Washington Post once rated the Detburger – named after its inventor, Bob Detwiler, who worked at the bar in the early ’70s – as one of the 20 best burgers in the nation.

The Detburger was really just a well-made cheeseburger covered with pizza toppings, but with one all-important difference: the patty was steamed in beer. Celebrity chef Sara Moulton has demonstrated the preparation of a slightly-enhanced Detburger on television, and included the recipe in her book “Sara’s Secrets for Weeknight Meals.” Moulton’s passion for the Detburger comes as no surprise to those who know that she worked at the Del in the early to mid-’70s when she was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan.

Despite the popularity of its unique fare, however, the Del Rio would ultimately succumb to the pressure to be profitable. Ironically, it seems as though it was management by consensus that was the major contributor to the bar’s downfall. By the turn of the twenty-first-century, competition had become so fierce that the owners felt a major change was in order – including a switch to a more traditional management system.

“The bar’s operation as a collective no longer seemed feasible,” writes Harburg in “Consensus.” “In years past, a few dedicated employees had always emerged as informal leaders. But over the past decade, this had happened less and less frequently. Most of the employees of the ’90s lacked the idealism of earlier workers and weren’t committed to a collective.”

When the switch finally came, however, the owners discovered that the current crop of employees were in fact very committed to the concept of communal governance. Not only did several veteran workers quickly resign, many of those who left (or were fired) formed into picket lines that marched the sidewalk in front of the bar. The owners, all well into their 70s, decided that they simply didn’t have the time or energy to cope with this latest crisis. When no buyers could be found, the Del Rio closed its doors for good, following a gala last-night celebration that went on into the wee hours of January 1, 2004.

But the legacy of the Del stretches on, in the lives of the people that worked and played there. “It helped me to follow my dreams,” says Larry Behnke, who today lives out the ultimate hippie fantasy – a geodesic dome home powered entirely by solar electricity – on 20 wooded acres in northern Florida, which he purchased with money saved while working at the Del Rio. “It gave credence to our being happily unconventional.”

Editor’s note: Ernie Harburg will be in town to sign copies of his new book on Wednesday, Nov. 11 at 7:30 p.m. at the Jewish Book Festival. The event will be held at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor, 2935 Birch Hollow Drive.

About the writer: Alan Glenn is currently at work on a documentary film about Ann Arbor in the ’60s. Visit the film’s website for more information.

The actor/comedian David Alan Grier, who attended the University of Michigan in the '70s, will be in Ann Arbor on Sunday to promote his new book, "Barack Like Me: The Chocolate-Covered Truth." (Photo courtesy of David Alan Grier)

David Alan Grier is an actor and comedian who became famous as a member of the cast of the groundbreaking TV series “In Living Color” from 1990-1994, and went on to land roles in a range of movies and TV shows. Born in Detroit in 1955, he started acting while attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in the mid-1970s.

Grier has another Ann Arbor connection, too. In 2007, he hosted an NBC improv show, “Thank God You’re Here” – a cast member of that show, Nyima Funk, grew up in Ann Arbor and is the daughter of former city councilmember Wendy Woods.

Grier recently authored the book “Barack Like Me: The Chocolate-Covered Truth,” which he will be promoting at two appearances in Ann Arbor on Sunday, Oct. 18. From 10 a.m. to noon he’s scheduled to appear at the Arthur Miller Theatre in the Walgreen Drama Center on UM’s North Campus. From 2-3:30 p.m. he’ll be speaking and signing books at the Ann Arbor District Library’s downtown branch.

In a phone interview earlier this week, Grier talked about his experiences in Detroit and Ann Arbor, and reveals – among many things – which local icon inspired one of his “In Living Color” characters.

What was it like growing up in Detroit in the ’50s and ’60s?

I loved Detroit. We thought that we were big time – you know, that’s where cars were made! And Motown was from Detroit. I really was very proud of my city.

I don’t really remember the ’50s. I guess my first memory is from around 1960, like most kids, when I was around four years old. I remember going into my preschool, it was part of the church I went to, People’s Community Church. My teacher was like, “Who are you voting for?” And we’re like, “We’re all for Kennedy!” That was probably my first memory.

Were you particularly political during the ’60s?

I was a kid, but growing up in that time, I think I talk about it in the book – my family marching with Martin Luther King, Jr., when he did his march on poverty in Detroit in ’63, and being aware of all those things that were inherently political around us. I grew up in a politically-conscious family. Let me put it like that.

Do you remember anything in particular about marching with Dr. King?

I remember that I did not want to do it because I wanted to play football! And I remember ice cream. And lots of people. And having to dress in our Sunday clothes. You know, as a kid, at that age, it really was like, this is very important. All our family’s doing it, you have to do it, too. That was what my memory was.

Later on, with the march on Washington, I remember watching it on television in the living room. I knew something important was going on, when my parents put the television in the living room.

What do you remember about the riots in Detroit in the summer of 1967?

I grew up on West Boston Boulevard, so there was a huge field, it was Durfee, Roosevelt, and Central High School. And the National Guard just took over. We had our little Brownie cameras and we went up to the fence and took pictures of the troops.

I remember when my aunt called my mom early in the morning, and said that a blind pig had been raided and there was a riot. In ’67 I was only 12 years old, and I was thinking, “What is a blind pig?” “What is a riot?” I didn’t know what a riot was. Was it a big fight? What was it? I didn’t know.

My mom loaded us up and we went and drove a few blocks to take a look, which was really scary, and dangerous. That felt like a state of war, like civil war.

You also tried to join the Black Panthers?

Yes, but I do say that I was what I call a “blerd,” a black nerd. I remember that my best friend and I, we really wanted to join the Black Panther Party. You know what it was the closest to? I was watching this documentary on the N.W.A., and Gangsta rap, and the fascination was the same. It was rebellious – these dudes were loud, and profane, and yelling stuff. It was very exciting, very provocative. Yeah, man – and they dressed really cool. They had black berets and black leather jackets. It was awesome!

Of course we were rebuffed, and weren’t allowed to join. We were too young. They said you had to be 16, and we were only 15. So that was unsuccessful.

[Later Grier would play Black Panther Fred Hampton in a television mini-series about the 1960s.]

What are your thoughts about Detroit now?

Oh man, what can I say. I still have family there, and it’s great to go back and visit the family. But when I’m taking someone there for the first time, I feel like a guy from the Twilight Zone, trying to explain that this was a vibrant city. All these neighborhoods that we’re driving through, these were vibrant, middle-class neighborhoods that weren’t the best, but they were safe, and they were populated. It’s hard to even imagine now.

It saddens me. I grew up in Detroit, and I love Detroit. Hopefully, some day they can figure out a fix and a cure, but it really does sadden me.

What do you remember about Ann Arbor?

I loved going to school in Ann Arbor. I have nothing but fond memories. That’s when I started acting. I started everything there.

I think Ann Arbor’s changed a lot. I haven’t been there in a while. But when I went to school in Ann Arbor it was really a quaint, small town. It was awesome. They still had the Hash Bash!

Did you go to any Hash Bashes?

Um, I went to one or two. I didn’t actually go to it, you know – you went through it to get to class. Once a friend of mine smoked some suspect hash, and it was a long night. So after that, I was kind of off the Hash Bash.

What made you choose to go to the University of Michigan?

Well, I didn’t want to go to the University of Michigan. I wanted to go to the University of Colorado in Boulder. There used to be a catalog, like the Whole Earth Catalog for colleges. It named the coolest school, the best party school, like that. The University of Colorado was the number one party school, and that’s why I wanted to go. And my parents were like, “No, you’re not going there.”

The University of Michigan was the coolest alternative, and most economically viable, being that I was a resident of Michigan. And you know, it’s a great school. And it was within striking range of my mom. It was about 41 minutes, I think, from our front door to the college. That’s why I got to go there.

Do you draw on your experiences in Ann Arbor for any of your characters or routines?

Of course! The character I did on “In Living Color,” this old blues player, was based on a guy that used to hang out on the Diag. His name was Shakey Jake. Someone told me on Facebook that he recently passed away.

Yes, he did.

Yeah, I was sorry to hear that. But that was definitely Shakey Jake. And One-String Sam, who was a real musician from the Detroit area. He had this two-by-four, and he took two nails, two liquor bottles, and one string, and he would play slide. I think he recorded one song, called “All I Need Is a Hundred Dollars.” When I did Calhoun Tubbs on “In Living Color,” that was definitely an homage to those two guys.

In the ’60s and ’70s Ann Arbor had a reputation for being a hotbed of radicalism. Was that your experience when you were here?

Well, I would say it was a hotbed of apathy by the time I got there. I mean, the SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] and all that – we heard rumors of them, but of course the heyday of all that was gone. It was in the midst of the apathetic ’70s. I mean, we went to a couple of Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festivals, but basically that atmosphere – there was still smoke, but the fire was gone.

Do you remember any activism on campus among the black student body?

Well, there were things that I took for granted. I’ll give you an example. Two or three years ago, I did a production of “The Wiz” at San Diego State University, and a fellow classmate of mine, who now was the dean of a department there, asked me to speak, because they were just inaugurating an African Studies department.

I was shocked! Because in ’74 they had an African-American Studies department at the University of Michigan that was well established. That had to be a result of the activism of the students there. Black Studies – that was a major. Women’s Studies – that was a major. Back then, that was a radical step. But they had these departments, and they were rolling. By the time I got there, they felt like they were part of the university.

I took classes as a freshman, before I decided my major. Even black theater, which was the first acting class I ever took. My teacher, Dr. Vaughn Washington, would do Othello. I was in it, a lot of my friends were in it. It was a part of my education, and it was at the very beginning, too. That’s how I really got into acting.

Any other memories of Ann Arbor?

I saw Richard Pryor there…. Honestly, the fond memory of Ann Arbor is the cultural mix that was there. I could go to a medieval concert, and poetry readings, and Chinese opera – I mean, it was there. It was a place that was vibrant and alive, and there was so much access to so much knowledge and experience, it was great. I liked being there, and going to school there. It really helped open and expand my world.

About the writer: Alan Glenn is currently at work a documentary film about Ann Arbor in the ’60s. Visit the film’s website for more information.

The crowd at Fuller Flatlands, site of the first Ann Arbor Blues Festival 40 years ago. (Photo courtesy of Bob Frank, www.bluelunch.com.)

Forty years ago this month, a great crowd of young people converged on a small, unsuspecting middle-American town for an incredible three-day celebration of peace and music. They sat on the cool grass of an open field, grooved to the tunes of a dizzying array of legendary performers, smoked pot, drank wine, and generally had a blast. It was a landmark event that is still spoken of in hushed tones of awe and reverence among music historians.

No, it wasn’t Woodstock. It was something similar, yet very different, something smaller yet in some ways bigger.

It was something called the Ann Arbor Blues Festival.

In early August 1969, two weeks before the mammoth fete in Bethel, N.Y., approximately 20,000 eager spectators came to the Fuller Flatlands on the banks of the lazy Huron River to hear an absolutely astounding lineup of living legends of the blues – B. B. King, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Rush, Magic Sam, Big Mama Thornton, Son House, T-Bone Walker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and on and on – at the first major blues festival in the United States.

Although the Ann Arbor event has been almost completely overshadowed by its big brother in New York, to many serious music fans – especially blues enthusiasts – it is by far the more important of the two. Writing in the October 1969 issue of Downbeat, critic Dan Morgenstern made his preference plain, dismissing Woodstock in favor of the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, which he declared was “without doubt the festival of the year, if not the decade.”

Choosing the Blues

But it wasn’t just the cultured music critics for whom the choice was clear. In the spring of ’69, Steve Wanvig was a 19-year-old blues fan living in Minneapolis. “I was working at an aluminum window and siding company,” he says, “when I heard about this massive rock show which was to take place in the summer, out in upstate New York.”

“I wanted to go,” remembers Wanvig, “but I was much more interested in the massive blues show which was to take place in Ann Arbor, Michigan, much closer. So I enlisted a high school buddy to drive his red ’67 Chevy Impala over there. Jim V (may he rest in peace) wasn’t even a big blues guy, but he was a good enough friend to provide transportation. We threw a tent and some sleeping bags in the car and headed east.”

Charlie Musselwhite performing at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

At that time Wanvig was particularly enamored of the magic harp (blues-speak for harmonica) of Charlie Musselwhite. “Musselwhite was to play in Ann Arbor; that did it for me,” says Wanvig, now an artist and graphic designer. “But besides him, you had the biggest collection of blues legends ever to perform on one stage. It was an absolute, stone-cold MUST for anyone who called themselves a blues fan. I chose the blues, and I’m glad I did.”

While Woodstock was remarkable largely because of the sheer size of its audience, the Ann Arbor Blues Festival was all about the music. “This particular happening did not attract even one-tenth of the 300,000-plus that Woodstock could boast,” wrote Dan Morgenstern in Downbeat. “Total attendance for the three evening and two afternoon concerts at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival was around 20,000. But everyone there had come to hear the music – not to make the scene – and the enthusiastic response was a joy to behold.”

Baby Boomer Blues

Most writers who attended the festival remarked upon the enthusiasm of the audience. Many also noted the striking contrast between the performers on the stage – mostly older, impecunious black men, with roots in the Deep South –and the spectators on the field, who were mostly young, white, and well-off. “It was an odd sight to see white youngsters besieging black men in their sixties and seventies for autographs,” wrote Hollie West in The Washington Post.

In hindsight, however, it shouldn’t have seemed all that odd. Throughout the 1960s there had been occurring what has been termed a “blues revival” – although that is something of a misnomer, since the blues had never actually died. Instead the phenomenon would be more accurately described as an awakening of interest in the blues in an audience that previously hadn’t paid it much attention – young, white, educated Americans.

Muddy Waters performing at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

The blues had first started to appear on the radar of the boomer college crowd in the early sixties, as part of the folk music explosion. A few African-American country bluesmen were booked into the coffee houses and were admired by audiences as purveyors of a truly “authentic” form of traditional American roots music. A number of popular white folkies, such as Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk, also included blues material in their repertoire.

The rise of interest in acoustic blues was followed by a surge of enthusiasm for the heavily blues-influenced rock ’n’ roll of the early British Invasion. The Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Who, and the Kinks were among the many English rock bands that – ironically enough – introduced scores of young American listeners to the blues, via rocking covers of blues standards as well as their own blues-tinged originals.

By the late sixties a new white blues-rock scene was in full swing on both sides of the Atlantic. Janis Joplin, Paul Butterfield, Canned Heat, Steve Miller, Fleetwood Mac, Eric Clapton, and others made millions with their hybridized versions of black American blues. At the same time, most freely acknowledged the debt owed their African-American forbears, who in turn enjoyed an increase of interest in their work (although nothing on the level of the white performers).

Roots of the Festival

The Ann Arbor Blues Festival was the brainchild of a small group of University of Michigan undergraduates, led by John Fishel, a 20-year-old anthropology major. Music festivals had become quite fashionable in the late sixties, and Fishel remembers that there was interest on campus in putting together some sort of fete.

Promotional poster for the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. (Photo courtesy of Michael Erlewine, www.michaelerlewine.com.)

“Somebody put me in touch with one or two people,” he says. “It ended up with maybe four or five of us getting together. Some of us knew each other, some didn’t. We really didn’t have a concept at the time. We didn’t know whether it would be a series or a one-shot deal. We didn’t know whether it was an inside show in an auditorium, or whether it was an outdoor show. But I agreed to do the entertainment part of it.”

Having been a blues enthusiast from an early age, Fishel naturally wanted to make it a blues festival. The others were either of like mind or were easily persuaded, and so, nascent concept in hand, they set about putting the gears in motion. Fishel and several companions traveled to Chicago, then probably the biggest blues city in America, to make key contacts among the performers and promoters, and to get a better feel for the milieu.

Fishel put his knowledge of the genre to work, and expanded his horizons in the process. “I had a lot of records at the time and I had some sense of who was alive, who was still performing. But there was much more that I didn’t know and it sort of took me into a world that I remain very fortunate to have had the opportunity to be part of.”

Easy Money

Probably the most crucial part of the festival’s development was fundraising. In that the organizers were unbelievably fortunate. Somehow they persuaded two university-connected nonprofit entities – the University Activities Center (UAC), and Canterbury House, the student Episcopalian organization – to put up $70,000 for the event. (That’s a jaw-dropping $400,000 in today’s money.) “To this day, I’m still not clear why they said yes,” marvels Fishel.

Luther Allison performing at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

Cash in hand, the small group of organizers began to develop the festival in earnest. It was decided to hold a try-out of sorts – a small, free blues concert – in the spring of 1969 in order to gauge potential interest. On one of their trips to Chicago they had discovered the perfect artist for such an event: the then-unknown guitarist Luther Allison.

“We sort of discovered Luther Allison,” says Joel Silvers, another of the festival’s organizers. “He was playing in this very traditional West Side club where most of the people were fresh from the South. I don’t know who initiated the conversation with him, but he was absolutely delighted to find any interest whatsoever in a university or a white audience for the kind of music that he was performing.”

Allison came to Ann Arbor in late April for a four-hour free show in the ballroom of the student union. At first the audience was small. But, as John Fishel remembers, “he started to play, and it was electric. People just started to pour in from all over the campus.”

As the performance wrapped around midnight, the planning committee were all smiles. The blues had passed the test; the community had responded. The show would go on.

Radical Blues

Today many may wonder why Ann Arbor – a small, Midwestern town, far from the South, with a tiny black population – should have been the site for the country’s first major blues festival. But consider that the core of the white awakening to the blues in the 1960s were the free thinkers, political activists, and countercultural rebels – and that in those days Ann Arbor was a major center of anti-establishment activity, home to all those types and more.

Festival organizer Bert Stratton recalls that in those days to like the blues was to be part of an exclusive, rebellious club. “It was like a secret language. If you were a young white kid who was into the black blues you thought you were pretty cool. It was an identity search on our part. We wanted something that was totally authentic, as opposed to what we were, which was not, I guess,” Stratton says with a chuckle. He explains that listening to performers like Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters was a sure-fire way to annoy the “straights.”

Joel Silvers remembers that in the sixties there was a politicized subculture that followed American roots music. “A lot of these people were white,” he says, “but had their roots in the civil rights movement. These were people who were both counterculture and highly politicized in some way or another. I mean they were still college students. They weren’t necessarily marching in Selma, but they were absorbing this sense of a black-white cultural alliance that was still possible in 1969.”

“Within a couple of years,” he adds, “between black power and whatever happened in terms of a cultural backlash or political backlash, a lot of white kids were no longer as interested in authentic black music, so it was a bit of a short-lived phenomenon.”

Part of the radical agenda in the late sixties was a rejection of mainstream white culture in favor of that of minority groups, especially African-Americans. From early on the festival organizers had decided that it would feature predominantly black performers. This decision was made not only to help right the wrongs that black artists had been suffering for decades, but also to expose concertgoers to the roots of the blues, with which many were expected to be unfamiliar. Festival organizer Cary Gordon told The Washington Post, “I feel the blues is a black phenomenon, and assuming there will be more blues festivals after this, we felt the first festival here should be devoted to first-generation blues.”

Bert Stratton remembers that at the ’69 festival it was unofficially decided that black attendees would be let in without charge. Not that it much mattered, he says. “I don’t think we had more than 50 black people in the audience at any one time.” He also suspects that although their hearts were in the right place, the organizers were unwittingly insulting those they intended to help. “It would have been totally embarrassing for any black person to say, ‘I want to get in for free,’” he says.

“This Is So Beautiful”

The first Ann Arbor Blues Festival got underway at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, August 1, 1969. Over the next two days attendees would be treated to nearly 24 solid hours of the best and most authentic blues music the country had to offer, old and new, from country blues to city blues and everything in between. Some reviewers had minor complaints about one or two of the performances, but overall critical opinion was glowing. Norman Gibson of The Ann Arbor News perhaps summed it up best, writing simply that “the first Ann Arbor Blues Festival in history was a success from almost any point of view and those who arranged it can be proud of the results.”

The audience was, if anything, even more enthusiastic than the experts. Many performers received heartfelt standing ovations, and the moving, quiet performance by the venerable Son House that closed the festival brought tears to the eyes of many. Dan Morgenstern wrote in Downbeat that “the performers – especially the veterans – were treated with respect that bordered on reverence. It added up to a kind of recognition that blues artists have seldom, if ever, received from their own people.”

For their part the performers were more than happy to bask in the unaccustomed glow of appreciation that the festival audience gave. To many it was the most amazing thing in which they had ever taken part. Michael Erlewine, a guitarist who played in a local blues band, helped out behind the scenes at the festival and had a chance to interview many of the performers. He recalls that James Cotton told him, “I’ve never seen nothin’ like this in my life. This is the beautifulest thing I ever seen in my life. This is so beautiful.”

B.B. King performing at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

Festival organizer Ken Whipple related a similar story to The Michigan Daily, about how he met B. B. King coming off the stage after finishing his set. “He put his arm around me,” Whipple said, “asked me my name and said what a great thing it was that he was able to be here. There were tears in his eyes. It’s the greatest thing in the world.”

It was also a sad fact that most of the performers were thrilled with the money. “The Blues Festival is a dream for some of these guys, not for the prestige but because they need the bread,” John Fishel told The Michigan Daily. “These guys will play two nights a week from 8 until 5 in the morning and only get $30. And even if they do get a chance to make a record, they usually get screwed.”

One of the more significant aspects of the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, in the opinion of music promoter Dick Waterman, was that it was the first to pay black bluesmen a commercial wage. “Others such as Newport, Berkeley, UCLA, Mariposa, et. al., insist on $50-a-day-plus-travel,” wrote Waterman in 1969, “which is fine for an act that is making a regular living – Baez, Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary – but hard on the bluesman who needs the festival for exposure but also needs it for actual living money.”

In this the Ann Arbor event served as an example to other music festivals, for even though the dozens of performers were paid a commercial wage, the first Ann Arbor Blues Festival not only recouped its original $70,000 investment, when all was said and done it had made a profit of about $200.

Ann Arbor Blues Part Deux

Following the unprecedented success of the first Ann Arbor Blues Festival, there was no question that there would be a second. There was a new group of organizers (including a few of the originals such as John Fishel), but they planned the second festival to be much the same as the first, on a slightly larger scale, given the bigger budget that was allotted by UAC and Canterbury House, who once again were sponsoring.

The success of the first festival brought more attention from the media for the second. The 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival was another astounding artistic success, a joyous experience for audience and performers alike that earned the raves of critics from Downbeat, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and newspapers across the country.

Financially, however, it was a disaster.

As early as Sunday afternoon, festival organizers realized that they were going to post a loss of nearly $20,000, an amount that would be ruinous to the sponsors.

The second festival appears to have suffered much more than the first at the hands of gate-crashers. It also had the bad luck of taking place the very same weekend as a giant rock festival near Jackson, at a park called Goose Lake. That event boasted an impressive roster of popular acts, including Chicago, Rod Stewart, Bob Seger, John Sebastian, and Jethro Tull, and would draw an estimated 200,000 attendees over three days. The Goose Lake Festival is an intriguing story in its own right – barbed wire, sanitation problems, emergency food deliveries, overzealous security, drugs being sold openly like concessions – but in relation to the Ann Arbor Blues Festival it is usually cast as the grinch who stole Christmas.

Undoubtedly, Goose Lake did have a negative impact on attendance at the Ann Arbor event. But in fact the figures seem to show that attendance at the second festival was roughly the same as the first. What must also be considered is that organizers spent more money on the second festival, and at the same time lowered ticket prices by almost 30%. This was done in hopes of attracting more attendees, but in hindsight may have been a critical mistake.

Moreover, the overwhelming success of the first festival, with its lineup of performers who were virtually unknown outside the world of blues freaks, may have led the planners to be a bit overconfident. Two weeks before the festival, The Washington Post reported that tickets would be limited to 15,000 “because festival organizers want to emphasize the music and not the event as a happening.” The Post quoted one of the organizers as saying – somewhat ominously, in light of what would happen – that they were trying to make the event “as esoteric as possible.”

This was perhaps not the wisest course of action, especially with so much money on the line.

Whatever the reason, however, the damage had been done, and the future of the festival was in peril. In hopes of making up the loss, and saving UAC and Canterbury House, festival organizers put out a plea for donations. They also turned to some high-profile blues-rockers for help. John Fishel explains:

“Johnny Winter came in 1970 as a guest, appeared back stage, hanging out. He then went on stage with Luther Allison, and they played together, to the delight of the audience. When the festival lost money, we went back to him and asked him if he would do a benefit.” Winter readily agreed, and played at the University of Michigan’s Crisler Arena a week later, along with some of the other performers from the festival. Fishel recalls that enough money was raised to make good the loss.

Fishel also remembers a tantalizing might-have-been. “We were also trying to get the Rolling Stones to come and we got pretty close. Their schedule didn’t allow them to do a benefit. Maybe if they had been there we would have raised sufficient money to not only pay the debt off, but also to continue the thing in ’71 and it might have been a different reality.”

As it was, despite the repayment of the loss, the university was not about to risk another such financial calamity, and the request for a third festival in 1971 was turned down. It seemed that the brilliant light that had shown on the blues in Ann Arbor the two previous years had been snuffed out.

Rainbows to the Rescue

All was not lost, however. John Sinclair was a hippie activist living in Ann Arbor who had come to national attention when in 1969 he was sent to prison for 10 years for giving two joints to an undercover policewoman. His unusually harsh sentencing became a cause célèbre, attracting such notables as Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Jane Fonda, and John Lennon. The two-year campaign to free him culminated in a huge rally at the University of Michigan’s Crisler Arena, at which Lennon, Bob Seger, Stevie Wonder and others performed.

Released from prison shortly thereafter, Sinclair was looking to get back into the fray, but perhaps in a less controversial way. In 1968 he had co-founded the White Panther Party, which was modeled on the Black Panthers, and adopted that group’s highly confrontational stance toward the mainstream American establishment – including, ironically enough, the condemnation of white culture espoused by the Black Panthers.

While Sinclair had been in prison, however, the White Panthers had softened their tone, and changed their name to the Rainbow People’s Party, reflecting a new outlook that promoted peace and brotherhood. Sinclair had been a fan of black music since early childhood, and reviving the artistically successful Ann Arbor Blues Festival seemed like a perfect project for the freshly-minted Rainbows.

So Sinclair joined forces with local music promoter Peter Andrews to form a company unconnected with the university, Rainbow Multi-Media, and put on a new festival. But this time around there would be no talk of being esoteric. Jazz, soul, and blues-rock were added to the bill, in hopes of attracting a wider audience, and bigger-name acts were booked, such as Ray Charles, Count Basie, Miles Davis, James Brown, Dr. John, Bonnie Raitt, and Booker T. & the M.G.’s.

The revamped Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival would run for three years, starting in 1972. Despite the changes instituted by Sinclair and Andrews, the new festivals would follow much the same course as the original two: each would be hailed as an artistic triumph, but financially would flop. After the disastrous 1974 festival, which had to be moved to Canada at the last minute because the newly-Republican Ann Arbor City Council refused to grant a permit, Sinclair called it quits. Once again it seemed that the light had gone out.

Ann Arbor Blues Redux

Peter Andrews had not given up, however. He kept the artistic ideals of the festival burning and in 1992 the Ann Arbor City Council was once again persuaded (without much difficulty: the vote was unanimous) to grant a permit for a revitalized Blues and Jazz Festival.

This time the festival would have its longest continuous run, surviving for nearly a decade and a half. But once again the familiar pattern would emerge: artistic success, financial failure. After the last festival in 2006 an accumulated debt of nearly $60,000 remained on the books.

The festival is now on what seems to be permanent hiatus. Peter Andrews is pessimistic about the possibility of another revival. There are too many blues and jazz festivals today, and to compete would require headliners that would make it nearly impossible to make money – a far cry from 1969, when Ann Arbor was host to the first major blues festival in history, and obscure but talented artists could draw a crowd.

The crowd at Fuller Flatlands for the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. (Photo courtesy of Bob Frank.)

Legacy

Although the Ann Arbor blues are no longer being sung, the festivals have left a rich legacy of which all can be rightfully proud. Especially the first two events, which brought together a lineup of blues maestros that had never been seen before – or will ever be seen again. The fact that the organizers were barely old enough to vote makes it all the more amazing.

John Fishel reflects on those early days with a mixture of pride and nostalgia. “I think the Ann Arbor Blues Festival did many things. It inspired the many blues festivals that came after. It resulted in a group of people who were primarily from Chicago creating a magazine, Living Blues, the first American magazine that was devoted to this type of music, a magazine that really became sort of the gold standard for those that were into it.”

“A number of labels were created as a result of the festival,” he continues, “people who came and got inspired because they heard people that they hadn’t heard before and went into the business, somebody like Bruce Iglauer, who created Alligator Records. It was a catalyst, which is wonderful.”

After a pause, he says simply, “It was magic.”

Alan Glenn is currently at work a documentary film about Ann Arbor in the sixties. Visit the film’s website for more information. While there you can contribute your memories of that time – and read those that others have contributed – in a public forum set up expressly for that purpose.

June 17, 1969: Officers confer as the crowd swarms on to South University. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

Ann Arbor, like many college towns, is usually a quiet place during the summer months. Most of the students are away on break, the university goes into hibernation, and a calm descends upon the city as residents sit back to enjoy a few months of peace and quiet.

During the turbulent 1960s the summer break was even more eagerly anticipated, offering as it did a brief respite from the regular succession of student-led sit-ins, protests, demonstrations, and strikes that occupied the fall and winter months. But the influx of large numbers of non-student “street people” (i.e., hippie youths) in the closing years of the decade made those last few summers of the ’60s decidedly less peaceful.

Forty years ago this week, the normally sleepy summertime streets of Ann Arbor were violently awoken by a series of violent and occasionally bloody clashes between police and a motley crowd of hippies, radicals, teenagers, university students, and town rowdies. Ostensibly at issue was the creation of a pedestrian mall, or “people’s park,” on South University Avenue – a four-block shopping district adjacent to the University of Michigan campus that caters primarily to a student clientele.

Even in those “interesting” times, the violence in Ann Arbor attracted national attention – including that of J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI. After the fighting was over, the national press lost interest and moved on to other, juicier topics. But on the local scene the repercussions of that summer would reverberate for years after.

The Detroit Free Press would refer to the four nights of conflict as “The Battle of Ann Arbor.”

The First Night

The existence of many widely-varying accounts makes it difficult to determine exactly what transpired during the disturbances. It seems that it all started at about 10 p.m. on Monday, June 16, when a uniformed Ann Arbor police officer attempted to ticket a motorcyclist for doing wheelies in the street. According to a report published by the White Panther Party, a locally-headquartered anti-establishmentarian organization, within a short time a group of around 50 street people gathered and began to quarrel with the officer, who called for backup. By the time the additional four patrol cars arrived, the increasingly hostile crowd had grown to nearly three hundred. The officers withdrew without ticketing the cyclist.

Exultant in their apparent triumph over the police, the crowd decided to hold a spontaneous “liberation party” in the street. A block of South University Avenue was barricaded by parked cars, garbage cans, tires, wooden planks, and other items ready at hand. The crowd, by this time swelled to anywhere from five hundred to a thousand, proceeded to enjoy several hours of dancing, drinking, fireworks, and motorcycle stunts. (One imagines that there was a certain amount of marijuana being smoked, as well.)

The Ann Arbor News reported that at some point during the evening a couple had engaged in “sexual relations…on the pavement of South University, surrounded by cheering young men and women.” Other newspapers also reported the event. The Washington Post stated that “at least one couple had performed the sex act in the street.” The Chicago Tribune went one better, reporting “two lewd acts in the street.” Interestingly, the UM student-run Michigan Daily, a paper not generally known for its modesty, does not appear to have reported “at least one overt sexual act” until more than two months later.

Damages resulting from the festivities were surprisingly minimal. A few slogans were painted on parking signs and windows, and one or possibly two windows were broken. Even more surprising, after the party broke up at around 1 a.m., a number of youths returned with brooms to sweep up debris from the street.

Shadow Police Presence

On this first night, a few plainclothes city police officers were sent to the South University area as observers. They made no attempt to interfere with the revelers, mainly because, as Detective Lieutenant Eugene Staudenmaeir told The Michigan Daily, police intervention would have caused an “instant riot.”

However, Ann Arbor Police Chief Walter Krasny did request that the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department and the Michigan State Police post in nearby Ypsilanti send additional officers on a standby basis. None of these were deployed on the evening of June 16. Two days later, The Daily would quote Krasny as stating that no police action was taken that first night because of “limited manpower.”

People’s Park

Almost exactly one month earlier, in Berkeley, California, attempts by an assorted group of radicals and hippies to turn a vacant lot into a communal garden and living space – dubbed People’s Park – were ruthlessly crushed with lethal force on the orders of Governor Ronald Reagan.

The events in Berkeley sent shock waves through the American Left, and were undoubtedly still fresh in the minds of many Ann Arbor radicals, including the White Panthers, who early on Tuesday issued a statement calling for the transformation of the South University shopping area into a pedestrian mall, or people’s park. Their choice of names was undoubtedly deliberate and intended to rouse local radicals to action by associating the events in Ann Arbor with those in Berkeley. The allusion worked so well (at least at first) that The Detroit News would claim that activists from Berkeley were behind the Ann Arbor disturbances.

Although a large proportion of Ann Arbor’s anti-authoritarians were in full agreement with the demand, some felt that it was an attempt to infuse a simple display of public merrymaking with a revolutionary significance that was simply not there. Student editorialists for The Michigan Daily asserted that “to most of the celebrants, the take-over was an act of care-free rebellion, not a means to obtain power, appropriate property, or even induce reform.”

The fact that police did not intervene on Monday night tends to add weight to the argument that local radical elements were – at least to some extent – attempting to manufacture an issue of contention between law enforcement and the countercultural community. There were also few, if any, substantive comparisons to be made between the events in Berkeley of a month earlier and the Monday night street party.

The Second Night

Many in the crowd on Monday night and early Tuesday morning were heard to say that they would attempt to hold another street party in the same place the next evening. As the day wore on rumors began to spread that something heavy would be going down in Ann Arbor on Tuesday night. The prospect of a street battle between hippies and police attracted people from all over Southeast Michigan to the South University area. Some came out of morbid curiosity. Others hoped for a chance to strike a blow at “the man.” Reporters and photographers from the Detroit papers and some farther afield descended upon the city, hoping to witness something newsworthy.

June 17, 1969: Youths confront officer on South University. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

None would go away disappointed – although some would have reason to regret their presence on South University that evening.

Word of the impending gathering quickly reached the ears of police. According to The Ann Arbor News, a group of high-ranking law-enforcement officials, including Washtenaw County Sheriff Douglas Harvey, Ann Arbor Police Chief Walter Krasny, and Prosecuting Attorney William Delhey, spent Tuesday afternoon “laying plans for a show of force if the ‘street liberations’” were to occur again. The police perspective was neatly summed up in a statement later made by Krasny: “We are going to control the streets of Ann Arbor and not give it to a bunch of people who think they own it.” City and university officials were apparently informed of the planned police actions well before the fact.

By the early evening of Tuesday, June 17, the South University area began to fill with people, many of whom were obviously gawkers attracted by expectations of violence. A force of nearly two hundred city police officers and county sheriff’s deputies had assembled at the east end of South University, near Washtenaw Avenue. Over a hundred additional officers were on their way, mostly from nearby agencies but some from as far away as Oakland County.

Minor confrontations between police and the crowd began around 8 p.m. By this time the gathered throng had swelled to over a thousand, with some estimates going as high as twenty-five hundred. Barricades were once again being erected, and many people were dancing and milling about in the street, blocking traffic. At around 9 p.m. Deputy Police Chief Harold Olson used a bullhorn to order the crowd to disperse. When that elicited little or no response, Olson instructed the riot-equipped officers to advance and clear the street.

June 17, 1969: Officers subdue an arrestee. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

As the wave of lawmen swept westward down South University, most of the crowd retreated, but some began to hurl rocks, bricks, and bottles. Sheriff Harvey ordered repeated blasts of tear gas fired into the area, apparently on discovering that projectiles were being thrown from rooftops.

In this first sweep it took about an hour for police to clear the street. Twenty-five people were arrested. After this, groups of officers moved about the area using night sticks and rifle butts to urge pedestrians to keep moving. The Michigan Daily reported that at two different times small contingents of police charged some distance into the UM campus to break up groups of students who had gathered there, at least once using smoke or gas. Some of the students who were set upon by officers claimed to have been simply leaving the library after an evening of study.

After the initial sweep the South University area remained relatively quiet until about midnight, when a crowd began to gather near to University of Michigan President Robben Fleming’s house. Fleming had emerged from his home some time earlier to try to mediate between the crowd and police. While Fleming was engaged in dialogue with the crowd, a passing contingent of officers launched a smoke bomb into the area, apparently without provocation.

June 17, 1969: An injured officer after having been hit by a projectile. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

The crowd near Fleming’s house soon swelled to around eight hundred. Police drew up shoulder-to-shoulder in battle formation to the east of where the youths were massing. Fleming spoke with Sheriff Harvey, urging restraint. Harvey made no effort to disguise his contempt for the president’s advice, reportedly calling Fleming a “smart ass.” Deputy Chief Olson, however, granted the president a few minutes to try to disperse the crowd peacefully. But when an officer was hit by a thrown brick, Harvey and Olson ordered their men to advance and “clear them out.”

Once again South University was engulfed in a conflict that would not have seemed out of place on a Stone Age battlefield – one side swinging clubs and the other hurling rocks. The retreating crowd soon broke into smaller groups that police chased down side streets. More tear gas was fired into the area, and an additional twenty-odd arrests were made.

It was all over by 2 a.m. In total, nearly 50 people had been arrested, about half of whom were charged with “contention in the street,” a misdemeanor. The other half were charged with violating Michigan’s new riot statute, put in place following the Detroit race riots of 1967. “Inciting a riot” was a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison and/or a fine of up to $10,000.

Not Chicago All Over Again – But Worse than Detroit

Shortly after the conclusion of Tuesday night’s fracas President Fleming issued a statement that was generally supportive of police actions but criticized of the use of tear gas, saying that “it tended to excite the crowd perhaps more than it helped.” Otherwise, he felt that “the police exercised remarkable restraint.”

June 17, 1969: University President Robben Fleming confers with Deputy Chief of Police Harold Olson. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

Ann Arbor Mayor Robert Harris was even more supportive of the constabulary, at least in his initial statements. In an open letter to the university community, he attempted to defuse anger at the police. “The sad events of last night were not a ‘police riot,’” he wrote. “They were not Chicago all over again.” Harris was referring to the infamous confrontations between police and demonstrators in the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Detroit News photographer James Hubbard disagreed with Harris’s assessment. Hubbard was present for most of the Tuesday night conflict, and condemned police conduct as “shocking and unbelievable,” saying by way of comparison, “I spent eighty hours on the streets during the 1967 Detroit riots and I never saw police behave that way.” Hubbard reported that he was clubbed several times on the legs and back, as were many other reporters and photographers. During the final sweep of South University Hubbard “saw 15 to 20 cops chasing one guy. One knocked the guy down and others ran up and began clubbing and kicking him.”

It must be noted, however, that for their part the demonstrators were not entirely innocent of violence. Fifteen police officers were reported to have been injured by projectiles, and some newsmen reported being hit with rocks thrown from the crowd. Deputy Chief Olson was struck in the chest and groin with rocks, and Sheriff Harvey suffered cuts from broken glass. At one point a number of incendiary devices – variously described as cherry bombs, fire bombs, or (improbably) Molotov cocktails – were launched at police, with one officer receiving a serious leg injury as a result. A seventeen-year old boy was also arrested and charged with felonious assault after allegedly attempting to stab Deputy Chief Olson.

Wednesday Afternoon Rally

Despite the fact that most reports placed very few university students among the rioters, in those days anti-authoritarian sentiment ran strong among the UM student body. A hastily-assembled alliance of campus radicals and student government officials called a rally for the afternoon of Wednesday, June 18, to collectively decide on what immediate action, if any, should be taken as a result of the previous night’s confrontations.

Nearly a thousand people attended the rally. A vote was taken as to whether or not the group should demand that South University be closed to make a pedestrian mall. By most accounts the result was a resounding “no.” Attendees were generally unreceptive to speakers who advocated for continuation of the confrontations with police, but many in the crowd showed an inclination toward further conflict.

The Third Night

Urgently desiring a peaceful end to the conflict, university and city officials decided to organize a rock concert on campus for the evening of June 18, hoping to draw people away from the South University area. The concert began at 8:30 p.m. in Jefferson Plaza in front of the university’s Administration Building, about half a mile from where the previous night’s altercations had occurred. More than two thousand people showed up for the free entertainment.

In addition to rock music, attendees also heard speeches by President Fleming and Mayor Harris. In his speech, Harris modified somewhat his position on the police actions of the previous night. He continued to defend the behavior of the Ann Arbor Police. But he boldly stated that he would not defend the actions of Sheriff Harvey or his deputies.

When several in the crowd shouted condemnations of the sheriff, Harris replied, “I share your concerns about Sheriff Harvey,” then added, “There is nothing I know that I can do about that problem.” As sheriff, Harvey had jurisdiction throughout the whole county, including the city of Ann Arbor, and was not subject to the oversight of city officials. Harris also promised to set up a committee to look into the creation of a pedestrian mall in the contested area.

June 18, 1969: Officers drawn up across East University Avenue. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

No police were in evidence at the concert. A short distance away, however, nearly three hundred lawmen from six different agencies lined the curbs of South University Avenue. An armored car with machine guns mounted in its turret sat menacingly in the street, and a police helicopter hovered watchfully overhead.

As the evening wore on, thousands of spectators made their way through the South University district, strolling the sidewalks or driving slowly by in their cars. But those hoping to witness another display of violence would be disappointed. The streets remained peaceful. A holiday atmosphere pervaded the area, with pedestrians chatting good-naturedly with law officers. By 11 p.m. the crowds had dwindled and the police withdrew.

Soon after the withdrawal, however, a crowd began once again to form in the street, blocking traffic. As the gathering swelled into the hundreds, university faculty and local clergy attempted to persuade the growing mass of people to break up and go home. Police were ordered back to the scene a little after midnight.

June 18, 1969: Police dog and armored car on South University. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

Nearly two hundred officers were deployed on either end of South University. Deputy Chief Olson ordered the crowd to disperse, then five minutes later signaled the advance. Police swept eastward and westward in a pincer movement, rifles leveled, bayonets fixed. The crowds were herded off South University and on to side streets. Around twenty additional arrests were made, with two civilian injuries reported. No injuries were reported among law enforcement personnel. By 2 a.m. the streets were all but deserted, and police left the area.

The Case of Dr. Edward Pierce

The conduct of both lawmen and demonstrators on Wednesday evening was markedly  less pugnacious than that of the previous night. But more tales of police brutality soon began to emerge, perhaps the most striking of which was that of Dr. Edward Pierce, a physician who had responded to a request from university students for a trained medical presence on the scene. In addition to being a doctor, Pierce was also a former city councilman and mayoral candidate, and had been chairman of the local Democratic Party.

Pierce said that without provocation police officers knocked him to the ground, struck him repeatedly with billy clubs, and dragged him for 30 yards along the pavement to the bus that served as a paddy wagon. The Ann Arbor News quoted an unnamed police official as stating that Pierce had “attempted to cross a line of officers,” an accusation which the doctor denied. Pierce was arrested and booked on a felony riot charge. Within a few hours he was released, the felony charge having been dropped for “lack of evidence.”

The Fourth Night

During the rock concert on Wednesday evening, city officials and university faculty had circulated among the crowd, engaging in open dialogue with the young people in attendance, urging calm. Encouraged by the relative success of these efforts, city officials decided to gamble that a contingent of civilian peacekeepers would be more effective at maintaining order than would another show of force by the police.

An agreement was reached between city government and law enforcement officials to keep 175 officers and state troopers on standby at a staging area near South University while city officials, university faculty, and White Panthers worked together to calm the crowd and keep the roadway clear. The evening of Thursday, June 19, would see no uniformed police presence on the streets.

Although the situation became tense at times, the results of the “no cops” approach cannot be called anything but successful. For the most part the streets were kept open. There was no violence other than what might be expected in a large crowd where alcohol was being consumed freely – and in which members of the God’s Children Motorcycle Club were present. Mayor Harris came twice to the area to talk with the gathered young people and urge them to go home. By midnight the crowds had thinned significantly. Around 2 a.m. it began to rain hard, sending the last few holdouts to seek cover.

The Battle of Ann Arbor was over.

About one month later, South University Avenue would be barricaded once more – but this time there would be no bayonet charges or tear gas barrages. It was the annual Street Fair, the tiny predecessor to today’s mammoth Ann Arbor Art Fairs. On the same four blocks where a month earlier rocks, bottles, and obscenities had been flying, and no little amount blood had been spilled, respectable townies mingled peacefully with the hippies, eating ice cream, browsing the art, and perusing sale merchandise on the sidewalk.

The Aftermath

That tranquil setting, however, belied the deep-seated animosity that continued to exist between conservative-minded townsfolk and the bohemian street people. Over the following weeks, the majority of the letters published in The Ann Arbor News about the South University disturbances were strongly pro-police or anti-hippie, often both. Some were quite passionate in their condemnation of the street people. One writer wanted to “form a Pied Piper Club to rid the town of rats,” i.e., hippies.

On the other hand, letters published by The Michigan Daily were almost universally anti-police, and especially anti-Harvey. The sheriff, who was known to have his men cut the hair of young people sent to the county jail, was the arch-enemy of much of the town’s non-conformist crowd. A recall effort directed against Harvey that had been mounted by radicals a week before was given a considerable boost by the South University affair.

June 19, 1969: Mayor Robert Harris circulates among the crowd on South University. (Photo courtesy of Jay Cassidy.)

The sheriff was not the only one to be loudly criticized for his actions during the disturbances, however. Mayor Robert Harris, in office barely two months when the streets exploded in violence, was attacked from both sides – from the right for not hitting the hippies hard enough, and from the left for not doing enough to hold back the police, especially Sheriff Harvey.

Harris was only the second Democrat to hold the office of mayor in Ann Arbor in nearly forty years. Soon after the riots, a Republican-led group called Concerned Citizens of Ann Arbor started its own recall campaign against the mayor and the Democrats on city council. Although none of these succeeded (neither did the recall of Sheriff Harvey), Republicans would win back the mayorship four years later, in part by playing off the Democrats’ supposed over-tolerance of hippie-led disturbances such as those on South University.

Harris, who had publicly criticized Harvey’s conduct during the disturbances, also found himself of the receiving end of reciprocal verbal assaults from the sheriff. Harris’s own city police force even turned against him, openly stating their dissatisfaction with his handling of the South University affair. Oddly, they seem to have been angry at not being allowed to put themselves in danger by forcefully clearing the street on Thursday night.

The Battle for Ann Arbor

The Battle of Ann Arbor, fought on a few blocks of city streets over four mild June nights in 1969, should probably be counted as a draw. The radicals and street people did not succeed in “liberating” South University. But the forces of law and order were not much more successful. Of the approximately seventy persons arrested during the fracas, only a handful were convicted, mostly of misdemeanors. Many charges were dismissed without trial. As near as can be determined, none of the more than thirty who were arrested on felony charges of inciting a riot were found guilty of such.

Ultimately the issue at stake was not the making of South University Avenue into a pedestrian mall. Rather it was a deeper conflict between two seemingly incompatible ways of life. The “straights” had made Ann Arbor their home for more than a century. The hippies had come to Ann Arbor only recently, but were now also calling it home. Each group wanted to the city to be a place where they could conduct their lives in the manner they thought best. Each felt the other was undermining their efforts.

The same situation was being played out to varying degrees in hundreds of towns and cities across the country during the 1960s. In Ann Arbor the conflict of long hair with short, new ideas with old, and youthful abandon with middle-aged restraint would last longer than in most other areas. In the decade following the South University conflicts, the balance of power would first tip one way, then the other. For example, Ann Arbor’s (in)famous “five-dollar pot law” would be enacted in 1972, then repealed in 1973, then reestablished as an amendment to the city charter in 1974. The city’s marijuana laws have remained a subject of contention ever since.

The Battle of Ann Arbor was only one part of a larger struggle, the Battle for Ann Arbor – a struggle that in some ways remains unresolved to this day.

About the writer: Alan Glenn is currently at work a documentary film about Ann Arbor in the ’60s. Visit the film’s Web site for more information. While there you can contribute your memories of that time – and read those that others have contributed – in a public forum set up expressly for that purpose.

A popular button made by U-M student activists to promote their March 1970 teach-in and its tie-in to Earth Day. (Courtesy of John Russell)

The sudden swelling of tension and conflict seen across the nation in early 1970 was also occurring in Ann Arbor. In February, the University of Michigan chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized a series of spirited protests against campus recruiters representing corporations such as General Electric that were supplying material for the war in Vietnam. At one of these “recruiter actions,” thirteen protesters were arrested following a street battle with police.

At the same time, a coalition of African-American student groups calling itself the Black Action Movement (BAM) were demanding that the university take immediate steps to increase black enrollment, and threatening a campus-wide strike if their demands were not met. (Eventually, BAM would call the strike, shut down the university for ten days, and win accession to all their demands.) On top of this were almost daily smaller protests and demonstrations on the war, women’s lib, gay rights, tenant’s rights, and nearly all the other sociopolitical issues of the day.

It was into this maelstrom that a group of U-M natural science students dove when they decided to set about organizing a teach-in on the environment, the latest movement to emerge in a nation awash in movements. The students initially desired to keep the teach-in apolitical, sober, and focused on science. In the highly charged atmosphere of the time, such a goal would prove impossible. Ironically, though, the eventual politicization of the teach-in would prove to be a significant factor in making it the watershed event it would ultimately become.

Dead Lakes and Burning Rivers

The environmental movement had taken root as far back as the nineteenth century, but it wasn’t until the middle of the twentieth that it truly began to flower. Environmental awareness built slowly but steadily throughout the fifties and sixties, and then all at once exploded in 1969 following a series of high-profile environmental disasters – a huge oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, Lake Erie being proclaimed “dead,” and Ohio’s Cuyahoga River catching fire (again), among others. Ecologists who had for years been fighting to get their concerns about the environment into the national spotlight suddenly found their voices being heard.

One of the most powerful of those voices was that of U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. In September 1969 Nelson announced his idea for a nationwide protest against the degradation of the environment. Following the lead of the anti-war movement, he proposed a massive series of teach-ins to take place on college campuses the following spring, intended to make Americans more aware of the deadly seriousness of the multitude of threats then facing the environment. (The majority of which, sad to say, are still with us nearly forty years later.)

A button for the group Environmental Action for Survival. (Courtesy of John Russell)

Nelson’s announcement reached the ears of a small group of energetic U-M natural science students – soon to adopt the name Environmental Action for Survival, or ENACT – while they were already hard at work on their own teach-in event. It was an idea that was occurring to many people around that same time. Bill Manning, who was one of those original U-M students and is now the managing partner of an organic food-processing company, sees an analogy with a pan of popcorn. “You have kernels that have been heated up,” he explains, “and all of a sudden a whole bunch of them start to go off, almost simultaneously.”

ENACT quickly made contact with Nelson’s group in Washington. “Once we found out about the committee in D.C., we were perfectly happy to start working with them, and share back and forth,” remembers Manning. For its part, the national group recognized the value and importance of what was taking place at Michigan and invited forestry student Doug Scott, co-chairman of ENACT, to sit on their board. Scott, now Policy Director for the Campaign for America’s Wilderness, was one of only two students so engaged. (This was before student activist Denis Hayes was hired to coordinate the national effort.)

One of the first tasks facing the national organization was to choose a date for the proposed mass teach-ins. They settled on April 22 – “Earth Day,” as it would eventually be named – largely because that date fell optimally between spring break and final exams for most American colleges. (The fact that it is also Lenin’s birthday is apparently a complete coincidence.) But the University of Michigan operated then as now on a trimester system, with April 22 falling right in the middle of finals. As a result, the U-M environmental teach-in was scheduled for mid-March 1970.

The fact that it took place more than a month prior to national Earth Day has led to the misconception that the ENACT teach-in launched Earth Day, or that U-M was host to the first Earth Day celebration. In fact there were environmental events on other campuses as early as December 1969. But that does not in any way diminish the importance of the Ann Arbor event, which was to have a huge influence on the course of what has been called the largest mass demonstration in American history – Earth Day 1970, in which an estimated 20 million people participated.

“The University of Michigan teach-in was not the first or even the second or third – a few small liberal arts colleges had environmental teach-ins in January and February 1970,” says Adam Rome, a professor of history at Penn State who is working on a book about Earth Day. ”But the Michigan event was by far the biggest, best, and most influential of the pre-Earth Day teach-ins. The media gave it tremendous coverage. It was the first sign that Earth Day would be a big deal.”

Make No Small Plans

The members of ENACT knew that Earth Day was going to be a big deal long before their teach-in took place. In the fall of ’69 someone in the group came up with a catchy slogan, based on a John Lennon song that had debuted in July: “Give Earth a Chance.” “We started making buttons using the slogan, with our contact number carefully printed on the rim of the button,” remembers Doug Scott. ”We had a button-making machine at first, but then had to order frequently from a button maker. We had an incredible demand – thousands and thousands of buttons – from beyond Ann Arbor, with orders from all over the place.”

After that things started to snowball, and the event began to develop a will of its own. “When the conditions are right, an idea can spread like wildfire, and that’s pretty much what happened,” says Bill Manning. More and more people became involved. Money began to pour in, from local sources and others farther afield, including such unlikely benefactors as Dow Chemical, which contributed $5,000. ENACT would eventually raise an astonishing $70,000 to support their teach-in (a number made even more astonishing when it is adjusted for inflation and becomes nearly $400,000 today). They raised so much money that they weren’t able to spend it all.

David Allan, then a natural science graduate student and now Acting Dean of the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment, marvels at the memory of the way events developed. “A lot of what is amazing about the teach-in is that it wasn’t that hard,” he says. “It just kind of happened, in this very organic way. We were able to get venues, we were able to get funding. The media came to us. A lot of things just kind of came together.”

As fall passed into winter, ENACT began to hold “mini-events” on campus and around town. The positive response to these events encouraged them to push the boundaries. “Make no small plans” became their motto. The national Earth Day group actually started getting a little worried, according to Bill Manning. “They were very concerned that we were so far ahead that we might dominate the whole Earth Day activities simply by our event being in March.”

But ENACT had no intention of holding back. The ambitiousness of their plans drew the attention of leading figures in industry, media, science, and government. Across the country, many eyes were turned toward Ann Arbor, watching with great interest to see how the teach-in would come off. Many in industry were undoubtedly hoping for a humiliating failure. But even the anxious ecologists who had their fingers crossed for success weren’t expecting it to turn out the way it did.

The “ENACT Teach-In on the Environment,” as it was officially titled, was a staggering success, attracting more people and attention than anyone could have imagined. An estimated 50,000 attendees were drawn to the more than 125 seminars, speeches, workshops, panels, symposia, debates, forums, rallies, demonstrations, films, field trips, concerts, and colloquia that unfolded over five days at locations on campus and all around town. “There’d never been anything like this,” says John Russell, a teacher at Pioneer High who sat on the ENACT steering committee. “We had sessions where we were shutting the doors and turning people away.”

Events ran from the early morning until well after midnight, on topics such as overpopulation – “Sock It to Motherhood: Make Love, Not Babies” – the future of the Great Lakes, the root causes of the ecological crisis, and the effect of war on the environment. More than sixty major media outlets covered the action, including all three American television networks and a film crew from Japan. It was the biggest such event that had yet been seen in Ann Arbor – and coming as it did at the tail end of the sixties, it would be one of the last.

A poster promoting the 1970 teach-in in Ann Arbor. (Courtesy of John Russell)

At the kickoff rally around 14,000 people paid fifty cents to crowd into Crisler Arena and listen to speeches by Senator Gaylord Nelson, Michigan governor William Milliken, radio personality Arthur Godfrey, and ecologist Barry Commoner, and groove to the music of Hair and Gordon Lightfoot. Another 3,000 who couldn’t get in listened on loudspeakers that were hastily set up in the parking lot.

Other events from the teach-in which stand out today include the driving of an all-electric car by Godfrey from Detroit to Ann Arbor at posted speeds on I-94; a panel at Pioneer High attended by 4,000 in which Dow Chemical president Ted Doan was mercilessly heckled but stood his ground, earning a measure of grudging respect from the crowd; the demolition of a broken-down old car on the U-M Diag by a crowd of sledgehammer-wielding students; and provocative speeches by Ralph Nader, environmental lawyer Victor “Sue the Bastards!” Yannacone, and radical ecologist Murray Bookchin, among others.

And then, after five days of almost non-stop activity and little sleep, it was over. Organizers were left feeling both elated and mournful. “A couple of us were clearing out the office when Luther Carter from Science magazine walked in,” remembers Doug Scott. “He remarked, almost in passing, that neither of us would ever again organize anything reaching that scale. For some reason, that really struck home.”

But the ENACT teach-in wasn’t actually quite finished. The events and people from Ann Arbor continued to exert a strong influence on the other Earth Day activities taking place that spring. James Swan, a member of the ENACT steering committee who was also a part-time folksinger and guitarist as well as being the de facto entertainment coordinator for the teach-in, went on to have a hand in twenty-two other teach-ins on campuses around the country in the weeks leading up to April 22. Others who had worked on the Ann Arbor event did the same.

The influence of ENACT reached even farther when the national Earth Day committee started sending out a description of the Ann Arbor event to those inquiring about how to organize their own teach-in. Closer to home, the legacy of that original ENACT team can still be felt today, mainly in the form of the Ann Arbor Ecology Center. Using money left over from the teach-in, group members – many of whom would soon graduate and move away – organized the Ecology Center in order to leave something permanent behind in the community.

Becoming Politicized

One of the most remarkable aspects of the ENACT teach-in was how it managed to include most of the major sociopolitical issues of the day, as well as environmental science, under the wide blanket of ecology. The planners of the teach-in went to great lengths to make the event as inclusive as possible. The war, women’s liberation, racial equality, and social justice were made part of the discussion to show how these issues were interconnected with the environment.

Apparently it was the more radical elements of the campus community who were most responsible for bringing these broader political issues to the teach-in. Stephen Sporn was a member of SDS who was studying environmental psychology when not picketing campus recruiters or attending anti-war demonstrations. He also sat on the ENACT steering committee. “Most of the committee would have felt more comfortable listening to Lawrence Welk than Jefferson Airplane,” says Sporn with a laugh. “I played the role of the ‘token’ radical. It seemed like my job was to push the envelope way past what was acceptable and hope for something else in the compromise.”

The presence of firebrands such as Sporn resulted in planning meetings that could quickly become heated. “The steering committee represented a broad diversity of the campus, politically and academically,” explains James Swan. Young Republicans could find themselves seated next to left-wing radicals fresh from a protest march. “Some of the meetings were pretty passionate,” says Swan. “I remember one that almost became a brawl.”

Sporn, now a naturopathic physician, recalls an argument that developed over whether or not to sponsor a panel on how the war in Vietnam was affecting the environment there. “The steering committee viewed the tie-in to the war as too much, too alienating, and felt that it would upset the public and be too far-reaching for the teach-in,” he says. Ultimately a panel on the war would be organized, and made part of the major series of events scheduled for the last day of the teach-in.

Over the course of the ENACT teach-in, it was the events that were of an edgier, more provocative nature that tended to be best attended and receive the greatest attention from the media, and therefore presumably had the biggest impact. In addition to the car smash, which attracted the most television coverage, another widely-reported event consisted of a march to the Coca-Cola bottler on South Industrial Avenue by a group of students who dumped 10,000 non-returnable bottles and cans on the lawn. (They later picked them up and put them in the trash.)

Also, judging by newspaper reports, it was the more radical speakers, such as Murray Bookchin and Ralph Nader, who made the greatest impression. Their speeches called for dramatic lifestyle changes and even a complete restructuring of society, something that resonates today as the same things are being proposed once again as possibly the only lasting solution to climate change and the other environmental threats we presently face.

Given the tremendous wave of environmental concern then sweeping the country, as well as the vast sum of money they were able to raise and the caliber of the speakers they were able to recruit, the ENACT teach-in was almost certain to be a big draw. But it was the politicization of the event – the radical influence that widened its scope to include many of the crucial issues of the day, and show their interconnectedness – that made the teach-in something that even conservative Business Week could admire, calling it “a remarkable series of debates on America’s values and political systems, all under the umbrella of environment.”

Everybody Get Together Right Now

Of course it wasn’t just the moderates and conservatives whose views were modified by their participation in the teach-in. The radicals learned the art of compromise and also that the environment was as important as the other sociopolitical issues of the time. Today it is a marvel to see the way these normally combative groups came together in a coalition for the common good. In some ways the America of the sixties was less divided than it is now.

Bill Manning sees an important lesson to be learned from Earth Day 1970. “There is nothing to be gained by further fragmenting the world we live in and exacerbating existing adversarial relationships; it seems pretty clear that more antagonism only leads to more conflict, not enduring and effective solutions,” he says. “At the most basic level, if we take care of the process, workable and healthy solutions are far more likely to emerge. And really, isn’t this our experience in all our relationships, from the most intimate to the larger circles we are connected to?”

About the author: Alan Glenn is currently at work a documentary film about Ann Arbor in the sixties. Visit the film’s Web site for more information. While there you can contribute your memories of that time – and read those that others have contributed – in a public forum set up expressly for that purpose.