Colleges and universities across the country now facing backlash from
both sides over the swell of pro Palestinian campus protests.
anti-Semitism, many schools cracking down as those reports of anti-Semitism
grow.
At Columbia University in New York,
negotiations continuing with students. They gave them another 48 hours
to set up a
pro Palestinian encampment of smaller size without outside agitators.
Arguably, the deadline extended now to tomorrow
to dismantle it, all of it very reminiscent on different
issues.
Of course. It was Vietnam of
Colombia's 1968 protests against that war.
One woman who had a front row seat to the
turbulence of the
1960s is presidential historian Doris Kearns.
Goodwin, who was a White House fellow,
worked directly with President Lyndon Johnson,
later helping him with his memoir When He Left the
White House.
She takes us, takes us through all of it and
so much more.
In her new book, An Unfinished Love Story,
A Personal History of the 1960s,
Doris Kearns Goodwin joins me now.
This is just amazing because we've all
read everything that you've written about,
you know, the Roosevelts, about Lincoln.
You know all of your other histories.
This is so personal, and I did not know so
much about it.
And you went back
into the archives that you and your husband had and
did the research.
But it's it's also a book about the 60s
in so many ways. It was such an extraordinary decade.
And he had saved everything,
300 boxes over all 40 years.
But he didn't want to open them because the 60s
ended so sadly with the deaths of Martin Luther King
and Bobby Kennedy,
the riots, campus violence. Finally he turns 80 and he
said,
we, I've been waiting and waiting for this to happen.
And it meant that we relived the decade from beginning
to end.
We promised we would not know what happened later so
that you wouldn't be sad at the beginning.
When you start with JFK growing into power,
you go to LBJ and the Great Society and voting
rights,
and you finally get up to Bobby Kennedy and Eugene
McCarthy.
And it was a different time from now.
I mean, their kids were powered by that conviction.
They could make a difference.
Think about all those people who marched against segregation,
against the denial of the vote,
the civil rights movement and it worked.
I mean tumbling down discriminatory systems of segregation and voting
rights.
So there was a feeling of of belief in the
power and then even with the anti war movement,
you know, they got Lyndon Johnson to agree on March
31st to negotiate and to stop the bombing and he
pulled out of the race.
So it's much more complicated and nuanced today,
but this was a time I wish young people could
look back at and take some hope from,
from the fact that if you do it right,
it can make a difference.
And your husband was with JFK,
he was in that inner circle
with JFK and then Bobby Kennedy with him when the
horrible when the assassination happened.
And you had your roots in the Johnson White House
as a White House fellow.
And there was that tension between
LBJ after the assassination of JFK and the Attorney General,
the brother, a lot of tension which ended up,
you know, resulting in a presidential campaign which LBJ had
always feared would happen.
And it really was a tension that was through our
marriage as well,
because he was so loyal to the Kennedys.
That excitement of being on the Kennedy plane in 1960,
a very small prop plane when you're part of that
team and being with him in the White House,
and of course being in the White House the night
his body was brought back,
and then becoming so close to Jackie and to Robert
Kennedy so that always through his life he was the
JFK guy.
I was loyal to Lyndon Johnson because I worked with
him,
as you say, helped him on his memoirs.
It was the foundation of my presidential history career because
of him.
So we would argue all the time.
I would say yeah, but JFK didn't get any of
those programs through.
It was only LBJ who didn't.
Yeah, but he'd say JFK inspired the country.
We finally came to. Of course,
what we should have known all along emotionally,
which is that they neither one would have been as
great without the other.
They they they were braided together in their legacies.
1 inspired and one made things happen.
I mean, I think that's the unique perspective,
not only in your marriage,
obviously the extraordinary marriage, but in this book about that
relationship.
Yeah, I, you know, I I really do think that
when you look at the decade,
first of all, I don't think Kennedy would have ever
become president if he hadn't made
LBJ his vice president. But more importantly the moon shot
he inspired.
But it was LBJ who was able to get all
the work done to make it happen.
I I ended up with respect for both of them.
I mean think about that decade we're leading.
We've got large leaders. Many people want to go into
public life.
Young people feel a trust in the government.
Obviously, the escalating war took some of that trust away
and the credibility.
But during the heyday of that,
it was so great to be young and be alive.
I was an intern in 63.
I was at that March on Washington.
I'll never forget what that experience was like,
to be carrying a sign.
Protestants, Jews and Catholics unite for civil rights.
There was a feeling you were making the country better.
And you really were when you think of what the
Great Society did.
Voting rights, Civil rights, immigration reform,
NPR, PBS, Aid to the Cities,
Pollution Patrol. Incredible. And we've seen so much of it
come apart.
The Peace Corps, importantly, that's part of my families
service and the feeling of,
you know, volunteerism. We have a whole cohort of people
in the Senate now aging out who were inspired by
that,
participated in that. We're in either,
you know, volunteerism, you know,
we have Jay Rockefeller and other,
you know, great senators in the past.
We're all part of that Moynihan bridging that gap.
I mean think just think about it
so true. I mean, it really was a signature of
the Kennedy years
and my husband was there at the moment when it
was born at the University of Michigan,
when all that JFK did was to say how many
of you would be willing to go to Ghana for
a couple years,
3 minute speech. That was it.
He was just overtired and was going to go to
sleep.
But 10,000 kids were waiting.
The kids took up the challenge.
They got a pledge from 1000 people on the University
of Michigan campus that they would join this nonexistent Peace
Corps.
And then it's born. And it was a symbol of
the era,
I think. And I was just thinking also,
I recently looked at a clip from
LBJ's commencement address at Howard University talking about the the
importance of affirmative action and how you can't just expect
people
to all of a sudden,
okay, you've got the right to vote.
All of a sudden you've got the right to sit
at a lunch counter and now expect them to be
able to thrive in society.
They have to have help to catch up.
And what he understood there was a metaphor.
You can't take a person to the beginning of a
race
and expect them to compete when they've been structurally held
back for all that time.
And another extraordinary thing, he said,
was that men and women are born with the same
range of abilities,
but they're stunted or stretched by the neighborhood you grow
up in,
the family you live with,
in the school you go to.
So it was an attempt really,
to understand that social and economic problems have to follow
legal challenges.
As you say, the victories were made legally,
but it was much more to find the full blessings
of life to people who were hurt by poverty or
race.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, An unfinished love story.
It's unfinished in so many ways,
but it's just fabulous. Congratulations.
I'm so glad that you're reading it.
It's and it's so romantic.
That too. About America as well as my husband.
Yes, indeed. Thank you. Thank you.