Claudia Selmer:OK there we go now we are recording. Alright, well I am Claudia Sommer interviewing a Catherine Aiken- is that how you pronounce it? "Aiken?"-
CS:-interviewing Katherine Aiken. Before we begin, participation in this project is voluntary and you may withdraw at any time. The duration of the interview will vary up to 60 minutes. This interview will be recorded in transcribed a copy of each will be made available to you upon your request. The recording of this interview may contain material which material to which you hold copyright to. You may transfer copyright of this material to the regents of the University of Idaho then they may then be preserved by the Special Collections and archives at the library.
The University of Idaho students, faculty, and staff, as well as researchers visiting the special collections and archives may use the interview for any research, educational, promotional, or other purposes deemed appropriate. And finally, the University of Idaho library will preserve the interview, and transcript. The interview will be made publicly accessible through the UI library for scholarly and historical purposes including potentially through its website. Do you agree to these terms?
CS:Perfect. Alright, let's begin. So, when, and where were you born?
[00:01:31]
KA:I was born in Sunnyside, WA in September 1951.
CS:Alright, did you have any siblings growing up?
KA:I have two younger sisters and a younger brother.
CS:And you grew up with your parents or?
CS:Okay, perfect. So, what was the broader culture of your community like growing up?
KA:So, Sunnyside was a very small town at the time, I think about six thousand people. It's a farming community, pretty kind of typical small town, the way people think of small towns. Mostly white people, there certainly were Hispanics who engaged in agricultural work, but they were pretty much excluded from society. A few attended schools many of them were migrants.
CS:Okay, how would you describe yourself growing up during this time?
KA:I think I had a very typical 1950s lifestyle. I indicated that I lived with my mother and father, my father was an attorney my mother was a homemaker. We were part of that mainline religious denomination [inaudible]. We did sports and campfire, typical kinds of activities. It's very typically 1950s-ish for white, middle-class people.
CS:Okay, you mentioned some sports and some other activities, were there any other hobbies you were particularly interested or passionate about?
KA:I read a lot, I liked music.
CS:Okay, what do you remember about your education at this time?
KA:So, I mean I went to public school with the same people that- I went to public school with a lot of the same people from first grade to high school. I think it was a very traditional education. I don't recall people discussing controversial topics, rather the literature we read in the history we studied was kind of standard and straightforward. There was nothing very exceptional about the educational process.
CS:So, you mentioned earlier that you enjoyed some music what was the sort of music or other forms of media that you were consuming?
[00:04:51]
KA:So, the big thing when I was in high school was listening to the radio, and like one of the things was that there was a program at night where people could dedicate songs to one another, and that was big topic of conversation at high school. I guess we listened to it we would now call rock'n'roll, and the radio is the main way that we did that. We also actually had records, we bought records and played them on a record player.
CS:Was there any other books or movies that were also particularly popular or interesting to you or your friends?
CS:Do you mind me asking who that is?
KA:[Laughs] My daughter recently had twins, Daniel and Elizabeth, and that was Daniel. He was making his presence known at this point in time.
KA:Well, there's no question that rock'n'roll is a defining element of American social change and culture, it's really the first music that is generational. I mean, I think- and generation before for example, people listened to Frank Sinatra but, young people and their parents listened to that. But, rock and roll, parents had no interest in listening to it, so it was- it was young people's music that's why I think that's [inaudible]. We also- when we think of the beginning- I should of thought of this -- of the television age, I remember when we first got television there was one channel it wasn't on all day was only on certain times- sporadically.
CS:Do you think that really like highlighted like- or not really highlighted, but do you think that changed the way like your family viewed the outside world in anyway [in terms of television?]
[00:07:47]
KA:I'm not so sure it changed how we viewed the outside world, but we did watch television as a family, and since there is only - we watched it together, usually. And we watched the nightly news, it was only 15 minutes long, I can remember watching Ed Sullivan, I can remember watching Bananza. Oh and Walt Disney.
CS:Ok, so kind of continuing on with that do you remember any particular major historical events um of around that time period?
KA:I remember lots of them. I remember Martin Luther King's assassination; I remember Robert Kennedy's assassination. I remember the first man on the moon, that was such a -- it doesn't seem like it's so revolutionary now, but my grandmother was in her 80s at the time- she literally lost her mind after we landed on the moon. She couldn't fathom that somebody could be on the moon. She was born in the 19th, late 19th century and so she had seen so many changes with automobiles and transportation, but she just couldn't fathom that someone could actually be on the moon. I remember Woodstock. I remember- I remember that I was at the University of Idaho when Richard Nixon had forces invade Cambodia, so I guess I remembered the 1968 election quite well.
CS:Well, kind of relating to that question, did these events directly impact you or your community?
KA:Well, I mean, 1968 is an incredibly difficult year for America, and I mean everyone was certainly aware. And as I look back, the one that had the most impact obviously was Martin Luther King's death, it had a big impact on and continues to sort of be a catalyst for thinking about questions of race. Although you know, there was one negro family - one African American family in Sunnyside, so it wasn't like that was the big issue that impacted me. And as I reflect as a historian, I think if Robert Kennedy had not been assassinated American history would have been dramatically different.
CS:Hm, okay. So, it seems like you're pretty aware of what was going on at the time, so I mean-
KA:Yeah, I mean- [laughs] it was pretty hard to not be aware and to notice those kinds of things!
CS:Yeah, so kind of going off of that that, what were the specific social and political movements that you really focused on or really heard a lot about during this time period?
KA:Well, I think- I think about mostly all of them is that young people play a major role in every one of these movements that in a way that as a historian looking back is really quite remarkable, and so certainly the civil rights movement and lots of college students went to Mississippi and elsewhere, I mean we are certainly aware of that. The women's movement turned out to be really important to me, of course, later on and people began to notice that. Because there were Hispanics in Sunnyside Cesar Chavez's activities were very prominent in Sunnyside.
He visited Sunnyside several times and united farm workers, so that movement was important in Sunnyside. I think Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty had a big impact, it [Sunnyside] had one of the first head start programs because it had Hispanics in the area. I think that was important. I guess those would certainly be the ones- although not as much as it later was, but I think environmental questions were important with Earth Day and- and that. Although, in Sunnyside we seemed further removed from that. I think from some of the others.
CS:Yeah, how did you feel about these movements at the time? Like were there any that you were particularly supportive of or any that you didn't really care for?
[00:13:36]
KA:So- [Laughs] my family are liberal social reform type Democrats, so there were no big objections. Although my father was a World War Two veteran, and early on he was pretty supportive of the Vietnam War, as I think were most Americans because it was the patriotic thing to do. But certainly, by the time I got to the University of Idaho in 1969 people were beginning to have questions and by the time of Cambodia, then there were even bigger questions, so. Being against the war was one of the things I did, I was interested in the Woman's Movement.
I was intellectually supportive of African American rights, but at the University of Idaho there weren't very many African Americans, besides Sunnyside so it wasn't as if well, I was in favor of civil rights- it didn't have a big direct impact on people at the University of Idaho cause there weren't very many minorities there as you might imagine- there are very many minorities now, so you can imagine in 1969 how few there were.
CS:So, you talked a little bit about how your family kind of viewed politics generally- like how your family seemed like more supporting of certain movements during this time- did you or your family have any specific feelings about the political leaders of this time period?
[00:15:07]
KA:So, I mean there certainly were conservative people in Sunnyside, it has big John Birch group and there were certainly conservatives at the University of Idaho. But, my family, as I said was pretty liberal minded and was generally in favor. My mother grew up in Washington, DC so she recalled vividly when the white swimming pools were desegregated, and kind of impact of that. She always told this story that she didn't know that chickens had and other parts because in Washington, DC, only breasts and thighs were sold where white people shopped, and all the other parts were sold where African American shopped.
So, I was a part of conversations about race, but as I said, there were not African Americans in Sunnyside or at the University of Idaho. So, my family was in favor of equality, but it was not an issue that we confronted. Although, there was a significant Hispanic community in Sunnyside, and my father's law practice catered to Hispanics when a lot of other lawyers would not provide service for them. So, I was aware of that, but I was not really a part of that.
CS:Okay, alright. So, kind of relating to the general politics of the time, what were your thoughts on the Vietnam War?
KA:So as I said, when I was in high school, it was generally sort of patriotic to think about it, but it soon became pretty clear to me that it was not a war that we should be involved in, and I think like a lot of young people, I believe that politicians were forcing my friends to go die in Vietnam for reasons that were not clear to me certainly, and I don't think they were very clear to them either. And it just seemed like war that was endless in a lot of ways, with no real goals or purpose as far as I was concerned.
CS:Okay. Did it change the way that you viewed the United States in any way, like as a global superpower or just generally?
[00:18:19]
KA:Well, I guess I would say that I'm not sure it changed the United States being a superpower but, it was clear we were not winning that war, and you would think the superpower would win that war. But I think it was because we had no real purpose or motive to be there in the lot of ways, and I think one of the reflect upon it I think young people really thought they could stop the United states from being involved in the war if they objected and protested, which they did throughout a lot of the 60s and into the 70s. But in the final analysis, I'm not sure that any of those protests had any impact on when the war ended. I think politicians made those decisions in all of that effort movement real limited impact on American foreign policy.
CS:So, did you know anybody particularly, like especially once you started going to college, who was involved in any anti-war protests or any young men who were particularly against it?
KA:I went to several protests. When I think about it now, they were very unkind, like one of the signs I remember seeing at the University of Idaho, which was seen elsewhere as well, said: "LBJ, pull out now like your mother should have," which looking back now was a very unkind and ungracious thing to say to the president, I guess I didn't think of it then. I knew lots of people, myself who were in anti-war demonstrations. One of my husband closest friends was killed in Vietnam, Bobby Dunbar. And one of my [inaudible] friends, [inaudible,] went to Vietnam, he came back addicted to heroin, he never really was right after that.
Those were a couple of examples. So, most everyone knows someone who was involved in the war. And certainly, it was very common at University of Idaho when I first went, you still get a student deferment, and so men were always telling their professors I need to get this grade so I can keep my student deferment. That was a common thing. And it was while I was at the University of Idaho that the lottery went into effect, and I could remember us sitting and waiting hear the dates and the numbers to see who was going to have a low lottery number. My boyfriend at the time his number at the time was in the two-hundreds so...
CS:So, this is the last question that I have. What would you say was the one of the larger social changes that you saw growing up and entering into adulthood that affected the people around you and yourself the most?
KA:Well as a historian, I think the Civil Rights Movement is perhaps certainly very impactful. But on a personal level the Women's Movement has a big impact on me, I mean I couldn't have had the kind of career I had or done the things I did without the Women's Movement. When I graduated from the University of Idaho and went to graduate school at the University of Oregon, all of the papers still listed the positions: jobs for men jobs and jobs for women.
And that has been a really big change. And I think the Civil Rights Movement, people- I mean seeing African Americans on television doing more things and being part of society. Like I always think when I watched pictures of early space travel for example, every person in the control room was a white man in a suit. Well, it was a lot different after that. And I think those changes have dramatically changed the way American society and culture operated.