David H. Green ’71
Dartmouth College Oral History Program
Dartmouth Vietnam Project
August 9, 2017
Transcribed by Mim Eisenberg/WordCraft
[CLAIRE P.]
RAFSON: This is Claire [P.] Rafson with the Dartmouth Vietnam Project. It is about 2:15 p.m., and today is Wednesday, August 9th, 2017. I’m here in Rauner Special Collections Library speaking with David [H.] Green.
David, thank you so much for coming out and agreeing to talk to me and be a part of this project.
GREEN: I’m very excited to be here.
RAFSON: It’s my pleasure.
GREEN: Okay.
RAFSON: So let’s start from the beginning. So why don’t you tell me a little bit about, you know, where you’re from, your family, growing up?
GREEN: I grew up in a pretty middle-class family in Baltimore [Maryland], and, gee, as a kid I—I—I was always interested in—in two things: sports and politics. And I had some—some real teachers and mentors in both of those, and those people kind of led me to apply to Dartmouth. And so, you know, that was my first time getting out of my cocoon of the Mid-Atlantic states, coming up to New England, so I came to Dartmouth, and that’s where all this stuff started.
RAFSON: Yeah. So let’s—let’s stay back in the childhood for a second.
GREEN: Oh, okay.
RAFSON: So—you know, so talk to me about this cocoon of the Mid-Atlantic states. What do you mean by that?
GREEN: Well, I didn’t travel much, so I didn’t really have experiences outside of the Baltimore area pretty much, which was okay. It was big enough for me then. It’s not big enough for me now, but I think a lot of people have that experience, and I really wanted to go to college somewhere else, where I could, you know, have different—can enlarge my world a bit.
So let’s see, while I was in Baltimore, I went to a public high school, and I was involved in some community action projects, like a tutoring project for inner-city kids. I was chairman of a teenage March of Dimes campaign to raise money to fight against birth defects. I was president of my high school, played—played varsity lacrosse at my high school, and I was a member of a very unique boys club called the Lancers Boys Club, not affiliated with, you know, the national boys clubs or anything; it was just a—it was a group of guys, and we were led by a brilliant—a brilliant leader who was my mentor, Judge Robert [I. H.] Hammerman, who a Supreme Bench [of Baltimore City] judge.
There were several hundred boys in the club, and—and I got to know him very well, and he—I mentioned sports and politics? He was keen on lacrosse and all kind of sports and got us involved in that, and that was a big part of my life, but he also brought into our lives the importance of academics and scholarship and being involved in the community, and we learned from some of the top national and local leaders. For example, Colin [L.] Powell came to our meetings and talked, and various senators came, and we heard from all kind of personalities, and we were exposed to a lot of things.
And—and we were—we were raised to be idealists, and “idealists” meant—at that time, it meant starting to speak up for civil rights, because that was during the early ’60s, and the civil rights movement was—was just ripping through the country at that time, and, you know, my consciousness got very involved in that movement.
I remember being—well, two events, growing up, that really kind of set the tone for kind of my moral, political development. One was John [F.] Kennedy as president. Really, I was just at the age where I got the full brunt of his—his kind of image, his idealism. And that really motivated my generation. And when he was assassinated, it devastated my generation. So it—in a sense, I think all of us who were in our young adolescence at that time are now suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome [now called post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD], of a sort, because that was an incredible national trauma that we watched in real time. That was powerful.
RAFSON: About how old were you when that happened?
GREEN: I was 14 at that time.
RAFSON: And so you were kind of just in your formative—
GREEN: Yeah, really formative and—and—and we really looked up to him and his vision of—of justice and of peace and—and moral leadership in the world that—we thought America should exert that kind of a role.
The civil rights movement was happening at the same time, and I also remember being powerfully moved by the March on Washington [for Jobs and Freedom, in May 1970]. I wasn’t there. I watched it on TV. But for the first time, I saw, like, hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the [National] Mall in Washington [D.C.] and this brilliant orator, [the Rev. Dr.] Martin Luther King [Jr.], whose oratory just soared, give that famous, you know, “I Have a Dream” speech. And—and suddenly I became aware that these things that were happening were—these movements were going to change the world. And they did. They really changed a lot. And I was just at an age where I could start thinking about being part of it. So that—that inspired me a great deal.
RAFSON: Yeah. Wow. That’s definitely a formative experience. Would you say that—you know, were these views—were your parents pretty aligned with where you were?
GREEN: Not really. [Chuckles.] Not really. I think—you know, they were from the World War II generation.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: My parents grew up in Baltimore. They had big hearts, and they were good people, really good people, but they—you know, they had grown up in the Cold War and in the World War II situation, so they had a different, you know, experience than—than we did. The Beatles were my generation.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: Their generation was [Francis A.] “Frank” Sinatra.
RAFSON: Right. Did
either of your parents have particular experiences with the war?
GREEN: Well, my dad—in World War II, my dad was on a destroyer in the Pacific [Ocean].
RAFSON: Interesting. And did he ever talk to you about that kind of—
GREEN: Not much, not till he got—not till he was in his 70s or 80s.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: And it wasn’t that he had bad experiences. In fact, he remembers them being really wonderful experiences. He was not—they did not see actual combat in the Pacific.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: Because he—his ship was heading towards Tokyo [Japan] just as the war was ending, so if the war had gone on, yeah, he would have been in combat. But he had good memories of that [U.S.] Navy experience. Just it was such a—it was so different from the rest of his life that it was hard to talk about, just because he—you know, that was then, and this was now, so—so they—they never really understood my radicalization.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: And they were really proud of me. I was a high achiever. And you have to be to get into Dartmouth. [Both chuckle.] And so I was the first one from my—from my family to go to an Ivy League school and one of the first ones to go to college.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: So they were really proud of that, you know. And I did—did well here, so—and then it all blew apart.
RAFSON: [Laughs.] We’ll definitely get to that.
Did you—just—did you have any siblings or any other close relatives in your growing up?
GREEN: I had lots of close relatives. I still have two younger brothers and lots of cousins and extended family, most of whom were centered around Baltimore. My dad owned a har - —a family hardware business. He took it over from his father, and then—and then he turned it over to my younger brother, who now runs the store.
So it’s an inner-city Baltimore hardware store. And I worked there as a kid, and it’s an African-American neighborhood. It was a Jewish neighborhood when they owned it—you know, when they—when they started the store. In fact, my father was born across the street from the store. But the neighborhood became majority African-American, I’d say probably 99 percent.
And I—I worked down there a lot. And it’s—it’s a pretty down-and-out area. Baltimore has had a lot of hard times recently, but there were hard times back then, so—I know I’m skipping a little bit ahead, but if you’ll permit me,—
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: In my freshman year at Dartmouth, Martin Luther King was assassinated. That was the second big assassination: JFK, then Martin Luther King. Again, trauma, trauma. And my father had a hardware store when there were riots in Baltimore and the streets were burning and the National Guard [of the U.S.] was on the street, and about a week after that rebellion was quelled in Baltimore, somebody walked into the hardware store and shot my father.
RAFSON: Oh, wow.
GREEN: Held him up and shot my father, and he—I got a phone call while I was in a freshman dorm at—at Dartmouth, and they said, “Come home. We’ll get you a plane.” I think my dorm adviser took up a collection to get me money to get on a plane and send me back to Baltimore. And I went back to Baltimore thinking I might not see him again. But he survived and lived 40 more years.
RAFSON: And does that—I mean, does that create any form of animosity on his part?
GREEN: Not the slightest. And I was always amazed that he was ab- —maybe he just compartmentalized it. He didn’t. But he—he continued to work there. He continued to have really good relationships in the community, and he treated everybody with a lot of respect, and he was treated well. So I—I’m impressed with that. You know, it’s like a life lesson to me that—that you don’t have to take revenge, and certainly you don’t—don’t stereotype a population because of something bad that happened to you.
RAFSON: That’s definitely important.
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: Okay, so if you don’t mind, I would love to—so you definitely had, you know, your early formative years that really made you know you wanted to obviously have some form of activism. You excelled in school. So could you talk to me a little bit about your path to Dartmouth and, you know, how you ended up in the middle of the woods in Hanover?
GREEN: Yeah. Well, I mentioned the Boys Club I was a part of and Judge Hammerman, who was a profound influence on my life. He passed away about six or seven years ago. Judge Hammerman loved Dartmouth. He truly loved it. He never went there. He was a Harvard [University] guy, a [Johns] Hopkins [University] guy. But he loved Dartmouth, and he—I turned to him for advice on colleges, and he recommended I apply to Williams [College] and to Dartmouth, and both of them accepted me.
And I—I had never even—I don’t think I had ever been up here before I—I entered as a freshman, but I’ve seen pictures. [Chuckles.] Like I say, I was a Baltimore guy, and—and I loved the way the place looked. I liked the feel of a small town. It was different from where I lived. And the fact that it was an all-male school at the time didn’t really bother me. I don’t know what I was thinking!
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: But—but I was more interested in the academic tradition here and the outdoors tradition and the athletics, and that’s why I came here.
RAFSON: Yeah, that definitely rings true. So, I mean,—so you get to Dartmouth. Were you able to kind of get outdoors, participate in sports? What were you up to?
GREEN: Well, the first thing I did here was Freshman Week. I remember going on the Freshman Trip [Dartmouth Outing Club First-Year Trip] and climbing on Mount Moosilauke. Did you do that?
RAFSON: Yes, I did.
GREEN: Yeah. Well, it was still the same mountain, and it’s a heck of a climb, but, yeah, that was my first outdoor experience here.
And pretty quickly I got involved in sports here, so—one sport I had never played was soccer, and I wanted to learn how to pay soccer, so I figured the best way to learn was to go out for the team. So I—I—I made the freshman team, and I was never a very good soccer player.
RAFSON: [Laughs.]
GREEN: But I liked—I just liked playing. I liked practices. That’s because that’s all I did. I just practiced. They never let me in a game because I wasn’t good enough. But then I—I used to—back in Baltimore, I had played a lot of squash with Judge Hammerman at the Hopkins courts, and so I went out for the squash team here, and I played—I was only here at Dartmouth for two years.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: So I played squash two years, but my real love was lacrosse, and I played freshman lacrosse. I was captain of the team. And then my sophomore year, I was on the varsity.
RAFSON: Wow. So you definitely got your fair share of sports in.
GREEN: Oh, yeah, I was busy every afternoon. I loved it.
RAFSON: And then did you have any particular academic interests, other clubs?
GREEN: Well, I—I—academically—as a freshman, you just take on introductory courses,—
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: —but I quickly started to like the religion department [Dartmouth College department of religion], and I—I took some really good courses on the history of religion and—and Asian religions, and so I—I fancied myself to be an Asian religion major. That was my freshman year. And by my sophomore year, that had turned into a government major.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: I don’t—I don’t remember how that transition occurred, but that was, you know, what had my interest. So that was academics. And I did well, and—it wasn’t hard, really. It was pretty easy. I worked at it, and I worked at my sports, and I also—the other activity I did was with the Daily Dartmouth [sic; Dartmouth Daily D]. Do they still have that?
RAFSON: Is that just the newspaper?
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: We do have The Dartmouth, yeah.
GREEN: So I was—I was a feature writer for them and also a sports writer, so I followed the squash team and lacrosse teams, so I got to write about the teams I was on.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: I had a pen name, so there wouldn’t be a conflict of interest.
RAFSON: What was the pen name?
GREEN: C. M. Lessball.
RAFSON: Hmm. Was there any significance in that?
GREEN: Yeah, the balls we used are called seamless balls.
RAFSON: Oh, that’s so funny.
GREEN: [Laughs.] So that was my pen name. And then—but I also wrote—my freshman year, there was a—what kind of protest was there? It was a fast. SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] existed on campus, and there was—they were doing—I think they were doing some kind of a—we did, like, a week-long fast to protest the war, and I—I wrote a whole feature about antiwar activity on campus, and I won an award for that.
RAFSON: Wow. So on that note—so, first off, what is the fast consist of? I can’t imagine people completely were fasting for a week straight.
GREEN: Actually, I don’t know if it was a week or five days—
RAFSON: Wow.
GREEN: —or for some- —but I—well, see, what did we do? We didn’t eat food.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: And once a day, we would gather on the [Dartmouth ] Green and drink chocolate milk. [Laughter.] Or orange juice. I remember that. And, let’s see—and I—I—I maintained my—this was during lacrosse season,—
RAFSON: Wow.
GREEN: —and I continued, you know, going out to practice as well as fasting. I remember that. And I remember—and—and—so we fasted to, like, gain moral authority or something and also attract attention. And then—you know, then we would go out to dormitories and fraternity houses and—and give talks about the war in Vietnam. So we were fasting, and we were educating, having teach-ins and things like that. And so we did that for several days, three, four days, and then I remember deciding I needed to break my fast.
So I went to some restaurant on Main Street [in Hanover, New Hampshire], and it was all-you-could-eat spaghetti night, and I remember breaking my fast with a lot of spaghetti.
RAFSON: That’s a good way to break a fast. So that was sponsored through SDS.
GREEN: It was.
RAFSON: Were you involved with SDS?
GREEN: I was just starting to get involved then. In the winter—so before the fast—in the winter, one of my professors, Jonathan Mirsky, who was a Asian religion professor and he’s a brilliant scholar—I think he’s now in London; he spent some time at Tiananmen Square during the uprising there. But in those days, he was teaching here. And he was a—I think he was a Quaker and a pacifist. And very influential on me.
And he took a bunch of us in his car to Manchester, New Hampshire, my freshman winter. And there was protests going on at the draft center, the induction center, where people were being inducted into the military. And the pro- —so we went to kind of witness it, be moral witnesses, and—we weren’t there to be involved too much but just to see it.
And what we saw was that the protesters lined up on the steps of this draft board induction center, and the Manchester police, who at the time—Manchester was a pretty right-wing town at that time. They waded into the crowd of protesters with billy clubs and started cracking people’s heads open, and blood was pouring out on the steps, and people were getting arrested.
And I watched that, and it was—it was pretty influential in my deciding to become involved—you know, to see that happening and the intensity of it and realizing that this war in Vietnam is not just happening far away, it’s happening—it’s happening here.
RAFSON: Wow.
GREEN: And we’re standing right here, where it’s happening, and we can either be bystanders or we can be involved. And I kind of made a commitment to get involved at that point.
RAFSON: So you made the commitment, and then, you know, what was your next step?
GREEN: There was an SDS on campus. SDS was a very, very loose national antiwar, anti-racism movement.
RAFSON: And that’s Students for a Democratic Society.
GREEN: Students for a Democratic Society. Not Sigma Delta Sigma.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: It was Students for a Democratic Society. And, you know, there were—there were some national leaders, and they—they would have some marches in Washington against the war in Vietnam. But mainly they started taking root on college campuses. And there were upperclassmen here who were involved, and they had meetings, and they led this fast, and they had had a protest on the football field, Memorial Field, the year before, I think, that I had heard about. And they had teach-ins. So I started going to some of the meetings and attending some of the events. And before I knew it, I was doing some of the teaching and—and calling other people to join the events.
RAFSON: Mm-hm. And so that was just alongside your other sports commitments.
GREEN: Yeah, I did that all at the same time, sure.
RAFSON: Mmm. Interesting.
GREEN: It was—actually, I—I’m—I am pretty unique in that regard. At that time, people were either jocks or freaks. [Both chuckle.] You know, they were—they were—they were, you know, kind of in this fraternity, drinking—you know, athletics world. Or they were, you know, more kind of counterculture and against the war and activists and stuff like that. And usually people were one or the other camp, and I had one foot in both camps, so—I lived in the dorms. You know, I was friends with all kind of students here, and, you know, I took road trips with the athletic teams, and then I’d come back and go to a teach-in on Vietnam.
RAFSON: Hmm. Sounds like you were doing a lot.
GREEN: I did a lot, but, you know, that’s what you do when you’re in college: You do a lot. Everybody does.
RAFSON: Yeah. So—that’s interesting. And so I—you kind of started to pick up a little bit more of a leadership role, then, is what it sounds like?
GREEN: Yeah, I’ve always—I’ve always gravitated to leadership roles in whatever organizations I’ve been part of, so whether it was Lancers Boys Club or my high school or captain of my teams, head of the March of Dimes—you know, I always ended up going there because I have certain abilities to kind of work with people and—and lead, and lead through action and also speech.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: So it was pretty natural to—to start to take more responsibility. We didn’t have an elected leadership in SDS.
RAFSON: Yeah. How was—what was the structure kind of like?
GREEN: There was no structure. [Laughter.] Absolutely no structure.
RAFSON: It was just—you know, if you wanted something to be done, you proposed it, or how did—you know, how did you plan things?
GREEN: We—we would meet. You know, we would have meetings. We’d call an SDS meeting. I don’t know how often they were. I’m sure it was not a regular thing. But we—we’d meet. Whoever was really interested would come. And the more passionate people would speak, and the passionate people who had leadership ability would—would begin to help create a strategy. And everything was done on a very informal basis. I don’t remember—I don’t remember proposals or—
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: —or, you know, committees or things like that.
RAFSON: Mmm. And I know there’s probably a larger collective of students and there’s probably some varying degree of, you know, commitment. Did you also see kind of, you know,—it’s a large grouping, but were there different, you know, viewpoints within that against the war, or—
GREEN: Sure, on both the national level and also our local college, Dartmouth level. So on the national level, there were competing ideologies and leaders, and here, locally, we didn’t so much have competing leaders, because we didn’t really have leaders—[Both chuckle.] We just had more or less involved people, and—but there were a couple of different philosophies.
RAFSON: Could you tell me about some of them?
GREEN: Well, we all worked together. I mean, we were united in a number of things. We were united in our opposition to the war. All of us agreed that Dartmouth was complicit in the war effort, so, you know, we were both antiwar and also anti Dartmouth’s role in the war, whether it was training—Reserve Officer [sic; Officers’] Training Corps (ROTC), training officers; whether it was recruiting for military purposes; whether it was contracts with the Defense Department [U.S. Department of Defense] for research; whether it was the corporate ties of our [Dartmouth College] board of trustees and some of their interlocking—you know, their interlocking interests with other corporate interests in America that were driving the military.
So—so we were united around that stuff. We were united in—in—in being opposed to the draft. We were united in—in supporting working people. We were united in being opposed to racism and supporting Black Power movements. So we were united in all those things.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: So most of the differences we had I think were probably around kind of ideologies and strategies.
RAFSON: Yeah.
GREEN: So there were—some people were—called themselves New Left, the New Left people. And there was some Maoists people that looked towards China for ideological leadership. There were some people that had been associated with kind of the Old Left, from the ’30s or ’40s or ’50s.
RAFSON: And what’s the kind of difference between the Old Left and the New Left?
GREEN: New Left more embraced kind of counterculture music and lifestyle things, you know, and guerrilla theater and Jerry [C.] Rubin and [Abbot H.] “Abbie” Hoffman, and a more of a freeform movement, whereas the Old Left was a little bit more rigid and, you know, strictly about supporting workers’ rights and, you know, unions and kind of the old left approach—you know, with a strong emphasis on economics. And New Left people were more tuned into the I’d say civil rights movement, direct action where, you know, instead of just picketing, New Left people were more likely to go into the streets or block recruiters or commit civil disobedience.
And then there was—you know, there—there were some people that were pushing—there was a group called Progressive Labor Politics [sic; Progressive Labor Party]. So, yeah, within—within even our group, which was united in so many ways, there were some different approaches.
RAFSON: Mm-hm. And where would you say you kind of fell in that group? Were you in one of those four?
GREEN: You know, just like I was—I was—I was on the lacrosse field and also at demonstrations, I was kind of—I always felt like I tried to listen to all the groups—
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: —and learn what I could and work with people in all the different factions.
RAFSON: So the uniter, kind of.
GREEN: I don’t know if I—I—I don’t know that I was a uniter, but I was—I was somebody that—I didn’t see us as being in a—in a struggle with each other.
RAFSON: Mm-hm. That makes sense.
GREEN: So I just tried to, you know, synthesize what—what works, you know, and what we had in common. That’s why I started, by talking about what we had in common.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: We had a lot in common.
RAFSON: It sounds like it.
GREEN: And we—this was not—some of the SDS groups that I’ve heard about were in pitched warfare against each other.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: But not—not our group. We worked together pretty—pretty darn well.
RAFSON: That’s good. It sounds like you were pretty organized. Within your own organization.
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: So you—kind of your first taste of—
GREEN: There were some anarchists, of course.
RAFSON: [Laughs.]
GREEN: There’s always a few anarchists. You know, some people are more into the drug culture.
RAFSON: Mmm.
So—so your first taste of a real—of your protesting was kind of the fasting, right? Or was there something that came before, when you joined SDS?
GREEN: Oh, back in Baltimore I think I had handed out leaflets for a group called Vietnam Summer.
RAFSON: What is the purpose of Vietnam Summer?
GREEN: Just a teach-in, a teach-in kind of thing where we went to people’s neighborhoods and knocked on their doors and talked to them about the war.
RAFSON: So just, you know, when you think of your favorite forms of civil disobedience and protesting, are teach-ins kind of at the top, or—
GREEN: Well, I think teach-ins are really important, because they really fueled the—the mass movement that we had. People—you know, because we’re students. We want to learn stuff, and we didn’t know a lot of things, and—and once we learned things, then—one of the best ways to learn something is to learn it and then teach it. So, you know, we learned it, and we taught it, and we lived it. And that’s a great formula for anything you do in life.
RAFSON: So where were you learning these things from? Was it each other? Were there professors that were particularly helpful?
GREEN: Oh, just anywhere you looked there were—there was—there were national newspapers where you could learn stuff. We didn’t have the Internet then. You can watch—you could watch the news at night every night. You know, the Nightly News [sic; CBS Evening News] [Transcriber's note: Or perhaps he means the nightly news generically], and you would learn stuff about Vietnam.
We—you know, there were—there were certainly books. There were professors. I know in my sophomore year I took a winter semester course with Carl Oglesby, who was a former president of the national SDS, and I learned a lot about theories of imperialism and colonialism from him. So some of it was academic learning, some of it was from teach-ins, some of it was—just by being involved in things, you learn more.
So—so there’s two ways to learn things: You can learn by sitting in a classroom and learning, or you can learn by doing, and we were learning by doing. So right now you’re interviewing me, which is really neat because you’re learning by doing it.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: You’re not just reading the interview that somebody else did; you’re doing it.
RAFSON: Yeah.
GREEN: And so if somebody asks, “How did you learn to interview?” you would say, “Well, I learned a few things, but then I learned by doing it.”
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: And we learned about, you know, activism by being activists.
RAFSON: That’s definitely interesting. You know, there’s definitely something different than, you know, seeing it on a page and then once you put it into practice, you really get some new insights.
GREEN: Yeah. And—and the context is that this was happening all over the country.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: So, you know, we learned from watching the protests at Columbia [University].
RAFSON: Were any other schools particularly—you know, did you have more communication with one school or another or one that you kind of looked up to?
GREEN: I don’t know that there was much in the way of communication. Like, we didn’t have—people didn’t come from other campuses and try and teach us how to do it.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: So we—mostly, I think, at least for myself—I—I heard them and read about them or see them on the news, so I heard about, you know, the big uprising in Columbia. That was a year before. And then at the same time we were creating things here, there was a lot of unrest at Harvard. There were things happening at San Francisco State [University]. That was a big name, I remember. And—and [University of California,] Berkeley. Madison, Wisconsin, was—was very involved in the antiwar movement. So, yeah, we all learned from each other in that way. And it was happening almost simultaneously around the country.
RAFSON: It’s interesting to be a part of, you know, certain levels of collectives, so, you know, you have your Dartmouth SDS, but then you’re looking to see similar things.
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: It feels like you’re definitely part of something bigger than yourself.
GREEN: Yeah. And then we were—we felt like this is happening everywhere, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t happen here. But Dartmouth was a pretty conservative place then.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: So, you know, a lot of people were surprised that it happened here.
RAFSON: Yeah. And so were there other, you know, opposing groups that were as strong as SDS on the other side?
GREEN: I think there was Young Americans for Freedom. I think that’s what they were called. And it was a kind of a—what do you call it, button-down, button-up group? You know, they used to dress real formally and preppy, and they—it was a small group of kind of we would say right wing type people. But they were not—they never were a mass movement of any type.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: And we were.
RAFSON: How—yeah, how many—I don’t know how to quantify it, but how large was SDS relative to the campus and the student body? Was it pretty widespread, or was it kind of small?
GREEN: Well, we didn’t have a membership.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: So there’s no way to gauge our influence. I think all you can say is that—that there was probably 50—50 people who were very involved and, on any given event, there might be 100 or 200 people turning out to something. And then there were lots of people on campus who sympathized with a lot of our views. So it’s really difficult to say. And percentage wise, I couldn’t even begin to tell you.
RAFSON: Of course.
GREEN: I think one of the—one of the myths of the ’60s that we have now is this idea that all the young people were opposed to the war, and that all the young people were smoking weed, and all the young people were, you know, getting arrested and had long hair, and—that’s the image. I don’t think it was ever more than a large minority.
RAFSON: Hmm. That’s interesting.
GREEN: And we had—you know, there were people who I guess you would call liberals, and then there were those of us that called ourselves radicals.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: And it was just—it was a continuum. It wasn’t—you know, weren’t just on one team or the other; there were people that were at various points on that—on that spectrum.
RAFSON: Right, makes a lot—you know, for different issues within that. Makes a lot of sense.
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: So I guess I’d like to move, then, to talk a little bit more about—so, you know, you’re clearly very much with and involved in SDS and some of its larger planning. So, you know, moving towards [the] Parkhurst [Hall takeover] specifically but if there are any other, larger protests that you had a role in, I’d love to hear about those, but—you know. So how did you come to the Parkhurst takeover? How did that become?
GREEN: Well, my memory is a little fuzzy. [Both chuckle.] But—mostly because it’s been a lot of years. But there have been protests at Dartmouth for several years now about ROTC. And when I think about it, the whole—the principle under- —underneath it was the idea that you should think globally but act locally.
So globally, there was a war going on that was an incredible atrocity, in Vietnam. And, you know,—and we needed to do everything we could to oppose that war and stop the killing. But how to do that? Well, you have to act where you are. And so you have to act locally. And so that’s—that’s why we focused on Dartmouth’s role in the war. And our activities were around Dartmouth.
And the issue at Dartmouth that seemed to crystallize all that was ROTC training, so our—our fellow students were given scholarships and encouraged to take training so they could become lieutenants in the [U.S.] Army or Marines [U.S. Marine Corps] or whatever. I don’t know. And so they—they attended classes that were sponsored by and held at the university. They marched around campus, in uniforms at times. They had their own special events, their own officers’ balls and things like that, which we didn’t like too much.
And we didn’t like the idea that our fellow students were—were going to be leading people into battle to basically kill peasants in Vietnam. That—that’s not what we thought was the Dartmouth ideal.
We also didn’t want our fellow students being killed, and those—you know, people who were in ROTC lost their lives at times in Vietnam.
So—so that was the issue. That had been percolating for several years, and protests against it and petitions and a fast against it and a march in Memorial Field against it. And so it had been a topic of controversy for several years.
At some point during the Parkhurst year—at some point earlier in the year, I think there was some kind of a vote or a referendum. If my memory is correct, it was a vote of the faculty, maybe the students. I just can’t remember. But anyway, on whether ROTC should be allowed to stay on campus and have the support of our liberal arts campus. And the vote was against it. They voted that it shouldn’t.
And my recollection is that that then went to the board of trustees, who voted to ignore that vote and keep ROTC. So when they decided to keep ROTC, that was a signal to us to—to escalate our efforts. Yeah. So that was—that was the germ of the idea.
And then we saw what had happened on other campuses, where, at Columbia and other places, students would take over or occupy. So we were the first occupy movement, you know? What was going on around the country was Occupy Phase 1.
RAFSON: Yeah.
GREEN: Unlike what just happened a few years ago, which was also Occupy [Wall Street]. I think it’s interesting. But we occupied. So our idea was to shut down the university, shut down the college until we got our way. We wanted to take a stand. You know, we felt like we had—we had moral authority because we were right. We felt like we had—we had certain authority because the board of trustees had—had—had overturned a democratic decision made here on campus, and that the democratic means of reaching—of changing the policy have reached its natural conclusion. So we needed to move to civil disobedience. And that’s what we chose to do, to stop the university.
RAFSON: So what makes it civil disobedience versus—is it—so you knew—it was actively against the rules, then, obviously, to take over an administrative building.
GREEN: We knew going in that—that what we were doing was illegal. We knew that we would be met by an administration and a police or military force that would—would take us out of the building, and we knew that we would be arrested. We didn’t know what the consequences would be to our academic career or to our, you know, legal status. But we went in, knowing that and knowing that in the short run, we would be arrested, but we felt like in the long run, the power of our action would motivate and inspire people and ultimately help change the—the trajectory of the war.
RAFSON: Yeah. So, I guess, were there any SDS members who really were not ready to take that risk of getting in trouble?
GREEN: Oh, sure, sure, there were a lot of people that—that didn’t—weren’t there for the final—final round. [Both chuckle.] You know, they may have entered the ring, but they didn’t stay till the final round. So I think about a hundred people literally occupied the building. And we can go back and talk about how that built up.
RAFSON: Great.
GREEN: But about a hundred people occupied the building when the—when the [New Hampshire] State Police came in. I think it was State Police. Was it National Guard or State Police?
RAFSON: I—I would have to check, but I think it was State Police, for sure.
GREEN: When State Police came in, there were I think 56 of us remaining, so the others had—during the—the course of an eight- or nine-hour occupation, had—had come and gone out of the building. And—and there were a lot of people that supported us, but for whatever personal reasons did not want to risk getting arrested. Yeah, there were—I mean, if—if we weren’t facing arrest, we might have had 500 people in the building.
RAFSON: Yeah, that’s understandable.
GREEN: Sure. So we knew—we knew what was going on. I knew—I knew my—my sta- —my status as a Dartmouth student was—was very precarious.
RAFSON: [Laughs.]
GREEN: I—I made a decision that—that ending the war was more important than getting a degree from Dartmouth.
RAFSON: Hmm. Okay, so—
GREEN: And I felt powerful.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: We felt powerful.
RAFSON: Yeah.
GREEN: We felt like we actually, at this point in time, at this point in Dartmouth’s history, that we actually could have an effect, that we could cause things to happen. You know, we didn’t think we were going to end the war by ourselves, but this was happening all over the country, and we felt like if enough people took civil disobedience into, you know, actions, that it could cause the policymakers to change.
RAFSON: Okay.
So—so let’s go back, and let’s—walk me through what happened on, you know, the days leading up to—maybe if you have some recollection of, you know, that preparation, and then let’s, after that, move on to the actual day.
GREEN: Sure. Can I back up even a little further?
RAFSON: As far as you want.
GREEN: I forgot to mention—you asked me what other kind of protest I was involved in.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: I—I—there was—of course, there was picketing and teach-ins, but I do remember one protest that took place in one of the buildings near Parkhurst, where some corporate entity—I don’t know whether it was Dow Chemical [Company] or even whether it was—the [U.S.] Marine Corps was recruiting on campus, and students would go in for their recruitment interviews.
And we were definitely opposed to napalm, and we were opposed to—that was the Dow Chemical Company. We were opposed to the military presence. So I can’t remember whether it was a Marine recruiter or Dow Chemical recruiter, but a number of us blocked the steps, and we refused to let anybody go in for interviews. And we were—we were not arrested for that, but I—I was—a number of us were brought in on college charges, and I was put on probation.
RAFSON: So coming into this next protest-
GREEN: Yeah, so before Parkhurst happened, I was already on probation for having blocked a recruiter.
RAFSON: Okay. And what were the stipulations of that? Was that, you know, one strike?
GREEN: That’s one strike. “Don’t do anything again or you could be in big trouble.”
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: So I knew I could be in big trouble.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: But we—so we—we had determined—and among the leadership group of perhaps 10 to 12 SDS members—that we were going to occupy Parkhurst, and we set a date, and we made plans, as best we could, and then we called a meeting to talk about Vietnam, and at that meeting that we had planned—that was, like, one or two in the afternoon—at that meeting—we had put out publicity about it, and there were probably maybe 150 or 200 people at that meeting, and I remember being the one who announced that we were now going to walk over to Parkhurst and occupy the building.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: And because of my role in that and having the bullhorn—
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: —I had possession of the bullhorn—I—I think I became pretty—pretty visible in the Parkhurst event.
RAFSON: Yeah. So just to, you know, give me some mental image of it, where did—where did this meeting of 100 to 200 people take place on campus?
GREEN: What is that building right on the corner?
RAFSON: Which—which corner?
GREEN: Right near where the stores are.
RAFSON: You know,—
GREEN: Cattycorner from the Hanover Inn.
RAFSON: Collis [Center for Student Involvement], maybe?
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: It’s Collis now.
GREEN: Probably Collis.
RAFSON: So the Student Center for Involvement.
GREEN: Yeah, it was a student center of some kind.
RAFSON: Mmm. So a short walk to Parkhurst, then.
GREEN: Yeah, yeah, so that’s where we gathered.
RAFSON: Hmm. And so at that point, you know, you made the announcement. Was it just kind of, “This is what we’re doing”?
GREEN: Yeah. “The time for talk is over; the time for action is now. We are prepared to—to lead an effort that could result in arrest. It’s going to be civil disobedience. We’re not going to commit any violence, but we’re going to occupy the administration building, and we are going to stay there and demand that ROTC be removed from campus. All those who want to join us, let’s go.” And we headed out the door.
RAFSON: Hmm. And so, just, you know, backing up a little bit more in the planning, you know, was there any significance to the date? Was there anything important that, you know—was it just this day of the week we want?
GREEN: I can’t remember. I don’t know how we arrived at it. I don’t remember making that decision. It just—
RAFSON: Felt like a good day?
GREEN: I don’t know. Maybe there was a reason, but I don’t know what that reason was. [Chuckles.]
RAFSON: Yeah. Okay. So you and a hundred to two hundred students leave—
GREEN: Yeah, I think—yeah, we left and walked down to Parkhurst, and we went in, and—I mean, I wasn’t in on all the planning, so maybe some people had plans I didn’t know about. I mean, maybe some people were going to go to the president’s office, some people were going to go to the dean’s office, some people were going to go to this or that office and—and start to clear people out.
RAFSON: And where did you go?
GREEN: I can’t remember. I went to different offices, and I—and the one that—the one that got me a lot of notoriety was my experience with Dean [Thaddeus ] Seymour,—
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: —who was the dean of students at the time.
RAFSON: Could you tell me a little bit about that experience? I’ve heard it a little bit.
GREEN: It’s huge. [Laughter.] It’s so big. [Laughter.]
RAFSON: I’m ready.
GREEN: Well, one other experience: I do remember Dean [Albert I.] Dickerson [Class of 1930]—I think he was an assistant to the president or something,—
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: —or a provost. I'm not sure what his role was. But he refused to get up out of his rolling office chair, so we got behind him and wheeled him out of Parkhurst.
RAFSON: Pretty early on? Just took him out?
GREEN: Yeah, we—we—he—he wouldn’t get up and walk out, so he remained in his office chair. I remember a bunch of us pushing it down the hall and then lifting it down the stairs—
RAFSON: [Laughs.]
GREEN: --and taking him out that way.
RAFSON: Was he saying anything when you did that, or he just sat there silently?
GREEN: I don’t remember. I really don’t remember. We were—I mean, the adrenaline was pumping. We were full of adrenaline, and we—I don’t remember whether we were entirely rational or not. I know I said some expletives that I wish I hadn’t said, but—
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: —it was all—it was all happening, and it was very intense. I—I did go to Dean Seymour’s office, and he refused—Dean Seymour was a big character on campus. He’s a big guy, and he was—he related to a lot of students. He was kind of the face of the administration.
RAFSON: In, like, a positive way?
GREEN: He just represented the administration a lot, and he interfaced with people. He was like the intermediary between the administration and student groups, and he was well known and recognized. I didn’t know him personally. But he was like a caricature for us of the administration. And he refused to leave. He was going to stand his ground and lot leave on his own power.
And so a number of us got behind him and—and locked arms and started to walk towards the stair- —stairwell. And so, you know, we kind of pushed him forward, and he—he kind of tried not to go, but, you know, it was kind of symbolic. He was standing his ground, and we were gradually moving him out.
And we got to a point at the top of the stairwell where he recognized me, and I was standing right next to him, and he said—he said, “You’re using violence.” And I said, “It’s not violence, it’s nonviolent force.” So we were debating [laughter] the philosophies of nonviolence. I said, “This isn’t violence, this is nonviolent force.” I had no intention of hurting anybody.
Then we—we got to the top of the stairs, and he said, “Take your hands off me.” And I said, “Take your hands off the Vietnamese.”
RAFSON: Hmm
GREEN: And I don’t know where that came from, but I’m so proud of saying that.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: You know, it was—it was—it just symbolized what—what was being said. “Take your hands off me.” “No, you take your hands off the Vietnamese.”
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: Those were the two sides. And it really—later, as I thought about it, that really crystalized what was happening.
Later, and we’ll get to this part of the story, but Dean Seymour and I have had conversations in later years, he told me that in his mind at that point—he was bigger than I was, and he—he had foc- —he was focusing his energy on me at that point. In his mind, what was going through his mind was, I could—I could grab a hold of this guy, put him in a headlock and run his head into the concrete corner, where the stairway turned. And he never said that, he never acted on it, but he was honest enough with me to share that with me 25 years later. He said in the moment that he said it, to himself—in the moment that he thought that thought, he was mortified, and he realized how close things were to being completely out of control. [Transcriber's note: Thaddeus Seymour describes that precise moment in two paragraphs on page 50 of the transcript of his May 13 to June 12, 2015, interviews for the Dartmouth Vietnam Project.]
Anyway, we did march him down the stairs and out of the building, and as we took—and the secretaries left, and pretty much it was just us in the building, and my friend, [Edward M.] “Ed” Levin [Class of 1969], who was a woodworker, had brought his toolbox and some board, and he—he boarded up the door and put locks on it and hammered it shut from the inside. So he—that was his preparation. He was going to do the carpentry on the big oak front doors of Parkhurst. So the doors shut, and there we were, inside Parkhurst.
RAFSON: Hmm. So just really quickly before we keep going, so, you know, there was that moment where he knew that it was—you know, that it could have turned at any moment from, you know, the civil disobedience to something much more, you know,—
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: —consequen- —not consequential, but—
GREEN: Because we were all pumped with adrenaline.
RAFSON: Did you feel a similar feeling at any moment during that?
GREEN: It was—yeah—you know, we were—we had a mission, and we were super charged. It’s like we had drunk ten cups of coffee. We were—we were revved up and ready to—we weren’t in a talking mood. We were not in a discussion mood; we were in action mode.
RAFSON: Mmm. So it was just, you know, “Get these people out”?
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: “Secure the building,” essentially.
GREEN: “Get them out, secure the building, and then we’ll figure out what goes on after that.”
RAFSON: Okay. So you got them out.
GREEN: We got them out.
RAFSON: You secured the building.
GREEN: We secured the building.
RAFSON: What next?
GREEN: I headed to the president’s office.
RAFSON: Hmm. And the president was out.
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: I went to the president’s office. I sat down at his desk. I called my lacrosse coach to tell him I wouldn’t be at practice—
RAFSON: On the phone at the desk?
GREEN: At the desk. I said, “This is David, David Green.” I said, “I—I’m sorry to tell you I’m going to miss lacrosse practice today.” And he said, “Why?” Coach [Alden H.] “Whitey” Burnham. “Why are you gonna miss practice?” And I said, “Well, we’re taking over Parkhurst to oppose the war.”
RAFSON: What an interesting thought. You know, at the moment, you know, adrenaline pumping through you, you’ve just done something that could threaten your entire Dartmouth career, and you think to call your lacrosse coach.
GREEN: Yeah. I felt really bad about missing practice. [Laughter.] And so I—I don’t know that many people know that. That’s what I did. That’s what I did. [Laughs.]
RAFSON: Amazing.
GREEN: [Laughs.]
RAFSON: And he said—did he say anything after you—
GREEN: I don’t recall.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: I don’t recall what he said, but—so then we were there, and let’s see, there was a big crowd gathered outside—
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: —Parkhurst and stretching almost to the Green.
RAFSON: And where they sympathetic? Was it just anybody watching?
GREEN: There was—there was just onlookers, and there were people that supported us and people that were opposed to us. And it was very tense, and there were a lot of people out there. Nobody knew what was happened [sic]. I know some of us went to the window and opened the window of the president’s office, and we took some flowers out of the vase from his desk and threw them out into the crowd.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: One of our people, [Donald E.] Donny Miller [Class of 1968], unfurled a banner he had made that said, “ROTC Out of Dartmouth.” And we—you know, and hung that out the window. And then we—I don’t know what we did for all those—there was a lot of hours going on. I guess a lot of strategy discussions, like, “What are we do next? What are they gonna do next?” I know that I had—I had dressed in jeans and a—and a heavy jean jacket and a turtleneck shirt so that I would have maximum protection in case we were maced.
RAFSON: Wow. So you really had to think about—you know. Yeah.
GREEN: So we—you know, we were thinking a bit about there was going to be a confrontation at some point, but we didn’t know what trajectory it would take. We didn’t know how it would play out.
RAFSON: So one thing I—I’ve read was that at some point you kind of came out and said that, you know, “About 70 or 75 of us are discussing what to do.” So is that kind of, you know, what you were doing in those hours after securing the building—
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: —and before—
GREEN: Yeah. I guess that’s what we were doing.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: We were also playing Beatles music on guitars and singing. I—I—I don’t recall how we spent all those hours there. You know, people were coming and going out the windows and on the first floor, so they would come in and bring news about what they see and what’s happening, and then we’d discuss it, and we talked about what we were going to do and were we were going stay or were we going to leave at a certain time? Were we willing to be arrested? If we got arrested, were we going to go willingly, or were we going to be dragged out?
RAFSON: Hmm. Did you come to a final conclusion with that?
GREEN: Well, the ones that stayed, stayed. We were going to stay. And at some point in the evening—and I think there was some negotiating going on, too.
RAFSON: And when you were negotiating, was there a particular, you know, member of the staff that was kind of leading that?
GREEN: There might have been one of us that was going back and forth from the building to negotiate with the college authorities. I don’t know who it was or what they were debating: the terms of our leaving or—you know, I don’t know what it was. I know there was negotiating going on. So we would be talking, and then they would come back, and we’d find out what the negotiator had said.
And then—then we got—somebody came and gave us a—not a citation. What do you call it, an order? A court order?
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: The college obtained a court order that said we had to vacate the premises, and if we didn’t vacate the premises, we would be held in contempt of court. So that was the legal grounds they had to arrest us. We were in civil contempt. So they—you know, they gave us the court order. “You have to vacate,” probably sometime in the early evening. And we refused, and people that didn’t want to get arrested left, so there were 50—I don’t want to say 50-odd people because we weren’t odd.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: There were about 56 people there, and we stayed, you know, and there were mostly students. There were some who were not current students, maybe former students that happened to live in Hanover. It was—I think there were a couple of faculty members. I can’t remember if any of them got arrested with us or whether they left. There were mostly men; there were a few women.
RAFSON: And where were the women from, from the town or with the—
GREEN: They were probably wives.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: I don’t remember them, though. There weren’t many. I think there were some women, but I—there weren’t many women in Hanover in those days, you know, at college, anyway.
RAFSON: You’d think you’d remember the few that were there, though.
GREEN: You would think. [Laughter.]
RAFSON: Wow. So, okay, you’re all together. At this point, you know that you’re definitely going to be facing some legal action by staying.
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: And, you know, you’re ready for it, though.
GREEN: We were ready. And it got on to evening, and the crowd started growing outside. And we could hear chanting outside.
RAFSON: Do you know what they were chanting?
GREEN: Antiwar slogans and pro-war things. And it seemed very—it started to get pretty heated out there. And we could see it out the windows, and we could hear it, but we were inside. And then sometime, maybe at one or two or three in the morning, the—the buses started to pull up, and the floodlights came on, and the state troopers—they were wearing helmets, and, you know, a lot more gear than normal policemen wear—billy clubs and—I don’t know if they had their clubs out. I don’t think they brought their—I shouldn’t say that. They may or may not have had clubs.
RAFSON: Was anybody clubbed?
GREEN: I don’t think so. There was—anyway, they—they came, and they—they—they—with a bullhorn. They said we had to vacate. This was our last chance. And we gathered on the steps. If you go into Parkhurst, there’s some big steps right inside—
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: —the hallway there? There’s the hallway and then steps. So we gathered on the steps and linked arms.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: And then they used a battering ram to bust the doors open, and when the doors opened, it was quite a moment.
RAFSON: What was going through your head? You know, it obviously takes more than one go at a door. What was—you know, you’re all together, you’re ready for whatever is to come.
GREEN: We were ready, and “this is it.” This was the moment. This was—you know, everything had been leading up to this exact moment. So when they busted the doors open, the doors flung open, and we saw crowds outside chanting and screaming, and—and then we started chanting, on the steps.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: And we started chanting, and we kept this chant up for a while. It was—and I remember the chant.
RAFSON: What was it?
GREEN: “U.S. out of Vietnam, ROTC out of Dartmouth. U.S. out of Vietnam, ROTC out of Dartmouth.” And that’s what this was all about. It was very clear. You know, it was a really good chant.
RAFSON: Yeah, yeah.
GREEN: [Chuckles.] I liked it. And then they came, and one by one they—they took us and either carried or dragged us down the steps—you know, down the front steps, through the crowd and out to the buses.
RAFSON: And so that’s the moment that that picture is from of you.
GREEN: Yeah, that photograph with—giving the peace sign. I was being carried out, dragged out.
RAFSON: So—so what was your thought process? You were being dragged out. Do you see a camera?
GREEN: My thought process: I hope nobody hits me over the head with a club. [Laughs.] And I hope nobody sprays me with Mace. And, you know, This is it. I’m getting arrested.
RAFSON: And you throw up your peace sign.
GREEN: Throw up the peace sign, go to the bus, hope that you don’t get sprayed with Mace.
RAFSON: And what was the feeling on the bus? Was it kind of, you know, “We did it” or was it fear, a mixture?
GREEN: I think we were very proud of ourselves. We felt like we had really accomplished something. We stood for something. We were willing to take the consequences. We had—we had completely kind of transformed the atmosphere in the campus. We had made this issue front and center. Probably made national news. And so we accomplished, you know, part of what we wanted to do.
RAFSON: Yeah. There’s definitely no—no ignoring that happened.
GREEN: And—and we were checking with each other to see if anybody had been Maced.
RAFSON: And not to your knowledge.
GREEN: Well, a couple of guys said they—they felt something.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: I don’t think anybody was seriously injured. I don’t think anybody was injured. A few guys said they felt some burning around their eyes, so there may have been some Mace in the air. I just don’t know. Overall, I have to say, it was not a violent confrontation, on both—on either side. We certainly didn’t do any violence, and the other side didn’t.
RAFSON: Was it interesting, though? Like, were you expecting, you know, these fully-equipped officers?
GREEN: Yeah, we were ready—we were ready for that, and we knew that, because of what happened at Columbia and San Francisco State and at Harvard that is was more likely than not that we were going to get some heads cracked open by billy clubs.
RAFSON: Wow.
GREEN: That’s what we expected.
RAFSON: And do you think the rea- —was there a reason that it didn’t happen? Was it how you guys had handled your protesting?
GREEN: No, I think the reason it didn’t happen is to the credit of Dean Seymour and some of the administrators who had done their planning ahead of time.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: And I didn’t know it at the time, but when I met with Thaddeus in 2004, he told me that they had had meetings anticipating this moment and that he had—he had given specific instruction to the—the authorities, the police, the state police, to avoid hurting anyone or using violence.
RAFSON: And that was a lot, you know, just to quell further unrest, or was that, you know, just out of the goodness of his heart?
GREEN: I think it was out of the goodness of his heart. He didn’t want to see us hurt.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: He’s not an evil person.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: And he didn’t want any—yeah, he didn’t want to make martyrs out of us, either. It was a strategic decision as well.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: It was a smart decision by them.
RAFSON: Definitely.
GREEN: So I’ll give them a little credit there.
RAFSON: Just a little, though.
GREEN: I’ll give them credit for that.
RAFSON: [Laughs.]
GREEN: I would give them more credit if they announced, on the spot, they were getting rid of ROTC.
RAFSON: Hmm. We’ll get to that next.
But, so, you’re on the buses, and you know you’re going to some jail. Where did they take you?
GREEN: They took us to an armory somewhere, and we spent the night in an armory.
RAFSON: And what exactly is an armory?
GREEN: It’s like a big military center.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: Like a big hall, big open hall, where they had cots for us to sleep on.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: And we—we didn’t know what was happening, but we were in the armory together, all 50-some of us, and—and exhausted, totally exhausted. And we got a few hours’ sleep, and they released us the next morning.
RAFSON: Did they release all of you—
GREEN: Mm-hm.
RAFSON: —or just—okay. And so one thing I have to ask: Going into this, did your parents know you were about to embark on this?
GREEN: No,—
RAFSON: Did they know you had been arrested?
GREEN: —they did not know. They knew that—that things were heading in a direction that was—they were not feeling comfortable, but they didn’t know what we were going to do.
RAFSON: And did they know once you got arrested?
GREEN: I don’t know.
RAFSON: Interesting.
GREEN: I don’t know what they knew.
RAFSON: And so, you know, you were—so you got—you were only arrested for that night, personally.
GREEN: We were held overnight, then we were released.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: On bail. Somebody had put up bail for us.
RAFSON: Do you know who?
GREEN: It might have been the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union]—
RAFSON: Huh!
GREEN: —or it could have been some faculty members. I—I—I didn’t know. I didn’t really have much to do with our defense or our legal—
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: —the legal events that unfolded.
RAFSON: And those legal events seemed to center around, you know, only a small group of students?
GREEN: No, all 56 of us.
RAFSON: Oh, okay.
GREEN: We were all arrested. We were all charged with violation of a—we were all in contempt of court for violating a civil contempt order
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: And we were out on bail for maybe five days, and then we went to trial. So during those five days, we had teach-ins—
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: —and—you know, again, we were trying to—to capitalize on the interest on campus.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: And marches and stuff like that. But—but then we had to go to court, so we all went to court. And I—I didn’t have anything to do with hiring a lawyer. I never talked to the lawyer beforehand. He had to represent all 56 of us. And I just heard rumors about how things happened. I mean, I was there in court, and didn’t—I didn’t have a chance to speak for myself, but there were charges, and then the prosecutor asked that we be jailed for 15 days, and the judge decided to put us in for 30 days. And then we were taken off to six different county jails—you know, groups, and that’s how we spent the next month.
RAFSON: So for—you know—
GREEN: We—we didn’t know we’d end up going to jail.
RAFSON: Interesting.
GREEN: We thought maybe we’d just get a fine. So I wasn’t really—I wasn’t ready for jail. I don’t think I brought a toothbrush or anything.
RAFSON: Wow! [Chuckles.] And so you and—do you remember which jail you were put in?
GREEN: Oh, definitely, definitely. [Laughter.]
RAFSON: Where were you?
GREEN: Rockingham County Jail.
RAFSON: And was it a proportional amount of the 50 of you?
GREEN: No, I think—I think I was in the largest group. I think there were about 15 of us there. And we—being Ivy League students, we—were in jail, but we were kind of treated with kid gloves, and so we called it the Rockingham Hilton. [Laughter.]
RAFSON: Do you remember anything in particular about, you know, your living arrangements, the food?
GREEN: Oh, I could—I could take up another three hours telling about jail. It was an interesting experience. We—we were actually there for 26 days.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: We got out on good behavior.
RAFSON: [Laughs.]
GREEN: Four days early. So we had—let’s see, we were in jail. We didn’t have any—really, except for maybe just news that visitors brought us, we didn’t have any contact with the other jails, the other people.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: So I don’t know what their experiences were like in the other jails. They were all over New Hampshire. But in our group, we were two to a cell, and I think I was rooming with [Steven E.] “Steve” Tozer [Class of 1972].
RAFSON: Were you friends?
GREEN: No.
RAFSON: [Laughs.]
GREEN: We weren’t friends and haven’t heard from each other since. But nothing bad.
RAFSON: Yeah.
GREEN: You know, we—we were in a jail cell, and there were, like, six or eight or ten cells in a row, with a walkway connecting them? So there was, like,—there was a walkway and cell off of the walkway.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: And during the daytime, our cell doors were open, so we could intermingle with the other 16 people?
GREEN: Mm-hm.
RAFSON: You know, we’d walk in and out of each other’s cell and hang out and do yoga—
RAFSON: [Laughs.]
GREEN: —and read and talk, and read our mail and have political discussions and—you know, just do our homework. So we had—we had our little cellblock, and we were all in the same cellblock.
RAFSON: That’s really interesting. So obviously you were expecting, then, to come back to school, all of you, right? So you were preparing to finish the term out, like [cross-talk; unintelligible; 1:08:46].
GREEN: Yeah, it was in—it was in early May, and I think once we got out of jail, we were going to have a couple of weeks, maybe a week of school left, or two weeks.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: So, yeah, we were—we were trying to keep up with our studies.
RAFSON: And people would bring you the homework?
GREEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
RAFSON: The professors were.
GREEN: Yeah, the professors would come and give us our homework.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: I—I got straight A’s that term.
RAFSON: Really!
GREEN: I had some very favorable, favor- —you know, professors that supported us.
RAFSON: Yeah, that’s interesting, you know, taking school—you know, some Dartmouth level classes while you’re behind bars, technically.
GREEN: Yeah, yeah. So I was jailed—let’s see. The first few days were awful.
RAFSON: Mmm. Why?
GREEN: Because they went on forever. For ever and ever, and seemed boring and confining and all that. But it was amazing to me how quickly most of us adjusted.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: And that became our little world. That become our little civilization there. So we had our own culture, our own schedule of what we did during the day, and pretty soon, the days weren’t long enough, you know, to get all the things done—
RAFSON: [Laughs.]
GREEN: —that we wanted to accomplish [cross-talk; unintelligible; 1:09:56].
RAFSON: So what were some of those things?
GREEN: Well, you—you’d do your—you’d get your mail, you’d read your mail, you’d read your cellmate’s mail, you read your friends’ mail, and then you’d write responses, so we’re reading and writing a lot. We’d be reading political books about revolution and things like that, and the war in Vietnam, and we’d have discussions. We did exercise together. I—I can’t remember all the things that occurred, but I’m sure there were some really boring down times. We took naps. We had—I think in 26 days, I had two, maybe three showers.
RAFSON: Wow.
GREEN: We had to wake up each morning at 5:30 and stand in line to use a single razor blade to shave.
RAFSON: Not super sanitary.
GREEN: The food was not that good.
RAFSON: [Laughs.]
GREEN: That’s where I learned how to drink coffee. One time, I remember—we would—like I said, they treated us with kid gloves.
RAFSON: Mmm.
GREEN: So we could walk down to the caf- —to the cafeteria ourselves, without a guard. They would just open our cell door and we’d go to the cafeteria. And then we’re supposed to—after eating, the bell rings. You’re supposed to go back into your cell. And there was nobody making us do it or watching us, so one day Don Miller and I decided that we would visit some of the other—the other prisoners in the—in the jail.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: So we walked to some of the other cells, and we’re talking to them.
RAFSON: And what are they generally in for?
GREEN: Oh, who knows? I have no idea. I can’t remember. Not protesting. You know, different crimes and—all different crimes, I guess.
RAFSON: Was there an interesting cafeteria dynamic with, you know, the young students who were in for their civil disobedience and then everyone else?
GREEN: I don’t know—I don’t know if we ate with the others or not or whether we were segregated. I don’t remember a lot of interactions.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: And so Don and I wanted some interaction, so we—so we—we went on our own, kind of, walking around Rockingham County Jail, and the guards were appalled. [Laughter.] And they threw us into the hole.
RAFSON: What’s the hole?
GREEN: The hole is a—you go into your own jail cell, and they put you in a dark cell. There’s just a little slit where the door is? And there’s—instead of a bed, you just have bare, like, springs on the bed. No mattress. No toilet, just a hole in the floor. And it’s dark. Kind of primitive, you know?
RAFSON: Yeah.
GREEN: So we were in there, and—
RAFSON: For how long?
GREEN: I don’t—hours. We didn’t know how long we were going to be in there. And so as soon as we got sent to the hole, our cellmates, all of our fellow students, upstairs on the third floor cellblock, started making a real ruckus.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: They started singing revolutionary songs and chanting and sloganeering and shouting and just being completely obnoxious.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: And at one point, they got served their dinner. It was Brussels sprouts. And they—they started throwing the Brussels sprouts out through the cell bars, and the Brussels sprouts were raining down three floors of the jail.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: And shortly after that, they released us.
RAFSON: On good behavior.
GREEN: No, I think—
RAFSON: Oh, from the hole.
GREEN: I think it was because of the Brussels sprouts. They released us from our—the hole.
RAFSON: Quite the cleanup.
GREEN: So I—I—I—and honest- —honestly, Claire, I don’t know if any of my fellow protesters even remember it the way I do.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: But that’s my memory, and I’ve always kind of laughingly referred to it as the Brussels Sprouts Rebellion.
RAFSON: [Laughs.] The great Brussels Sprouts Rebellion.
GREEN: That’s right. So we—we had a sense of humor about all this, and we knew—we knew that we were being treated with a certain deference because we were Ivy League—white—white Ivy League students.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: And we were all white, by the way, in my memory. Not an insignificant thing, but we didn’t think about it much at the time.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: Dartmouth was a mostly white school. There was an African-American society, but we were only loosely affiliated with them.
Anyway, they let us out after 26 days, and we went back to college, and immediately they started having trials, campus—campus jurisdiction, you know?
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: Charges against us. And I remember reading, like, a ten-page manifesto that I wrote about, you know, why I did what I did and why it was—it was morally—morally defensible to do what we did.
RAFSON: And you wrote that in jail? Before?
GREEN: Probably before the trial.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: I think it was called the CCSG, the College Committee on Standing and—I don’t know. It had to do with college policy. [Transcriber’s note: From the draft word list: the Committee on Standards (COS).] So they had a trial for us.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: And we got to speak, and I gave a—a long speech about it, and my—my recollection is that the comparison I made was that—that [the] United States was—was bombing and napalming tens of thousands of innocent peasants in Vietnam, and if they were doing that kind of thing to people in West Lebanon [New Hampshire], nobody would doubt that I had a right to protest—
RAFSON: Got it.
GREEN: —and commit civil disobedience to stop it. So the fact that they were a globe away, half a globe away, you know, doesn’t make it less correct. Anyway, that was my—my defense.
RAFSON: So—and so were you on trial, all 50, or did you have kind of your own personal trials?
GREEN: Each of us had our own hearing. It was a hearing.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: And I had my own hearing.
RAFSON: In front of administrators, students?
GREEN: I think—I think it was students and administrators, although I can’t remember. And shortly after the hearing, I found out that I was—I think—no, then—then college ended.
RAFSON: For the year.
GREEN: For the year, and I went home to Baltimore. And then I got a phone call that said that the decision’s been made that you’ve been expelled. I think there were two or three students expelled. No, I was the only one expelled. But two or three, maybe, were suspended, maybe four people suspended,—
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: —and a bunch of them were reprimanded or put on probation.
RAFSON: Were you given a particular reason why you were the one—
GREEN: I was not given a reason. I—I’ve only been able to speculate for the reasons, and I—I have my speculations.
RAFSON: What do you think led to this?
GREEN: One this was I was very visible. I had the bullhorn. I had a big mouth.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: I was one of the leaders. One of many, not the leader, for certain. But I was—I was one who was involved in a physical confrontation with Dean Seymour, and that was captured on film—
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: —and photographed. So that was one reason I was expelled. Another reason is I was already on probation from blocking the—the recruiter on campus earlier in the year.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: And then I think—although I don’t think you’d ever get Dean Seymour or anyone to acknowledge this, but I think they viewed me as a threat because I was—for a couple of reasons. One, I was—I was pretty effective at relating to a lot of students.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: I was a sophomore. They knew they would have to put up with me for two more years.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: Most of the other people were upper class. And the other reason is that one of the things that made me effective was that I lived in the dorms, I played on athletic teams and I had a pretty broad outreach to the general student body, so I—I think I represented a threat in terms of the SDS to them. So for those reasons, they—I think they—they said, “Goodbye, and don’t come back.” They said, “Don’t come back to Dartmouth and don’t come back to Hanover.”
RAFSON: Oh, really? So they asked you just not to—
GREEN: “Don’t come back to Hanover,” they said.
RAFSON: Were there parameters for that?
GREEN: No, just don’t do it. So—so it’s really fun to come back. I enjoy it.
RAFSON: You’re still disobeying.
GREEN: I’m really happy to be here right now,—
RAFSON: [Laughs.]
GREEN: —doing this, because it’s like putting my thumb in the eye of—you know, years later, by the way,—I mentioned Judge Hammerman earlier?
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: My mentor? He was good friends with President [James O.] Freedman at one point, President Freedman, who was president of Dartmouth at a certain point.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: And the—a lot of the draft dodgers and resisters who had gone to Canada were being granted amnesty, and I thought, Well, if they can get amnesty, I should get amnesty. So I had Judge Hammerman forward a letter from me to President Freedman, asking to be granted amnesty from Dartmouth.
RAFSON: And how many years later is this?
GREEN: Probably 20 years later,—
RAFSON: Wow.
GREEN: —15 years later.
RAFSON: And you were still—had never been back then.
GREEN: Oh, yeah, I had been back once or twice. Yeah, yeah. But President Freedman communicated that he didn’t have the power to do that and that that was not a possibility.
RAFSON: So you’re still technically banned?
GREEN: I think so! [Laughter.] I think so. But I certainly—I’m not a Dartmouth student. I didn’t graduate from Dartmouth.
RAFSON: Hmm. So—yeah—so what happens—you know, you just finish your sophomore year—
GREEN: Can I go back really far?
RAFSON: Yes.
GREEN: We didn’t talk about the draft.
RAFSON: We haven’t.
GREEN: There was a draft. That was one of the main things that—one of the main thing that—that fueled the protest movement,—
RAFSON: Yeah.
GREEN: —was that students and friends of ours were being drafted.
RAFSON: And so just—just so to clarify, at least for my understanding: So, you know, when you’re in college, you can apply for specific things that will keep you kind of out of the draft at the moment, right?
GREEN: Well, first there was a draft.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: And then they instituted college deferments, which meant if you were in college, you couldn’t be drafted.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: So when I was in college, I couldn’t be drafted.
RAFSON: What about when you’re expelled from college?
GREEN: Yeah, then I could be drafted. And also—but then they changed the law. After I was out of Dartmouth, they changed the law, and they instituted the lottery.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: And the lottery does not give you college deferment.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: So where- —whatever your number is, if you got called, you had to go.
RAFSON: Do you remember your number?
GREEN: Two fifty-six.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: That’s pretty high.
RAFSON: Yeah.
GREEN: So it never got called. But had I been called, I would have probably gone to Canada.
RAFSON: And that’s—was that just, you know, you get in your car and get away?
GREEN: Yeah, yeah, get out of there any way you can. I would have done that. I would not have—I never—I can’t imagine going into the [U.S.] Army and going to Vietnam. I don’t know how people did it. I mean, I—you know, it was horrible for them, and I really—I feel for them as much as I feel for the Vietnamese. To be sent to Vietnam is a horrible thing, and I—I don’t know how they did it. I mean, I—I can’t imagine summoning that amount of courage or fearlessness. I would have been just so overcome with fear and anxiety and moral—moral repulsion, I could not have done it.
RAFSON: So do you think that—you know, when you found out that you were expelled, was there—was that going through your head at any point, that, you know, now you were?
GREEN: You know, I think there were still student deferments at that point, and I figured I was going to get into another college, which I did.
RAFSON: So where did you go?
GREEN: I went to my hometown college, which was University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus, UMBC. And I—I got in there before the announcement came out that I was expelled.
RAFSON: But you knew it was coming?
GREEN: I knew something was coming! [Laughter.] So I wanted to get into college real quick, because if—if—if I had been expelled and then applied, I might have had a hard time getting in.
RAFSON: Hmm. Oh, right, with an expulsion on your—
GREEN: Yeah, and UMBC I’m sure regretted very much that they ever let me in.
RAFSON: Really?
GREEN: Because I did the same thing there. [Laughter.]
RAFSON: Was—was there much of a infrastructure for, you know, dissent when you came to USNB—
GREEN: UMBC?
RAFSON: UMBC.
GREEN: No. No.
RAFSON: So you had to kind of create one?
GREEN: We created something, yeah.
RAFSON: Through SDS again, or—
GREEN: Eh, not really. I mean, I don’t really go in for national organizations like that. You know, we—I don’t even know—I don’t think we were SDS there.
RAFSON: You were just some concerned students.
GREEN: We were just antiwar protesters.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: It didn’t really matter what the name of the group was. It didn’t matter.
RAFSON: That’s interesting. So, you know, you—it did not deter you to face the consequences that you did at Dartmouth.
GREEN: No, and I got into another college, and I’m happy to say that even though it wasn’t an Ivy League school, I got an excellent education there, and there were good teachers, and it made me realize that there are places other than the Ivy League where you can get a top-notch education.
RAFSON: So, I mean, it doesn’t sound like you’re necessarily regretful of having to leave Dartmouth.
GREEN: You know what? I love Dartmouth. I really love it here. And I loved my time here, and I was sad to go because it was a terrific place. I—I never didn’t like Dartmouth. And I—I wasn’t really angry at Dartmouth when I was kicked out. I’ve never had any animosity, because we did what we had to do, and we knew they were going to do what they had to do. That’s part of civil disobedience. You—you recognize what you’re up against and that you’re—you’re playing your role. You’re doing the best you can and that you agree to take the consequences.
So some people get arrested, and they—they’re—you know, they—they didn’t expect to get arrested or they didn’t expect to get treated like that, and they don’t take the consequences well. And it’s very different when you practice civil disobedience with a moral perspective. You don’t take that position.
So take a look at South Africa.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: Nelson [R.] Mandela was in prison for maybe almost 30 years, and he came out and eventually reconciled with his captors, his prison guards. He reconciled with them. They have an incredible process of reconciliation.
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: Ongoing. Truth and Reconciliation [Commission] in South Africa. What a great model! And that—that stems directly from[Mahatma] Gandhi’s teachings about civil disobedience.
RAFSON: Hmm. And that’s—
GREEN: And Martin Luther King.
RAFSON: And those are things that you kind of followed, obviously, having seen, you know, when you were younger, Martin Luther King.
GREEN: Martin Luther King and Gandhi, yeah. They were powerful.
RAFSON: That’s interesting.
GREEN: Gandhi is my favorite movie.
RAFSON: [Laughs.]
GREEN: Did you ever seen it?
RAFSON: I have not seen it.
GREEN: Unbelievable. You should sit yourself down. It’s about three and a half hours long.
RAFSON: Three and a half.
GREEN: It is wonderful.
RAFSON: I’ll have to keep that in mind. Let me write that down.
GREEN: Can I have a break?
RAFSON: Yes, of course.
GREEN: Where?
RAFSON: So if you—here. I’m going to pause. [Laughs.]
GREEN: Goodbye.
RAFSON: I don't want to—
[Recording interruption.]
RAFSON: I think it’s working…I think we are back on. All right, so you—all right, your new school.
GREEN: My new school, yeah.
RAFSON: And you—you finish your studies and continued to be really involved in the antiwar movement.
GREEN: Well, I did my studies; I didn’t finish them.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: But I was—I was at UMBC for a year and a half.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: But the first year I was at UMBC was the year of [the] Kent State [University shootings],—
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: —when four students were killed protesting—
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: —the war. Also I think students had been killed at Jackson State [College, now Jackson State University] as well.
RAFSON: Right, a lesser publicized—
GREEN: Yeah, because it was an African-American situation.
RAFSON: Mmm.
GREEN: So anyway, but Kent State got the public attention, and then—and so that year, we—we had a similar protest, where we occupied—we didn’t—we didn’t have anybody leave. We just had a sit-in that didn’t end. We went in and sat in, slept in for two or three days in the administration building, in the hallways and—
RAFSON: And was that a comparable size or a smaller group?
GREEN: Eh, I can’t remember. It was—it was cer- —there was no arrests. There was nothing—it wasn’t—it wasn’t as volatile a takeover in any way, but it was to make a point.
And I do remember one time leading a protest that marched through—out of campus and picked up students at the local high school, and then we marched over to a National Guard base, and I remember standing on top of a car with a bullhorn, addressing the crowd, and behind me, over my shoulder I could see up on a rooftop a National Guard soldier with his rifle trained on me.
RAFSON: Wow.
GREEN: This is right after Kent State.
RAFSON: So, you know, it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
GREEN: No, nothing is out of the realm of possibility. I mean, it was—the country was totally falling apart at the seams then.
RAFSON: But, you knew at that point, it was something where you just had to keep going, right? You had to—
GREEN: Yeah, I was—I was on a mission.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: I was on a mission. And I was living at the time—in Baltimore, what happens is radicals started forming living collectives, so we would live together and practice kind of, you know, communal principles, you know. And we saw ourselves then not as radicals but as revolutionaries. So at Dartmouth we were radicals, and then we started calling ourselves revolutionaries.
RAFSON: And what do you kind of see as the difference between the two?
GREEN: Oh, a radical stands outside the normal political process and offers a—a narrative that goes at the root causes. That’s what “radical” means, root cause. It looks at the root causes of racism and militarism and stuff, so—and a radical is willing to do extra-political things—you know, not just—not just vote but to protest, to civil disobedience, occupation—you know, to take more militant forms of action. So that’s a radical.
A revolutionary is somebody who—who actually views themself as—as—as living in a time where they can effect and need to effect a total, complete change in the way things are done.
RAFSON: What kind of marked that shift for you?
GREEN: Well, you know, the—the worse the war in Vietnam got and the worse the—what do you call it?—the repressive actions became against protesters and demonstrators,—
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: —and when Kent State happened and—and—and more and more B-52s [Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses] were dropping bombs on Vietnam and it was getting worse and worse and not better, a number of us felt like, you know, our numbers were increasing and that—and—you know, there had been riots in the streets in—in—in urban black areas, and so the black liberation movement was getting strong, our movement was strong, and we started to—to think of ourselves more as revolutionaries. So we—we lived in collectives. Even though I went to college, I was living in a collective, and we took part in—we had a number of marches and demonstrations and legal and illegal things that, you know, we did.
RAFSON: And so at that point, was your message still pretty much the same? Was it a little more focused or—
GREEN: Well, you know, in the earlier days, it was pro civil rights, anti war, but gradually, as—as we became more radicalized and the war got worse, a number of us became—started to—to, like, talk about—more about imperialism. We started to have more of a coherent political analysis—you know, an ideology: socialist, anti-imperialist—you know, that kind of thing.
RAFSON: So you had—if you had to kind of consider yourself part of any political philosophy, would you have said you were a socialist?
GREEN: I don’t know what I would have said.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: Yeah, I would say I believe in socialism, at the time.
RAFSON: Interesting. And so on the collective it was, you know, people agreed, were working toward similar goals?
GREEN: Yeah, we shared all of our—all of our—our resources and helped each other out and worked together. We printed underground newspapers. You know, we collaborated to have marches and demonstrations and actions and things like that.
RAFSON: And was—you know, was there the threat of facing, you know, action against that, or was most of what you were doing—
GREEN: No, yeah, there was threat. There was—you know, there was always—you were always worried about being busted, you know, or something happening.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: Yeah. And we were living, you know, month to month with rent. We didn’t have any money. But we also started to experiment with counterculture lifestyle things, like yogurt, whole wheat bread,—
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: —food co-ops, free medical clinics, various drugs and, you know, rock ’n’ roll and—all that stuff was going on then. So women’s liberation started to become a big force. Gay liberation. I remember going to the first Gay Pride march in New York City in ’68, ’69.
So anyway, then in my senior year at UMBC, instead of graduating, I dropped out, and I—I went to Cuba with a group called the Venceremos Brigade. And the Venceremos Brigade—I was on the third brigade. There had been two before me, and several after me. But in my brigade there were about 100, 120 Americans, radicals who—you know. And it was sponsored by SDS, working with the Cuban government. So we went at their invitation, and we went to learn about their revolution, and to work with each other and to build solidarity.
So we worked in—we cut sugar cane for six weeks out in the fields. It was the hardest work I’ve ever done. It’s really painful. It’s really hard work. Gave you a lot of appreciation for what—what the Cubans were going through at the time.
And right about that time when I was in Cuba—that was ’71; I think it was ’71. It would have been my senior year. In ’71 was when there was a giant march in Washington against the war in Vietnam, and after that, the various infighting and the factions and the fact that we weren’t ending the war—it wasn’t ending—things just started to fall apart.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: So all that good energy kind of dissipated. Some of it got violent. There were people that joined the Weather Underground [Organization], and that became pretty violent. And then there were—there were arrests and killings of Black Panthers all over the country, so the black liberation movement was being decimated, and people were going to jail for various things. Richard [M.] Nixon was president.
And so they were—they were—all that—all those things happened, and the movement fell apart, and—and I fell apart—[Both chuckle.]—and—and kind of became fairly uninvolved at that point.
RAFSON: So when you say you fell apart, was it more of, you know, like, your feelings toward it, your involvement?
GREEN: Yeah, all that. Involvement and also just on a personal level. Here I was. I had dropped out of college. I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have a career. I was this really smart guy that couldn’t get a job, you know, and didn’t know what direction I wanted my life to go in. And the thing that had been the cornerstone of my life for the past four years had just fallen apart. So it—it was a hard time for everybody.
RAFSON: Interesting.
GREEN: And so we all—people just kind of went off in their directions, and some people became teachers, and some peo- —most of the people I know that were in the movement—most of them or a good portion of them got involved in—in careers and jobs where they were helping people.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: You know, they were service jobs. They were teachers, they were doctors, they were attorneys, they were community organizers. They did good things. My—my comrades did really good stuff.
RAFSON: And—and what did you do?
GREEN: Ah! What did I do? [Chuckles.] Oh, I—I was a daycare teacher for a while. And then I kind of just drifted for a long time.
RAFSON: Hmm. And was it kind of, you know—was it your choice to drift? Was it, you know, just hard, you know, having dropped out of college and having been part of this movement?
GREEN: Yeah, and that was the time when—you know, when I was fooling around with drugs and the hippie culture was really strong, and it was kind of: Live for today and enjoy. And that’s what I did for a while.
RAFSON: Hmm. And so “a while” is?
GREEN: Well, I—I—I—I don’t want to spend a long time on this because it’s not really about me, but I—I traveled on a bus, a kind of psychedelic bus—
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: —and ended up—ended up in Austin, Texas, where I lived for a couple of years. And I—I did some—some movement-related stuff in Texas, not too much. And mostly I just worked odd jobs and had a good time. And I was—I was impressed to learn that—that—that New England was not the only enlightened part of the world. Austin, Texas, was very enlightened.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: Very radical, very hip, very into cooperative living and—and experimenting in alternative lifestyles. It was a great place.
And from there I—after a few years there and doing some cross-country hitchhiking with my dog, I bought into a land—a land group. A group was buying land in West Virginia, and these were mostly people from the South, and I had met them and became friends with them, and we—we started a rural community in the mountains of West Virginia. And that community still exists today.
RAFSON: Wow! Wow.
GREEN: I lived there for two years—three years. And I—I actually built and lived in a teepee there, and I got married there.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: And I had my first child there in a house that we built. And then I—I—after about three years there—they were wonderful people, and, like I said, a lot of them still live there and I still visit with them and we’re good friends, and they’ve built this community from nothing. I mean, no running water, no electricity, no heat, and we survived for a few years, is what we did. We learned how to survive and build shelters and heat ourselves. And then—now they—they’ve built—you know, they have built up a road or two, and they built 12 or 13 houses. They have all modern conveniences and music studios and—and water systems and gas and electric and all the modern computer technology.
RAFSON: Doesn’t sound too bad.
GREEN: And they’re doing great. They’re great people.
So I lived there for about three years and decided that was not ultimately where I wanted to end up my life, and I was interested in that point in alternative, holistic medicine, so I moved the Boston, because I like New England because of Dartmouth. So I moved to Boston to attend the New England Schools of Acupuncture. I became an acupuncturist and practiced for 12 years. Had a nice practice. And I had two more children. And then my wife died of cancer, and I ended up ending my acupuncture practice at that time. I needed to be home more with the kids, and it was just time for a change. That was in 1992. So I’ve been in—I’ve been in the Boston area from 1980—1978 until now.
RAFSON: Huh.
GREEN: So I was an acupuncturist. I’ve had a couple of other jobs, such as I was an energy adviser with Mass Save. They do home energy saving consultations,—
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: —provide services. It was a utility-sponsored group. So I got trained to be an energy adviser. I worked a Whole Foods for about six or seven years. But before I did any of those things, in ’86 I started a water filtration business, while I was an acupuncturist. And gradually that took over my life, and that’s been my work for 31 years.
RAFSON: Wow.
GREEN: So that’s a—that’s a short story.
RAFSON: Hmm. That’s—so—yeah, that’s definitely so. I mean, were you able to keep ties to, you know, the causes that really mattered to you when you were, you know, at Dartmouth and before at Dartmouth and before?
GREEN: I did, but I wasn’t really—I wouldn’t call myself an activist.
RAFSON: Okay.
GREEN: I voted, and I—I guess there was—there was a movement against some of the government activity against—against Nicaragua?
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: You know, the Iran—the Contras in Nicaragua. Anyway, I—I opposed some of the American interventions in—in Nicaragua. But beyond that, not too much. There was the anti-nuclear movement in the ’90s, and I—I went to some marches for the anti-nuclear movement. I—I was appalled by the Thee Mile Island [accident] events, but I was not really active. A long, long time. And I haven’t become active until this year.
RAFSON: Hmm. And what prompted that? What specifically prompted that?
GREEN: Donald [J. Trump].
RAFSON: Hmm. Makes sense.
GREEN: You know, when I saw what was happening in this election cycle, I knew that—that we were in for big trouble if—if—if Trump got elected.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: So I began to work pretty hard for the Democratic Party and for Hillary [Rodham] Clinton, who I think would have made an excellent president. I liked [Bernard] “Bernie” Sanders. I like a lot of his ideas. I—I think he brought a lot of good things to the table, but I—I—I decided that it was important to support somebody that I thought had a better chance of winning, and that was Hillary.
RAFSON: I also worked for the Ohio Democratic Party, organizing a little bit, so I understand.
GREEN: Do you know [Stuart Garson? 1:43:16]?
RAFSON: I do not. [Chuckles.]
So, yeah, a little bit about that, then. So, I mean, obviously there are a lot of reasons that—you know, seeing what was happening might have energized you, but were there any specific, you know, parallels or ties that really, you know, energized you and called you to action?
GREEN: Yeah. I mean, you know, since Vietnam, I felt like our country has generally—generally been moving in a good direction.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: You know, I always say during the Democratic presidencies we—every one of them, I think we moved in a very positive direction.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: And I—not since Nixon have I felt like our country was in danger of becoming a—a monster. You know, under Nixon there was that threat, and he—he carried some of it out, and it was awful. But since then, I’ve kind of been okay with things moving in just—as long as we’re moving in a positive direction and progress is being made. But when I took a look at this election campaign unfold, my sense was that—that if Trump got into the White House we would be dealing with someone who is more dangerous than any president we’ve ever had and who I think truly meets every definition of a fascist dictator.
So we’re not talking about—I’m not talking about conservatism or Republicanism or even a right- —he’s not a right winger. He’s a fascist. And—and I saw that, and it made me realize that—that people need to do something, that I needed to do something. It’s not enough just to vote. I had gotten, like everybody else, just complacent, and I was very happy with [Barack H.] Obama as president and—and figured, you know, Obama’s president. We don’t have to do anything. So I didn’t do anything. And—and then all of a sudden, We don’t have a choice right now.
RAFSON: And is that—I’m just,—you know, to put it in a context of, you know, your past—
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: —does it—does it feel like—was that a similar feeling, you know, as you watched the Vietnam War escalate and then—
GREEN: Yeah.
RAFSON: —got to a point where you had to—
GREEN: Here’s the difference: The difference is the Vietnam War was—I mean, yeah, there was the civil rights movement as well, so there were two movements. There was civil rights and the antiwar movement. And when I was at Dartmouth, it was focused on the antiwar movement, so it was kind of a single issue—
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: —kind of a resistance going on. I mean, we—we—we paid homage to some of the other movements: women’s liberation and civil rights and all—but, you know, for a lot of white college students, Vietnam was front and center.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: And—as a matter of fact, I wish we had done more on the—on the front of, you know, racial justice, but we didn’t do as much as we should have. And women’s liberation was new. We were just starting to learn about it, and we didn’t even know what gay liberation was. That wasn’t even a topic when I was in college. So it was focused around one thing.
And now the resistance is not focused around a specific policy, unless he drops bombs on [North] Korea, which is a threat. It’s not one policy or the other; it’s the overall tone of what he’s doing: his anti-government approach, his—his—his persona, his personality, his—his bullying attitude towards other countries, his—his assault on democracy, his assault on women, his assault on minorities, his assault on immigrants. It’s so multifaceted that it’s even a bigger threat.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: So I see—I see Trump as representing just a huge, huge threat. And so I look back at what I did in the ’60s and say, Well, we’re not gonna do the same thing now as we did then. Times have changed. And, you know, the way people communicate has changed. The whole political discourse is different. The demographics are different. The world’s different. So it doesn’t make sense to just try and take what we did in the ’60s and stamp it onto 2017.
But there were lessons to learn. One is that—that young people have to be in leadership, which means that us old guys that—that were leaders in the ’60s are not and should not be the leaders of the resistance now. And, you know, I was hopeful when I saw the [2017] Women’s March [in Washington, D.C.], and I saw it was mostly women and young people, and young women, and that’s great! You know, I just—my hope is that they continue to be involved and that they take leadership,—
RAFSON: Right.
GREEN: —not just say, you know, “We marched, and it’s over.” It’s got to be ongoing efforts, and I—I’m hopeful that’ll happen. And so then I think, Well, what’s my—what’s my role in this? And I see myself as a foot soldier and as somebody who does have some experience, so, you know, maybe I can help motivate young people to do more. If I can do that, that’ll be my role.
RAFSON: Definitely an important role.
I guess one this that I just am thinking about, you know, is what, you know, had that sustained interest in activism? You know, you were able to—along with, it sounds like, a lot of other people, dedicate a lot of your time and energy into really—counterculture and—
GREEN: Mm-hm.
RAFSON: —you know, opposing those things. You know, what was that underlying thing that kept you going?
GREEN: That’s a tough question. The underlying thing that kept us going in a positive direction?
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: I can’t speak for other people, but for me it’s always been about trying to be the best human I can be, and that means—I’m trying to find ways to be of service, to stand for what’s right and to oppose what’s evil. So, you know,—you know, I believe in freedom. I believe in empowerment. I believe in equality and everybody getting a fair chance and in—in finding non- —nonviolent solutions to problems. So those are, like, underlying principles of my life, and I’ve always tried to do things and be of service. So all the different jobs I’ve had have been jobs where it’s been of service. Organizations that I’ve joined, the way I—I try to treat people is to—is to be of service and to think of them and their needs and do whatever I can.
Sometimes you can help people by being part of a big organization or a group like SDS that’s involved in mass actions, and sometimes it’s just one-on-ones. You know, it’s the way I am with my grandchildren sometimes. That’s just as important.
RAFSON: Definitely.
GREEN: But I—you know, I think we were motivated by—I think our generation—sometimes they portray us as being very narcissistic, right? The boomers were narcissist. We’re selfish. We’re just out to get ahead and thinking of ourselves, and the only reason we went to demonstrations was to—to find somebody to have sex with. That’s—you know, that’s crazy. Or to do drugs. That’s not true. That’s not true. Most of the people I know that were involved back then were motivated by idealism, by higher cause and by a sense that they can make a difference. So they were doing those things mostly for really good reasons.
You know, some of the things we did were not probably wise. Some of them were probably wrong. We did wrong things. We made wrong decisions. You know, we were angry. We were strident. We were purists. We—we were sexist in some of the ways we handled the movements. We were not open to people that wanted to work within the system. So, you know, we were polarizing. I could go on and on about all the things that we could have done better at, but overall, I think we were motivated by the right things. We were on the right side of history. We continue to be, and we continue to try and do things to make it a better place. You know, that’s what we do.
RAFSON: That’s kind of all you can do.
GREEN: Yeah. And it—you see what history presents to you. At Dartmouth in 1968, ’69 we were presented with an opportunity to work in a certain way, and we seized it. We saw it. We got excited and turned on by it, and we threw ourselves into it. But, you know, 20 years later, when I gave a talk at Dartmouth—I came—they invited me back to give a talk. And there were about 50 student leaders there, and after my talk about Parkhurst, the things we’re talking about now, they came up to me, and they said, “We feel the same way you do, but what can we do? We don’t see what we can do today.” So the opportunity doesn’t—may be not as apparent.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: But that’s changing. That’s what I think is changing now. Right now, we have an opportunity for young and old to join together—black, white, straight, gay, men, women, all the different groups—come together and—and actually make some big changes. So I—you know, if we can get through the next two years, get—get a better Congress, and if we get, next four years, get a better president and build a movement, I think we may be even better off because I think there’s—the changes that are coming are really positive. We just have to survive [chuckles] right now.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: We’re under assault. It’s very dangerous. The world’s a dangerous place right now.
RAFSON: Hmm.
I think that’s kind of the majority of what I had to ask you. Is there anything that you feel like we haven’t got to cover that you want to speak to, along any of the timeline?
GREEN: I’m not the same person I was in 1969. [Chuckles.]
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: You know, none of us are. You know, I’ve had a lot of experiences with life and death and losing a wife and having children and grandchildren and seeing different presidents and the world changing, so, yeah, I’m different. We’re all different. So that makes you feel a bit more humble. Like, I don’t have all the answers. I thought I had a lot of answers. I—I had probably more answers when I was 20 years old than I do now.
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: I have more questions now. And that’s probably a good thing.
And when I say “more humble,” I can look at what happened then, and I can see that it was over all a really positive thing. I think what happened at Dartmouth and that I was involved—and I’m really proud of it. And, you know, looking back, there are a lot of things that I think we could have done better or differently, because that’s how it is. When you take action, you—you can’t always do it perfectly, so we did the best we could. I think we did a really good job.
And also I look back, and one of the things that makes me feel good is knowing that ROTC was eliminated from the Dartmouth program—you know, not directly because of what we did, but I think that was a big part of why ROTC—it was a big part of that conversation.
RAFSON: Mm-hm.
GREEN: So the takeover at Parkhurst indirectly led to the elimination of ROTC. Victory!
RAFSON: Victory.
GREEN: That was victory for us. The war in Vietnam did end, partly because of all the protests. That’s a victory. I now have a grandson—I’m sorry, a granddaughter, and I have a son-in-law who is Vietnamese-American, in my own family. So, you know, I had this experience now where, when I was—when I would go home from Dartmouth for holidays and sit around the family table, you know, our family would be fighting with each other about the issues of Vietnam, and we would go into the living room, and we’d see [CBS broadcast journalist] Walter [L.] Cronkite telling us about the Tet Offensive, about all this napalm being dropped on Vietnamese villages, right? And the Mỹ Lai Massacre. We hear about all that.
And now, all these years later, I have a Vietnamese-American son-in-law that I adore. I’ve gotten to know his parents, who fled Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in 1975. My son-in-law’s father was orphaned in the Vietnam War. They came here as refugees. They met and married in a resettlement camp in Pennsylvania. And I’m now on good terms with them.
So in the past, I used to—in Baltimore, I’d go into my living room and watch stories about the war in Vietnam, and now I go into my living room, and there’s my—my new in-law and his parents, and—and we greet each other with hugs, and it’s—you know, Vietnam is in my living room in a different way right now. So that’s been wonderful.
Another thing that I—I must—I must say is that I have been blessed, truly blessed in—in the story insofar as many years after my confrontation with Thaddeus Seymour on the steps of Parkhurst, somehow, through serendipity, our lives were brought back together. And in two thousand—I think it was 2004, I went down to Winter Park, Florida, to spend an evening with Thaddeus—that same Thaddeus Seymour and with his wife, Polly [Gnagy Seymour]. And they were very gracious. Polly was still a little scared of me—
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: —a first [laughs] because of what had happened at Parkhurst, but she got over that and served us a really nice meal, and then Thaddeus and I went out on his deck and shared a bottle of wine, and we reminisced, and we looked back and debriefed about what had happened all those years before, those 35 years before at Parkhurst. And as we talked, he learned what had motivated me, and I learned what had motivated him.
RAFSON: Hmm.
GREEN: He learned about the preparations we had made for Parkhurst, and I learned about the preparations that the Dartmouth administration had made for such a confrontation. And we came to a pretty deep appreciation of each other and respect for each other, and we continue to correspond and be in touch. We—we are Facebook friends, and we’re friends in a deeper sense. I think we both really treasure our friendship.
The last correspondence I got from him was a Facebook post in which Thaddeus Seymour, the dean that I had pushed out of Parkhurst, was wearing a T-shirt that said: “Resist.”
RAFSON: Wow.
GREEN: So that makes me feel really good.
RAFSON: That’s definitely, yeah, an interesting not turn of events but—you know.
GREEN: It’s coming full circle.
RAFSON: Yeah.
GREEN: And—and—and you’re—you’re a college junior, and I’m now on Social Security,—
RAFSON: [Chuckles.]
GREEN: —and when you get to be on Social Security, one of the most gratifying things is when your life starts to come full circle and you start reconnecting and—and re-experiencing things from this different vantage point, so reconnecting with Thaddeus Seymour, coming to Dartmouth and doing an interview for the oral history project about the events that happened at Parkhurst in 1969—that’s all coming—coming around full circle. And, you know, it makes me feel like, you know, my life has—has been worth it.
RAFSON: Yeah. Well, yeah, thank you so much for, you know, spending the afternoon with me and telling me a little bit—you know, just a snapshot of your story.
GREEN: Good. It’s good. It was really fun.
RAFSON: Well, thank you.
[End of interview.]