Brokaw Sells ’60s To Packed House

“I suppose out of all the characters I interviewed,” journalist Tom Brokaw told a packed audience at First Parish Church on Monday, “my favorite line may have come from Arlo Guthrie: ‘It’s a good thing that the ‘60s are still controversial­—that means nobody’s lost yet.”

Brokaw, best known as the managing editor and anchor of “NBC Nightly News” for 21 years, is also the author of four best-selling books, most notably “The Greatest Generation.” At the event, which was sponsored by the Harvard Book Store, he presented his latest, “BOOM!: Voices of the Sixties,” combining anecdotes from his life, a brief retelling of the major events of the 1960s, and a reflection on what our nation has gained and how we should best proceed.

“What I hope will happen as a result of ‘BOOM! is that it will be a catalyst for national dialogue,” Brokaw said. “What should we keep from the ‘60s and what should we leave behind? What should be the national tasks?”

SHOT HEARD ‘ROUND THE WORLD

Before taking the podium, Brokaw presented the trailer for “1968,” a two-hour History Channel documentary based on a portion of “BOOM!”

The screen displayed Brokaw, standing in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, where he stood 40 years ago when it was “the center of the world for the counterculture.” It cut first to a clip of Tom Brokaw as a strapping young journalist, then to a dramatic retelling of the assassination of John F. Kennedy ’40 that layered Brokaw’s narration over dramatic music and blurred visuals.

Conceptually, Brokaw’s presentation unfolded in a similar way. He began with personal narrative, describing how he spent his youth on an army base in South Dakota, the son of working-class parents. He became the first member of his family to enter college and later married a woman he had known since he was fifteen. When he was offered a job at the number-one NBC affiliate in the United States, he flew South and found himself right in the middle of the civil rights campaign.

Brokaw’s personal story soon blended into a national one beginning with a large “Boom”—the shooting of Kennedy.

“That was the beginning of the ‘60s for me—when he was assassinated,” Brokaw said.

For Brokaw, each major event of the ‘60s represented a “boom,” particularly the assassinations. The last “boom,” which signaled the end of the ‘60s for Brokaw, was the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

“What was great about the ‘60s is that all the nerve endings were exposed, all the time,” Brokaw reflected. “Left, right, and in the middle. At the end of the day, everyone was talking about what had happened, where we should go next.”

The generation following the ’60s has, in Brokaw’s estimation, benefited from the national change the decade brought about. Not only have the treatment of minorities and the conception of women been changed, Brokaw pointed out, but opportunities have grown in general. A legacy of tolerance and opportunity is what the ’60s have given the nation, by his estimation.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’

But events in the ’60s happened from the ground up, and, Brokaw claimed, this part of the legacy has unfortunately not been preserved. Most important now, he argued, is finding a way to join the working class and the more affluent portions of society so that America can move forward without leaving any group of people behind. His hope is that the 2008 election will become a referendum on issues from the ’60s that remain unresolved.

Brokaw recalled an anecdote about an interaction with Hillary Clinton. When Clinton asked Brokaw if he had “cracked the code yet,” he replied, “No, I haven’t.”

Similarly, Brokaw did not end the talk by providing some key to understanding how we ought to resolve the many issues of race relations, gender roles, and economic disparities

Instead, he concluded with the one immutable conclusion he had reached: “Whatever else is said about the ’60s, the music is fantastic.”

—Staff writer Elsa S. Kim can be reached at elsakim@fas.harvard.edu.