David Kraslow on major events of 1940s-1970s

Professor Spivey introduces David Kraslow, who gives a dramatic and wide-ranging lecture. Kraslow, former journalist and co-author of "The Secret Search for Peace in Vietnam," reads from a Columbia Journalism Review article about Donald Graham, chairman of The Washington Post Company and nephew of Senator Bob Graham, who volunteered for the draft and fought in Vietnam from 1966 to 1968. When he returned it was to a country in turmoil. In 1969, over 300 protests were held involving one third of the nation’s students. Kraslow compares these large numbers with a single anti-US-Iraqi war movement reported in the news the week before his speech. He reads from a timeline the major events of the 1950s and 1960s, including issues of race relations. University of Miami was "lily white" when Kraslow attended in 1946. The first black student was admitted to UM in 1961, and the first black football player attended in 1967. The Orange Bowl was segregated until 1950. Kraslow discusses the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education and the 1957 enrollment of nine African-American students at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, which fomented a crisis in which President Eisenhower had to intervene. Kraslow discusses Florida Senator Bob Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who knew classified information on the US-Iraq War and pushed Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet to declassify it. He admonishes his audience that the greatest power the U.S. government has is the power to classify information to protect those in authority. Kraslow talks about Operation Marigold, an attempt by Polish diplomats to bring the United States and North Vietnam together in secrecy; its failure and cover-up led to the bombing of Hanoi. At the end, Kraslow answers a question about race relations and the war.