The Activist Class

On a rainy Commencement Day 25 years ago, there wasn't much cause for celebration for Rachel Radio Lieberman '68. She was about to graduate from Radcliffe, but she was more preoccupied with organizing a special kind of protest.

The spring of 1968 had been a trying time for the country, and a busy time for social activism. The anti-war and civil rights movements had bit their stride, but the country had lost two of its most promising leaders.

In April, during Harvard's spring break. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis. And in Los Angeles, just seven days before Lieberman graduated from Radcliffe, Robert F. Kennedy '48 was shot dead by Sirhan Sirhan in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel.

Lieberman felt her class needed to make a statement, and it did on a day so rainy that then-Radcliffe President Mary L. Bunting interrupted the ceremony to ask the graduating seniors if they wanted to move the services indoors. (By a show of hands, they decided to stay outside.)

On June 12, 1968, 292 women--more than three-quarters of them wearing white armbands over their black robes--received their degrees from Harvard. Each white armband was bisected by a black mourning band for King and Kennedy.

That was not all Lieberman, a class marshall had planned. She read a statement, which had been approved overwhelmingly or the rest of her class, expressing support for male classmates who refused to serve in the military.

"Everybody except the Rockefellers stood up and cheered after the address," Lieberman recalls.

A tradition of social activism, born of the turbulent times of the 1960s, has shaped the lives of some, if not all, of the members of the Class of 1968.

"I would be overstating myself to say I was an activist," says Edward Larson '68, a professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. "But I was very much affected by movements."

"I got involved with taking care of people," says Lawson. "It was during that period of time that I got involved with pediatrics."

For some Harvard students, activism was already in their blood before they first entered the Yard.

In the 1950s, for example, Lieberman passed out leaflets for Democratic presidential candidate and Illinois Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson Jr. '52.

"I think college was an expansion of it," says Lieberman, who now works for the Commission on Aging for the city of Boston. "The '60s were very intense, people were optimistic. The war sidetracked ideals."

Arlene R. Popkin '68, senior trial counsel for the Legal And Society of Westchester Country, N.Y., says she was active in the civil rights movements before coming to college. And once at Harvard, she also protested the war, which she blames in large part on President Lyndon B. Johnson.

"Vietnam was a creature of Johnson's ego in a lot of people's views," Popkin says.

Popkin says she joined the Young Democrats Club with the intention of turning what was then the largest organization on campus into a tool of the anti-war movement. Their main goal was to dump Johnson, and she helped send more than 400 students from Harvard and Radcliffe to work during the primaries.

"The Harvard-Radcliffe Young Democrats had more to do with the [Minnesota Sen. Eugene] McCarthy campaign than any other institution that was available," Popkin says.

And Popkin, like other graduates of 1968, sees her current occupation as an extension of that activism. Popkin, in particular, likes her job at the legal aid bureau, where she can help those who can't afford proper counsel in the law. Lieberman also says she took her present job because it was in public service.

Other graduates focused their activism at Harvard on changing the University. Thomas S. Williamson Jr. '68, solicitor for the U.S. Department of Labor, was in the student government and served as the first chair of an ad hoc committee of Black students formed in response to the King assassination which took steps to establish Afro-American studies.

"Harvard hadn't been aggressive about making the country less racist," Williamson says. "My role was to help things get started in a way that was both progressive and conciliatory."

Williamson says the committee was part of an effort to make Harvard more accessible to minorities. He also says he and other students urged the admissions office to recruit more heavily from different kinds of schools.

"We said, 'you don't understand how remote Harvard seems to a Black student at an inner city high school,'" Williamson says.

He also worked hard on public interest issues as a lawyer, taking on race discrimination cases and working for Planned Parenthood before going on to the Carter administration in 1978.

"It's a very appealing and logical evolution from modest student activism to government to try to find ways in improving the role of people at the bottom rungs of society," Williamson says.

Other graduates didn't become politically active until long after graduation.

Linda J. Greenhouse '68, who covers the U.S. Supreme Court for The New York Times, notes that the women's movement in particular did not get into full swing until the mid-1970s.

"I'm certainly committed to social change," says Greenhouse, who took part in a march in support of abortion rights while she was covering the issue for The Times. "[But] I wouldn't call myself an activist."

But for all its different permutations, the ultimate effect of the 1960s activist spirit is best described by the silent protest undertaken by so many Radcliffe women a quarter century ago.

While the gesture of wearing armbands had its roots in a shared history and common principles, it ultimately has meant-and still means-slightly different things to different people.

Says Popkin: "I still think it's immoral to do nothing in the face of injustice."Courtesy Harvard ArchivesStudents block the car of Defense Secretary William S. McNamara on DeWolfe Street.

"I think college was an expansion of it," says Lieberman, who now works for the Commission on Aging for the city of Boston. "The '60s were very intense, people were optimistic. The war sidetracked ideals."

Arlene R. Popkin '68, senior trial counsel for the Legal And Society of Westchester Country, N.Y., says she was active in the civil rights movements before coming to college. And once at Harvard, she also protested the war, which she blames in large part on President Lyndon B. Johnson.

"Vietnam was a creature of Johnson's ego in a lot of people's views," Popkin says.

Popkin says she joined the Young Democrats Club with the intention of turning what was then the largest organization on campus into a tool of the anti-war movement. Their main goal was to dump Johnson, and she helped send more than 400 students from Harvard and Radcliffe to work during the primaries.

"The Harvard-Radcliffe Young Democrats had more to do with the [Minnesota Sen. Eugene] McCarthy campaign than any other institution that was available," Popkin says.

And Popkin, like other graduates of 1968, sees her current occupation as an extension of that activism. Popkin, in particular, likes her job at the legal aid bureau, where she can help those who can't afford proper counsel in the law. Lieberman also says she took her present job because it was in public service.

Other graduates focused their activism at Harvard on changing the University. Thomas S. Williamson Jr. '68, solicitor for the U.S. Department of Labor, was in the student government and served as the first chair of an ad hoc committee of Black students formed in response to the King assassination which took steps to establish Afro-American studies.

"Harvard hadn't been aggressive about making the country less racist," Williamson says. "My role was to help things get started in a way that was both progressive and conciliatory."

Williamson says the committee was part of an effort to make Harvard more accessible to minorities. He also says he and other students urged the admissions office to recruit more heavily from different kinds of schools.

"We said, 'you don't understand how remote Harvard seems to a Black student at an inner city high school,'" Williamson says.

He also worked hard on public interest issues as a lawyer, taking on race discrimination cases and working for Planned Parenthood before going on to the Carter administration in 1978.

"It's a very appealing and logical evolution from modest student activism to government to try to find ways in improving the role of people at the bottom rungs of society," Williamson says.

Other graduates didn't become politically active until long after graduation.

Linda J. Greenhouse '68, who covers the U.S. Supreme Court for The New York Times, notes that the women's movement in particular did not get into full swing until the mid-1970s.

"I'm certainly committed to social change," says Greenhouse, who took part in a march in support of abortion rights while she was covering the issue for The Times. "[But] I wouldn't call myself an activist."

But for all its different permutations, the ultimate effect of the 1960s activist spirit is best described by the silent protest undertaken by so many Radcliffe women a quarter century ago.

While the gesture of wearing armbands had its roots in a shared history and common principles, it ultimately has meant-and still means-slightly different things to different people.

Says Popkin: "I still think it's immoral to do nothing in the face of injustice."Courtesy Harvard ArchivesStudents block the car of Defense Secretary William S. McNamara on DeWolfe Street.