A great neighborhood center opens on the east side … the backlash builds to life on campus … and a great man dies. Some of the stories making news fifty years ago this month.
Madison, October 1968
October 1—Around 1 a.m., someone cuts the glass of a window of the state headquarters of the Selective Service System at 1220 Capitol Ct., pours in some gasoline, lights a gas-soaked towel, and tosses it in. The explosion blows out a window, and the fire burns some draft records and melts fixtures. Draft officials suspect the incident is related to last week’s attack on the draft office in Milwaukee.[i]
Later that morning—The Wil-Mar Center, serving the Williamson-Marquette neighborhoods, becomes the fourth member of the Madison Neighborhood Centers (MNC) when it opens in temporary quarters at the Pilgrim Congregational Church at 953 Jenifer St. The MNC had wanted to use the old Assembly of God Church at 1103 Williamson St., but the Zoning Board of Appeals denied the necessary zoning waiver in July. MNC director Chester Zmudzinski says Wilmar is unique among the MNC facilities—its board members “are people from the area it serves.” Zmudzinski appoints Reverend David G. DeVore, former curate at Grace Episcopal Church and chaplain for the Dane County Probation Department, as the first director.[ii]
October 3 – Three days after a combined state/federal drug bust on campus nets 46 users and sellers of marijuana and mescaline, the Assembly State Affairs Committee opens hearings into “The Problem of Drugs in Wisconsin,” which committee counsel James R. Klasuer (Wisconsin secretary of administration, 1986–1996) proclaims “a direct attack on the University.” The attack is coordinated by Assembly Speaker Harold Froelich, who says “The recent and constant revelations about drug use, demonstrations, and the nude performances on the UW campus attest to the ineffectiveness of the administration’s policies. It is only a matter of time before the policies of the UW administration destroy what has become a great state university.” He releases a report on October 11 titled “Administrators Fiddle as UW Self-Destructs” and warns of direct legislative involvement in campus affairs. There are bipartisan calls for the regents to fire President Harrington, who assures Governor Knowles—incorrectly—that there’s no significant drug use or distribution in the dorms.[iii]
October 12—About three thousand protesters march from library mall to the Army–Air Force recruiting office, 429 State St., for a series of antiwar speeches. But they cancel plans to continue on to Camp Randall, for fear of violence when the football game ends. Police chief Emery had denied the parade permit request from WDRU, SDS, CEWV and CDA, but Mayor Festge overruled him and issued the permit.[iv]
October 16—Governor Warren Knowles tells the Madison Downtown Rotary Club that the university needs “firm disciplinary measures” so taxpayers are assured it remains “a center of academic discipline—not a never-never land of perpetual adolescence. We should tell the disrupters, the hippies, the narcotics and LSD users, the pornography peddlers, that they are not welcome here.” The downtown businessmen cheer his attack on “students raised in a prevailing attitude of permissiveness—from pampering parents to over-promising political leaders.” That the moderate Knowles—a former president of the university alumni association—would echo the conservative Froelich is a bellwether of statewide public opinion. [v]
October 20—A Field House crowd of 4,000 enthusiastic admirers welcomes Senator Gene McCarthy back to Wisconsin at a campaign rally for Senator Gaylord Nelson and Congressman Bob Kastenmeier.[vi]
October 22—Independent presidential candidate Dick Gregory returns to Madison (with running mate Mark Lane) to denounce the Wisconsin law that prevents counting presidential write-in ballots. After predicting the end of the two-party system at a noon luncheon at the Park Motor Inn, he comes to campus and is met with raucous applause and a standing ovation from a capacity crowd at Great Hall. In a speech piped throughout the Union, he urges students to move beyond civil rights, which he calls “an insult to me. It doesn’t help the Indians or the Mexicans. Human rights frees a lot more people.” But he also warns of more racial violence: “We’re gonna Patrick Henry you—give us liberty, or give us death.”[vii]
October 24—Eldridge Cleaver, defense minister for the Black Panthers and the Peace and Freedom party candidate for president, cancels his appearance at the Stock Pavilion because he double-booked and decided to keep the other date. Tickets can be refunded or used as donations for Eugene Parks’s write-in campaign for sheriff, holding a rally that night in the State Historical Society auditorium.[viii]
October 27—Two of San Francisco’s best come to campus—in the afternoon, acid rockers Quicksilver Messenger Service blast through “Mona” and “Who Do You Love?” for free in Great Hall; at night, acid troubadours Country Joe and the Fish perform “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” and more in the Stock Pavilion.[ix]
And an important passing to note. Oscar Rennebohm, a Columbia County farm boy who got his pharmacist’s degree from UW in 1911 and amassed a fortune as a Madison druggist before serving as an influential governor and UW Regent, dies at his Maple Bluff home of a heart ailment at age seventy-nine on October 15, with his wife, Mary, at his bedside. It was Rennebohm, a regent from 1952 to 1961, who devised the university’s wildly successful foray into urban planning, with the Hill Farms neighborhood and Hilldale Shopping Center. From a single store on the southeast corner of Randall and University Avenues in 1912, he built a chain of twenty Rexall outlets, including “The Pharm” at State and Lake Streets. Rennebohm was a charter member, director, and president of the UW Foundation; he also personally funded scholarships and created a foundation that has so far provided $2 million for civic and community projects. Rennebohm survived an eleven-man Republican primary to win election as lieutenant governor in 1944; reelected in 1946, he became governor on the death of Governor Walter Goodland the next year. Elected to a full term in 1948, he began the state’s housing program for veterans and pushed through advances in public education, welfare, and state care for the mentally ill. He did not seek reelection on the advice of his physician. Governor Warren P. Knowles offers the state capitol for Rennebohm’s funeral, which the family declines.[x]
[i] Rettgen, “Set Fire at State Draft Office Here,” CT, October 1, 1968.
[ii] “Rev. DeVore to Head Neighborhood Center,” CT, July 3; “Neighbor Center Opens on Jenifer St.,” WSJ, September 27, 1968.
[iii] “Froelich Fears UW ‘Destruction,’” WSJ, October 12, 1968; Pommer, “Drugs Not Dorm Problem, Harrington Tells Knowles,” CT, October 24, 1968.
[iv] CAC minutes, September 9, 1968; Holly Dunlop, “New Parade Ordinance Suggested to Council,” WSJ, September 10, 1968; Rena Steinzor, “City Council Rules Curbs on Parades,” DC, September 27, 1968; Steinzor, “Parade Permit Granted; Mayor Reverses Police,” DC, October 9, 1968; “War Protesters Plan Camp Randall March,” WSJ, October 11,1968; Gondek, “3000 Hear Ex-GI’s Hit Vietnam War,” DC, October 15, 1968.
[v] Hunter, “Knowles Echoes Rightist Attacks on U.W. Chiefs,” CT, October 16, 1968; James D. Selk, “Knowles Asks Firmer UW Discipline,”WSJ, October 17, 1968; John Wyngaard, “Knowles Reflects Mood over UW,” WSJ, October 27, 1968.
[vi] John Keefe, “McCarthy Vows to Keep ‘Dream,’” WSJ, October 21, 1968.
[vii] Rosemary Kendrick, “Gregory Pushes for Write-in Vote,” CT, October 23, 1968; Mike Gondek, “Gregory Sees ’68 Election as Death of 2-Party System,” DC, October 23, 1968; Gay Leslie, “Gregory Shows His Independence Here,” WSJ, October 23, 1968.
[viii] Peter Greenberg, “Cleaver Cancels Speech; May Speak Here in Nov.,” DC, October 24, 1968.
[ix] bury st edmund, “Full Fish and Quicksilver,” DC, November 9, 1968.
[x] “Ex-Gov. Rennebohm Dies,” CT, October 15, 1968; “Oscar Rennebohm, 79, State, Civic Leader, Dies,” WSJ, October 16, 1968; “Oscar Rennebohm: 1889-1968,” Wisconsin Alumnus 70, no. 2 (November 1968): 31.
PHOTO: Oscar Rennebohm {credit: Oscar Rennebohm Foundation}