Uprising at Bowling Green: How the Quiet Fifties Became the Political Sixties - Hardcover

“Uprising at Bowling Green represents a useful and worthwhile read about an important, early chapter of the 1960s that up until now has been lost, stolen, or strayed.”
-International Review of Modern Sociology
“[Uprising at Bowling Green] is a fascinating study of the first large student demonstration of the 1960s, which led to the fall of an autocratic university president. When I began reading this book I could not put it down. Based on their own direct experiences during the uprising, as well as interviews, archival research, and sophistical theoretical and contextual analyses, the authors provide an authoritative and compelling account that situates Bowling Green at the front of events that encompassed the sixties. Their illuminating analysis is a must-read.”
―William Julius Wilson, Harvard University

"Writing about a long-ago protest at Bowling Green State University, Wiley, Perry, and Neal tell a vivid sixties story that significantly enhances our understanding of that tumultuous decade. The campus events at Bowling Green are a prism through which we can understand what happened over forty years ago as we continue to come to grips with those times. Until we settle our score with the many Bowling Greens―which combined institutional repression and surprising faculty and student activism―we will not understand who we were and who we have become."
―Ben Agger, The University of Texas―Arlington, and author of The Sixties at 40 (Paradigm 2009)

"As the authors point out, the Bowling Green student movement was one of the few 1960s campus uprisings in which there was a strong alliance between faculty and students, and this was a key to its success. Revolt from the bottom is seldom successful, as we see in comparing state revolutions, unless it coincides with and
fuses networks with revolt from near the top."
―Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania

Often overlooked, the student demonstration at Bowling Green State University was the first and most successful sixties campus protest-one that speaks volumes about America's transition from the social mores of the 1950s to 1960s activism. What began as a protest against outdated rules about dating and student behavior quickly turned toward political objectives about civil liberties and ousted the university president. The authors, two of whom were present on campus during the demonstration, tell the story of what began as dissent against the old schoolmarm rules-a fifties-style protest-and how it quickly transformed into a full-fledged sixties crusade, using the new issues, tactics, and identities of the new decade. A major force was an early flexing of feminist muscles. When the uprising succeeded, largely through female leadership, the civil liberties of women were brought up to date. Drawing on the sociological ideas of Weber, Durkheim, and Marx, this book depicts how young activists broke the fifties mold, little aware that many of their ideals would be echoed in the Port Huron Statement just a year later, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement subsequently, many important sixties protests. It is also a vivid portrait of how the '50s became the '60s in America.