If you remember the 1960s, according to the old adage, you weren’t there.
Then again, you might be among the thousands of people who have already discovered a treasure trove of classic speeches delivered during the era at UCLA. Among those featured are astronauts, actors, activists, politicians and scientists.
In a way, you experience the turbulence of the ’60s if you listen to all of the speeches,” said Derek Bolin, a 2013 UCLA graduate who spent the past nine months digitizing and uploading them to YouTube. “You can hear the ’60s happening in these recordings.”
Recorded between 1962 and 1973, the 365 auditory blasts from the past resuscitate LSD pioneer Timothy Leary, civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael, farm labor organizer Cesar Chavez and Black Power advocate Eldridge Cleaver, to name just a few of the collection’s long-gone giants.
Represented at the pinnacle of their rabble-rousing influence are anti-war activist Jane Fonda, Pentagon Papers figure Daniel Ellsberg, civil rights leader Angela Davis and folk singer Joan Baez.
Goose bump moments include Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling raving in 1971 about a recently released sci-fi flick called “THX1138,” which was George Lucas’s directorial debut; Carol Burnett in 1973 expressing optimism about the prospects for a recent guest on her variety show — his name was Tim Conway; and Vietnam War opponent David Dellinger discussing the Paris peace talks a month before his disruption of the 1968 Democratic Convention made him one of the Chicago Seven.
“I don’t know how organizers did it, but they managed to attract a veritable who’s who of the era,” said Tim Groeling, chair of the UCLA College’s communication studies department, which is responsible for the effort. A mix of scholarly lectures, prepared speeches and free-form question-and-answer sessions, the presentations were mostly organized by the Associated Students Speakers Program, which no longer exists.
Pearls of wisdom from such towering figures as pediatrician Benjamin Spock, Buddhism mainstreamer Alan Watts, Polio vaccine inventor Jonas Salk and atom bomb father Robert Oppenheimer were recorded onto reel-to-reel tapes when they were delivered. The tapes languished until last fall in a storage room on the first floor of Rolfe Hall, where communication studies is housed.