Renowned Historian Writes Book on Division in America in 1960s

Doris Kearns Goodwin finds lessons in our own divided era as well

Hugh Delehanty,

AARP

Comments

Published June 17, 2024

Doris Kearns Goodwin sitting on couch with bookcase full of books behind her

Historian and bestselling author Doris Kearns Goodwin, seen here at her Boston home in January 2024, has written a new book, "An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s."

Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of histories such as No Ordinary Time, Team of Rivals and The Bully Pulpit, has turned to a more personal story for her latest book — An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.

Her late husband, Dick Goodwin, was a presidential aide and speechwriter with an insider’s seat in the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson White Houses — sometimes a little too close, as during a skinny-dipping policy meeting in the White House pool with LBJ. Goodwin has woven her recollections of those days along with some of her husband’s private writings into a look at America during a time of deep divisions along racial and generational lines. We talk with her about those times and what we can apply to our own divided era.

Your new book, An Unfinished Love Story, is a personal look back at the turmoil of the 1960s that began when you and your late husband (and presidential adviser), Dick Goodwin, decided to go through 300-plus boxes of material he’d saved from his speechwriting days with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

We spent weekends doing it, reliving a decade. I was stunned by the dimensions of what he’d kept. He was everywhere you’d want to be as markers of the ’60s. He was with Kennedy on the plane [during his presidential campaign] and at the White House the night JFK’s body was brought back from Dallas. He was with LBJ at the great moments of the Great Society, then got involved with the antiwar movement.

What did you find in those boxes?

I knew all the things that had happened to him. His first wife died, then JFK was assassinated. Then Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, and Dick’s dreams of continuing the Great Society were cut short. But when we went through the boxes, something happened to him. It was almost miraculous. He recovered his sense of joy. Looking back on his life, I think he felt that what he had worked on had mattered.

Did your views on JFK and LBJ conflict?

Dick was loyal to the Kennedys always. It was partly because that’s where his first understanding of public life came from, in his 20s. The Kennedy family was part of his upbringing. In my 20s, I worked with LBJ and became part of his family. So when we talked about those men over the course of our marriage, we often sparred with each other. Some poll would come out ranking JFK higher than LBJ, and I’d say, “That’s not fair. LBJ got everything through Congress that JFK tried to get through — the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid.” And Dick would answer, “Yes, but if JFK had been in office, what would have happened with the Vietnam War?”

Tell me about Dick’s experience skinny-dipping with LBJ.

Dick was called to the White House swimming pool to have a meeting with LBJ and [Johnson aide] Bill Moyers. Johnson was already in the pool with no bathing suit, so Dick had no choice but to take his clothes off and jump in. And while the three of them were swimming naked, LBJ started outlining what he wanted his program to be. That was the beginning of the Great Society.

What do you think the ’60s can teach us about our times?

People often ask me, “Are these the worst of times?” I think it’s really important to remember that we’ve lived through really hard times before. The ’60s were one of them. So were the early days of the Civil War and the Depression and World War II. But we know how all of those situations ended. We don’t know the end of our story yet. Going through Dick’s boxes made the ’60s come alive for me with both promise and sadness. There was enormous promise, the real feeling that we were coming closer to our ideals.

But the ’60s also had great sadness.

That’s right. The way the ’60s ended, with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, riots in the cities, violence on campuses, there’s a feeling that all hope had been lost. But, in fact, the promises from the start of the decade — the birth of the Peace Corps, the Great Society program, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, and the enormous amount of other legislation the 89th Congress passed — have permanently altered our lives. That’s what Dick came to realize going through those boxes: that the ’60s were a decade of enormous promise and the enormous fulfillment of that promise.

How were the ’60s different from today?

The big difference, obviously, is the media. In 1965, when Alabama’s state troopers descended on the peaceful marchers in Selma, everybody was watching the same footage because there were only three networks. And it fired the consciousness of people and led to a change in public sentiment. Today, because of the divided media and 24-hour breaking news, even if you fire the conscience of people and organize a march, the next news cycle comes along with something else. It’s so ephemeral. I thought Jan. 6 would change the country in many ways, but it’s impossible to sustain that kind of feeling the way you could in the ’60s.

So how do we heal the divide?

The quality we need to engender most in people is empathy. I’ve often thought if we had a national service program — an internal Peace Corps — where we’d take young people after high school and send them to different parts of the country to work on disaster relief and other problems, it might teach them how to understand other people’s points of view and why they feel so angry at the other side. Then the talking can begin.

What kind of leadership do we need now?

I’m often asked who I would bring back among “my guys” — Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and LBJ — and I always say that I’d bring them all back. If you have to get something through Congress, you’d definitely want Johnson to be there. Teddy Roosevelt had that fighting spirit and charisma we seem to be demanding in this world of entertainment. And FDR would help us restore trust in the government. But what we need now are people of character in public life. That’s what Lincoln had in spades.

What gives you hope?

History gives me hope. When I think of the eras I’ve studied — the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, the early days of World War II and the ’60s — they all were times of great turmoil, but we got through those times and emerged with greater strength as a nation closer to our ideals.