January 2022
Mick Chantler has been a student of American history for over 50 years. His primary interests include the Revolutionary War period and the Civil War/Reconstruction era.
Many of your courses have focused on 18th and 19th century American history. What drew you to leapfrog a few generations to study the Kennedys?
You’re right that most of my work has focused on the early part of American history. The Revolutionary era, the constitution, Thomas Jefferson, that whole period, as well as the run up to the Civil War, and then after the Civil War and through the Reconstruction Era.
This Kennedy course is definitely a bit of a departure for me, but I’m really stoked about it. I’ve been a lifelong follower of the Kennedy phenomenon. They were rock stars in many ways for many decades. I believe their impact on America and in the world can only really be understood if you examine them in their context — as a whole, organic, family unit, not as siloed individuals. Everything and everyone are interrelated. Sort of like a solar system, if you will. In the instance of the Kennedy’s, the world rotates primarily around Joe, the patriarch.
I imagine you apply the family context to other historical figures.
Absolutely. The first course I ever taught at OLLI was on Abraham Lincoln. When I was deep in my studies, I came to believe that the only way you can really understand the man fully is to recognize that he was the product of what we would call a shame-based family unit. He was completely embarrassed by his father who was, essentially, an illiterate hillbilly. I believe Lincoln spent his career trying to extricate himself from his background, to leave it in the distant past.
I’m particularly intrigued by political family units, and the Kennedy phenomena isn’t the only one I’ve researched. I find the Adam’s family — John and Abigail, their son John Quincy, and his son Charles Francis, and his son Henry, the writer — a fascinating generational tableau. You really and truly can’t understand one without seeing how they all interrelate and influence each other.
The thing about the Kennedy’s though is that they’ve existed in my lifetime. I’ve lived it. I remember when Jack was killed and I remember Bobby running for President and his assassination. I was actually a Eugene McCarthy supporter because he was the first person to throw down the gauntlet and challenge Lyndon Johnson on the war. It was only after McCarthy proved that Johnson was vulnerable that Bobby stepped in. As someone who was prime draft age during the Vietnam War, who became president felt like a life and death matter for me.
Right now, threats to our democracy abound. What does history tell us about this moment?
History provides such an amazing perspective, doesn’t it? We have been a fractured nation before. We came pretty close to a civil war in the 1790s and in the early 1800s over the constitution and states’ rights. And, of course, we had a Civil War. In a way, we have a long history of being at one another’s throats and we seem to go through these divisive periods every couple of generations. All that said, the situation and the discourse right now seem exceptionally and unusually virulent. I think historians everywhere are searching for context.
Can you share what you’re working on next?
One area I’m examining right now is the history of anti-war thought in American history. There are so many fascinating figures who dedicated their lives against our chronic warmongering. There were people like Eugene Debs, the socialist and union organizer from the early 20th century, who ended up going to prison for opposing World War One. Another was Jeanette Rankin, a women's rights advocate, and the first woman to hold federal office in the United States back in 1916. American history is filled with extraordinary and intriguing individuals — the famous and the lesser known — who’ve played roles in creating the country we are today. I wish I could study them all.