 This is Leah Wicket. I am a grad student here at UC for history. I'll be interviewing Gene Lewis. My partner is Tao Nguyen who will be recording this interview for us. So can I just get your full name? Your full name? Gene D. Lewis. And where and when were you born? February 20th, 1931 in Lowell, Arizona. Okay, and your parents' names and their occupations? A. E. Lewis, father, neighbor. Mother, Mae, Lewis. Housewife. Okay. And where did you attend college and what was your focus of study there? Arizona State College. This is now, of course, the university, the largest public university in the country. B. A. M. A. I studied history. Okay, and what was your focus that you did in history? In history? In America. In America. Okay. And the date and the circumstances of getting hired here at UC and why you chose UC? I came in 1958 and I had done my dissertation, which is finished just a year before, on an early American engineer concentrating in the period of 1820 and the Civil War, the Civil War and the College of Engineering here had been given notice that their accreditation was in danger unless they diversified the curriculum of that way from the technical side to more humans, humanities, social studies, et cetera, business and because we were on a different calendar, they did not intermingle with the College of Arts and Sciences. So technically I was a budgeted as a college engineer, although my office was here in McEthall. That soon changed in 1963, but I talked over there for five years, totally, to engineers. I talked to American history, Western STEM, and their senior year, all of them in the class, two of them in a course called Contemporary Problems that's focused on the 20th century. And then what positions did you hold here at UC other than professor? Oh, I was assistant to, executive assistant to the president, President Warren Benes, and I was senior vice president and provost of the university in the 70s. And I was department head in history for probably different times, 12 years. And then what date were you tenured here and what was the process like at that time when you were tenured? Tenured or when I arrived here? Well, both. Oh, when I arrived here, we were very small and very, very isolated in terms of national identity as an urban university. We were supported by the city of Cincinnati. Quite small. I think we had five or six teachers in the department of history. And the hall that was 13th, or McEthall, where we're sitting now, we had about five or six departments, some in business college. It was not diverse. I was interviewed by five or six older white men. That was it. There was no affirmative action. Then I decided to hire me before I got here. I arrived at the airport, no one there to meet me. I said, well, Cincinnati, I have to stay overnight because my appointments were next morning. I had to find my way to the hotel downtown. After I went to bed that evening, I remembered I didn't know where the university was, so I got up and transferred down to the lobby to the desk and asked, how do I get to the university? They said, you can take a bus out here. And Dr. Rachel McGrane was the department head at that time. He was to retire the next year or so, but required retirement by age in those days. And he said, be here at eight o'clock. Well, I cut the bus up to the front of Clifton, asked where McEthall was. I said up there, I had his office number. Came up, I was here sitting on the floor in the hallway. He said, I'm busy teaching. Go do something. Meet us at lunch in the student union. And we had an interview of about ten minutes, nothing about me. I didn't even meet the dean of the college of engineering at the time. And then we went to the president's office. And he came out and shook my hand. He had mentioned McGrane went in and talked for 30 minutes. It turned out they were talking about a book they were doing together. And then I came out, maybe 132. He said, well, my machine didn't run in right, so you have to get back wherever you're going. So I walked down the hill, called a bus back downtown, and bused to the airport. And that was my interview. And that probably is pretty symbolic of the state of this university. All the rest of the early hires in the next two or three years for the graduate of this university, not the Ph.D., but backwards in MA. And no written interview process. There's dramatic change soon after that. Do you remember when you got tenure and what that process was like? Yes. There was no process. It was in the department. I had looked around and thought, well, he needs to be tenured. It was always he at that point. He needs to be tenured. So in 1969, oh, tenured. I was talking about the Moscow Professor. Tenured. I learned about it. I was tenured in 1963. And I learned about it a year later, almost. It's not important. We're not going to get rid of it. And when I was working for a professor in 1969, I found about it through the newspapers. No process whatsoever. That was the change, too. Can you talk a little bit about the courses that you taught while you were here and how teaching for you and for the university changed over time as you were here? I taught a variety of courses. Obviously from Master of Science to 20th Century to Engineering College. When I came here, I taught altogether American survey courses. And I developed several courses. I taught Civil War for a few years, reconstruction. I taught the Jefferson Jackson period. I taught the Old South. How did that change? Well, when I came back from being a Provost, they had seen I taught contemporary problems in engineering, so they signed an old history course, too. It was mostly the U.S. and its interaction with other countries, not really rural history. And I taught the survey occasionally. Large classes. Remember, we had about a thousand students and I co-taught with Tom Bonner in Wilson Hall, 69, 70. In fact, we were teaching in 1970, but students broke up the classes around the university and the protests over in Kent State. And then I developed, of course, the Jackson and Jefferson. But primarily after I became head in the 90s, I taught one of those courses occasionally, but I taught historiographical seminars. And that was a way for me to keep up with what was going on in American history and really coming to understand better American history that it often, so often, probably correctly so, reflects the time that you're writing and if it's a time of adversity and inclusion, then it turned more to social, cultural history, and that is reflected. The early period of professional history, maybe not quite as early, the beating period was all economic. Everything was based on economic conflicts and so on. And then after the World War II, it turned into that type of consensus history. And then as the great changes in the 60s and 70s, it became much more progressive, conflict-oriented again but on the progressive side and so on. So that's why history can never be written just as once. That's it because it reflects those who are living, they go back and examine what preceded this, what caused this. And so, see, women suddenly are in American history and they have been longed out over the years and same with the African Americans and other groups. Something like that. That's great. So what was your educational approach in teaching? Do you recall any of the activities you did in course? Was it lecture-heavy? Do you remember your teaching style? Oh, and classes are already lectured because the classes were big. In advanced courses, we had discussions. And in the survey courses, we broke up and had the assistant usually conducting discussion section, discussion section. Your lecture only maybe twice a week and then on the third time you had discussions. I don't know what to do now. Pretty much the same time. Well, that's her down. 127 was occupied all the time that's John Alexander teaching up to, I think it holds 180 students there. I don't think we do that anymore, so I don't know. You do. Okay. So you were involved in some of the programs here on campus as well in the history department, the student budget committee. It looked like in your paperwork that you were a part of that a bit. Do you recall any of those organizations and departments? There were committees in the department. That's true. But speaking more generally, I was talking about your problems my entire career here. We never had. Maybe we're not terribly unique, but I think we're unique in Ohio because we were starving for funding and we waited to become a state that had been in university 15 years too long. When I was a provost, right, I ended being provost just as we came state. We were terribly broke and the problems was trying to break this university into at least the 20th century, not the late 20th century, was trying to hire new deans. And that was my role. And it's very hard to attract top-notch dean that you really want without getting funding and money. And of course it was in that late period of provost time that we became immunized because of salary problems. And then I became department head after a long period of time, 88 to 98, the dean promised that when I had retirements we'd get two replacements for the one that retired that would have two secretaries. And there was something of a little recession we had those every three years at the university in 1991, and that one secretary that we had retired, we never got another one. That place is awfully out of burden for one person and the head to fill all those chores that you had to do. We never got two replacements for one. And in fact, back to the secretary thing, I often wondered what we did wrong there and the importance of the dean's role at that time, the dean has been demoted here a lot now, but at that time they controlled the budget totally. He was from Kimstrup, and I learned that they had five secretaries or general funds that we had, you know, you fought the budget all along. And about the same time that the secretary retired, he sent out a note that we had to make cups. Well, where do you make cups in this department? The budget is 95% personnel. What we can cut is a bit of paper and maybe a computer or two here or there, but that's it. You know what, one thing, and he made us cut it, you know, what we had to cut. We had to jerk out a third or two thirds of our telephones. And that's my role in terms of budget and it makes it grow. Fighting constantly. And I spent much of my time either teaching or doing that. And in the university, you've got to view it as a community. But occasionally within the community you have some top-down stuff. The top-down of the budget. They kept it secret of what other departments did and divide and conquer in a way. And I understand now that what they've done is in the last five or six years they've fired all of the business part of the Arts and Science College. And the budget is over. And that is really top-down. And probably there are not great discussions over where we should be going this time, what direction we should be going. But in the main, I support what they're doing now. It's diversity, inclusion, interdisciplinary. And that's hard to accomplish all of this without a lot of resistance. And in some cases it's desirable to resist if the purpose does not for their education. You have to look at that closely. I probably don't want to do that. Do you remember being an advisor on any committees? Like maybe Cincinnati's or fraternities? Oh goodness. I don't know. Walk to the unit. There's an award called the Barber Award. Dean Barber was the dean of the college for years. And I'd only left a couple years before I arrived. And when he retired, he said I'd fund the Barber Award for best student-teachers relations. And because of all my engineering, I didn't have much to do with the department at all. They tried to integrate me in the department a good deal. I spent my time with the students of the organization and tried to advance them. And the second year I won the Barber Award after this inaugurated in the 16th. So I spent a lot of time. And I noticed that it's interesting. The last thing I think that Professor Zane Miller you've heard of him ever wrote was a birthday card to me a year ago. Excuse me. In 10 or 12 days. And he wrote in there. He was the best mentor of undergraduate graduate students I've ever met. So that tells you again when I worked there. I just awaited the question, I'm afraid. Okay. So you talked before in our other interview a bit about your work with going to the march during the Civil Rights Movement. Would you want to talk a little bit about that? The summer march? Well, you know, that began in, you know, education comes in many forms. Humanizations and knowledge. I grew up in a rural area of Northern Arizona. 10p. Where Arizona State is located. It's a suburb of Phoenix. Probably had four or five thousand students there. Northern Arizona had a reservation here. Apache Indian Reservation 20 miles away. My interaction with that group was minimal. We had none of them in our school. It was a great school. I had no interaction with Latinos. That was the southern part of the state. And so when I left Arizona State I bet I hadn't met a dozen African Americans in my life. And I told in that interview about coming from Gold Bears to Champaign-Urban, Illinois on a ground bus back in 1953. And taking 24 hours to go across the state of Texas in those days. Got the Tulsa. My first experience with such obvious racism was the water fountain in the bus station. Colored in white. My interaction with an African American is a graduate student in Illinois. He was discriminated against. And it was no way to me. But when I came here in 1958 I bet the enrollment of African Americans at this university would have been something. African American community was largely located at the West End at that time. It was clustered there. The cell got out. What started to spread was in 1975. It was finished in about 59 or 60 through there and cut out the whole community. Separated. And so my interaction with black people was slowly but steadily. And what happened, of course, was the arrival of Martin Luther King in the 60s. His awful assassination in 68. And a president from all places, Texas, named LBJ, that was able to push through the Civil Rights Act for immigration, and voter rights and so forth. Accommodations. And the voter rights thing was terribly important to American historians. They had been fighting, talking about this for a good deal of time. And the leaders of the profession, including C. Van Woodward, Richard Hofstadter and others, decided that we would join him and Martin Luther King in a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 in Tom Bonner, a hero of mine, and did more to cause this university to transition to a modern university than anyone. I remember he came here in the fall of 63 and Guy and I had just gotten married. We lived down here in a apartment on Woodside Place, and Tom Bonner became chair of the apartment. But we came together quickly in terms of interest in out-of-the-political affiliations and so on. And I remember him sitting in a chair at that apartment on Woodside Place where the business college is now after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. So we grew up very close together. In 1965, I still remember him. We lived in Ambrick Village at that time. Why we went out there? Oh, I do know why we went out there. It's a largely Jewish community. A fellow who talked the Romance language in this hallway, lived out there and he took a job elsewhere. He said, Gene, I'll help you buy my place. I'll provide the second mortgage for you there. And I was like, that's why we were out there. I was just getting started. And Tom Bonner came out there and said, would you like to go with me on that march? And I said, oh, yes. What an experience I was. We flew to Atlanta, got in there just about dark, and some old yellow church buses driven by black folks managed there and drove that night to Tuskegee and stayed all night there the next day. We didn't walk all the way from Selma. That's probably 45, 50 miles. On the outskirts, we met. And this is a peaceful march. No protest in terms of yelling back at these red decks who were yelling and screaming at us. And we were protected by the National Guard. It was there. And I remember walking hand in hand with Richard Ostatter. If you don't know who Richard Ostatter was, she's one of those consensus writers back in the 50s and 60s who should look him up. And we marched hand in hand in these gay moves from all around yelling obscenities to us. We got before they opened their capitol in recovery about, I'd say, 10 or 11 o'clock that morning. These black folks, we called them black soldiers, African-Americans that had waited too long to be in front of that old Confederate place. And they weren't about too quick, are they? We stood there and it was in the middle of the late March. It was hot in Alabama, but that time, for three hours without any water or anything and listen, Mark Luther King, of course, spoke. John Lewis was there. You've heard of him, I hope. He's a congressman from Georgia, John Lewis. And then when we disbanded, they said, get to your buses quickly. Tom and I stopped in the gulf zone and said, can you shoot? You should arrest her. And we said, no, you can't. Get out of here and we jumped to that bus and got back to Atlanta that night. In the meantime, a woman from Michigan that had been driving back to Selma that night was hijacked and killed. That became national attention. That was a great experience for me. And then in 68, 69, we had the uprights in Europe, UBH, the United Black Association. We had very grown numbers of African-Americans, too. And you can imagine coming in with an old full-game white president and conserving. And I was president of the AUP, that's Association of American Professors. And we were trying, and Tom and I ourselves tried to get some another that faculty, students, and administrators to come together and discuss these problems every birthday. And they were generous. And we finally got a university senate set up where there were students and faculty about equal numbers, administrators, much smaller to discuss these issues. And obviously I was the first president of that. And a month later, Kent State occurred. We had to sit down at the university because it was just unheard of. We worked so hard at all sorts of discussions and sessions and seminars on bringing us together so that we could reopen. And the university senate met that to reopen the next day on Monday, late at middle of May, sitting on the course system of schools and all forever into June graduation. And we met to decide if we could reopen the next day in that very afternoon. Jackson State, all African-American universities and Mississippi have great rides. And the African-Americans here on campus demanded we respect the same way we did Kent State. We closed down. And we voted to. Then we had to convince Langston. And he wasn't even there. So we got our cars, Tom Bonner and I, he was a provost at the time. And I was chair of the university senate. Went down to his house on Kent State and Mrs. Langston got word that African-Americans were coming down there. And she yelled out all sorts of sympathies about to get out of here. And we went down to City Hall. At that time, the university was still open and the mayor was there. The trustees met. Langston was at that time Bonner and me in the room. So we sat out in the lobby of City Hall. Well, they were commended there for two, three hours and came out there the way that we could reopen. So it was closed. I don't know what the question was. That was great. Yeah, yeah, that was great. So you didn't talk much about, would you mind talking a little bit about the Vietnam War protests here on campus? Yeah. The reason, of course, that got to the footage that it did was because young men were drafted those days. And it was no worse. There was a hell of a mistake. And then the Rock War, the Rock War doesn't generate that kind of protest on campuses. Why? There were no drafts anymore. It's all volunteer. The Vietnam War, it was escalated. We had the terrible 68 presidential election where LBJ had dug himself in. You know, LBJ was great president until he turned to Vietnam. He didn't know anything about foreign affairs. He got us into that jungle. And they confused what we call a domino theory with nationalism. True Vietnam was communism, but it was not communism that China could take over. It was nationalistic communism. Do you understand what I mean by that? It was more nationalist than communist. And China was going to move in. We were afraid after the Korean War. And we were going to go in there and free North Vietnam. And, well, at any rate, the riots were terrible here. We, Tom Potter and I, organized a piece of protest. And it was a piece that we walked all the way downtown. And we had a lot of booze all the way down there. And I remember someone put up Tom Potter's back where he noticed a friend of North Vietnam type of thing. And several faculty were arrested, not several some. One of my own department. Dr. Herbert Shapiro, maybe you heard of him. What African-American history. And Tom Potter and I bailed him out. So that was the type of thing. And I remember one of our vice presidents, Ralph Bursig, a real gentleman, vice president of finance, had a lady secretary who had been here 30 or 40 years and she was very outspoken. When she came in that morning she had occupied the administration. And right next to her office was a man's restroom. She took a broom in there and cleaned it out in no time. Get out of here. So there was some humor in it all, too. But it was not an easy time. Do you recall at all if the Watergate scandal or the resignation of President Nixon was something that affected campus at all? I was the deputy assistant of the president when there was nothing going on in terms of usual protests a bit. I remember one protest. The first job I had as provost was going to Sanders Hall, but it's not here anymore. Because they blew it up. It was not safe and trying to calm the resistance there. But no, I don't think there were any national events in the 70s upset the university that much. I could be wrong. I have to go back and think about it. You have to take some of this because we're in caution. You're talking about stuff that occurred 50 years ago. Okay. So as far as you're living here near campus what was that like? What was your impression of your time? How did you come to campus each day? What was it like living near campus and working at campus for you? I think I always lived near campus for several years. I did. I lived on... I was not married then. I lived on Bermascones in places. And then I moved out to Western Hills. I shared an apartment with a fellow. He was kind of a good friend. He became a professor at North Carolina University. He has a very distinguished family. Lived out there and... I drove little foreign cars to the NGA. I talked to his engineers day to clock in those days. And I remember coming in down in Western Boulevard and there was a little hill there. This was the days before front-wheel drive on cars getting destroyed. This morning. I came up behind a woman in a car that got out and she was stuck shoveling under her front wheel and got in the car and drove off. I told that to those engineering students. They still remind me of that. That really tickled them that this occurred. And then we lived in Amberley Village as I told you about four or six years. And I moved into the place where we now live and I came across and we couldn't fight that I satisfied anyway. So we have lived in Clifton for almost 50 years. And then did you bus here when you lived in Clifton? Did you bus here or did you still drive? No buses. I'm sorry. Sorry. I'll call you back. I have to leave this on because my wife is recovering from a day surgery and I'm the chief rehabber. Do you have any involvement with the scholar we field outside of UC? I didn't have much time for longer than that. My wife did. And she carried me a long good deal of time. She was and is a great part of that Democrat. And she was a delegate to the Democratic Convention in Florida in 1972. And her great sponsor is now the Vice Mayor of Cincinnati David Mann and her great friends with him. And you know, he was dominated in 1972. Richard Nixon won a landslide election I think Democrat only took two states at that. And two years later he was had a resign at George McGovern. George McGovern was a classmate of Donald Obama. And then she was an assistant to the mayor when he became mayor later. And he appointed me to the Bicentennial Commission as a historian for Cincinnati in 1988. And have you ever been to Bicentennial Park downtown? That's the most visible thing. There's many parks down there now, you've been there. If you go in there's a brick to those who are the Bicentennial Commission or something like that. Let's make sure I go. And then I was editor of the Cincinnati Heritage magazine, Cincinnati History about 20, 25 years, I don't know. So I kept in contact in the city of Good Deal that way. And then she worked for a legal aid society. You know what the legal aid society is? I don't, that's great. She was one of your lawyers. She was the organizer of that to help the poor and those that need legal assistance. And then after that she still is a member of home. She's what home is. I think you get me. I was in opportunities made equal. Okay, I didn't know what that is. She was pregnant after a while. And still an important member of it. So she pulled me into it. But I tell you, it's a full-time job here. And when did you retire from UC? 98. Are you still involved with UC academically beyond your retirement? Were you? Not so much academically, but I'm a member of the Maritime Board. It's just sponsoring this. And I'll give her a little money. I can tell you I have. It's just this place. And we'll probably get more if we all behave. Thank you for allowing Tao and I to interview today. And we really appreciate your time. I'm grateful. And as an old historian, though you have to be alert, if you don't know, you have to take a lot of this with a grain of salt. Particularly the factual part unless you verify it as others. So reminiscence is not exactly history. It might give a tone to it. It's not historically totally valid until you're operating it as other sources. Am I right? Indeed, exactly. I have to say that listening to you, talk today helped enrich my knowledge well with you and of the department. And I think that kind of I think you said it gives you a flavor of the history. And so, going back and forth between these reminiscences that provide a really valuable flavor and then, you know, nailing down the facts with, you know, we were at the UC Archives yesterday and Kevin showed us how to do research in the University Archives. Going back and forth between the oral histories of the University Archives will provide, you know, both the factual stuff and, you know, the very rich personal reminiscences. I had such a hard time in the University of D.F.D.S. Provost, a president that was not good. And all those papers are in the archives but it's just too bitter of experience being able to go back and look at them will have to make the one this time. If people want to look at them do it since they can't get in there if you want to call me about it or talk to me about it, be happy to. Great. I think that will help, yeah. Thank you so much. I was quicker than Barbara.