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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 102.2 | The History Cooperative
102.2  
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June, 2006
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Reviews

Prairie Power
Voices of 1960s Midwestern Student Protest

By Robbie Lieberman
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004. Pp. xvi, 264. Bibliography. $44.95.)

In this regional perspective on what radical-turned-scholar Todd Gitlin called the "years of hope and days of rage," Robbie Lieberman explores how the student New Left manifested itself in "working-class institutions in rural, conservative areas of the country" (p. x). Through a collection of oral histories from former activists affiliated in varying degrees with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapters at the University of Kansas, University of Missouri, and Southern Illinois University (SIU), Lieberman attempts to present "Prairie Power" activism not simply as a disruptive contingent of SDS—the most high-profile and influential New Left group of the Vietnam era—but as a distinctive ethos, value system, and style of protest based on a genuine commitment to organizing around local issues and on a penchant for complementing direct-action politics with cultural rebellion. Concomitantly, by giving voice to these midwestern radicals, Lieberman's intends to challenge orthodox perceptions of Prairie Power (advanced by SDS leaders such as Gitlin) as having been little more than a collection of unsophisticated, long-haired, dope-smoking anarchists whose ascendancy within SDS after 1965 derailed that organization and helped steer what is loosely referred to as "the movement" down the path toward hedonism, violence, and nihilistic excess. . . .
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