Robert DePugh called him 'agitator'
Former KU radical now contractor
Laird Wilcox recalls activity
Former KU radical leader, Laird Wilcox, poses in the study of his Kansas City apartment. In an interview with a Kansan reporter, Wilcox, who now works as a contractor, recalls his KU activity.
Wilcox remembers when he was deputized to investigate Minuteman activity and had his car shot at. He also published the Kansas Free Press and founded the KU Student Peace Union.
By TERRY KOCH Kansan Staff Writer
Big, burly and bearded, Laird Wilcox, 26, a leading radical at KU during the early 60's, now works as a contractor in Kansas City, Mo.
The den of his second-floor apartment on Kansas City's south side is filled with souvenirs of his radical years.
On one wall hangs a framed certificate commissioning him as a deputy sheriff of Shawnee County. Wilcox had himself deputized when he made an
investigation of the right wing Minutemen in 1966.
"Robert DePugh, the chieftain of the Minutemen, attacked me for being a 'leftist agitator' in '64. I exposed one of his KU agents in '66. I got my truck windshield shot out for it," he said.
Hanging on the wall are clips of machine gun ammunition which he confiscated from Minutemen during his investigations.
In a filing cabinet in the corner are issues of the Kansas Free Press (KFP), a newspaper
he published from 1963-66
"The paper emphasized civil liberties and freedom of speech," he said, "the issues that I believe are most important.
"In 1966 Bert Carlyle, a Topeka newspaper publisher, won the VFW Americanism Award for exposing me as a Communist. He called the KFP 'one of the most left wing publications I have ever seen,'" Wilcox said.
Wileox said he had been a Socialist at one time but never a Communist.
In 1962 Wileox founded the
Med Center strikers displeased with outcome
KANSAS CITY - Morale has improved among the non-professional workers at the KU Medical Center since they went back to work last Thursday, a union official said.
But they still want action, said Milton H. Bledsoe, president of Public Service Employes Union Local 1132.
Union members started to picket and staged a walkout at the Medical Center March 9.
The strike caused the Medical Center to suspend all hospital admissions including emergency room service for three days.
But, a restraining order signed March 12, by Judge Harry G. Miller Jr., of the Wyandotte County District Court, enjoined the union from striking, picketing and encouraging others
to strike and to picket the Medical Center.
"The workers returned in full force March 13," Bledsoe said, "but they are still not happy."
March 14, Dist. Court Judge O. Q. Claflin dissolved the restraining order by mutual request of the attorneys for the state and the union.
The union publicly agreed to go back to work and to stay at work regardless of pending litigation, said J. Richard Foth, an assistant attorney general.
"Now the union can press its demands on the state legislature." Foth said.
They are hoping the Kansas State Legislature will come up with a bill providing for more than the 5 per cent pay raise that Gov. Robert B. Docking proposed in his budget this year.
The 5 per cent pay raise with a hospital provision which would be effective July 2, was unacceptable to the union, Bledsoe said.
"This is getting the utmost consideration now," said H. J. Yount, vice president of the Kansas State Federation of Labor.
Blount said a committee is being set up in the Republican party to go into the needs of state employees.
"We hope by the middle of the week something concrete will be proposed," Blount said. "When something like this happens, it takes in the whole state, not just the Medical Center.
"It takes in all state employees and costs considerably more."
Students attend workshop
Fifty KU students attended an Association of University Residence Halls' (AURH) workshop at Unity Village in Lee's Summit, Mo., this weekend in an attempt to discover what helps or hinders participation in a dorm situation.
The workshop was concerned with finding and developing the type of people who stimulate effort, capture imagination and inspire others in KU residence halls.
The purpose of the workshop was not only to study the influence of leadership, but to study the role of groups, both from an individual basis and from group effort.
Mar. 17
1969 KANSAN 13
Dean Kerkman, clinic psychologist for the Watkin's health service, initiated all investigations and supervised the six different groups.
He equated a dorm to a Peace Corps environment after the volunteer has become too well acquainted with its meaning and causes.
"Things have to happen at a group level for this disillusioned student, and that's what we are here for," he said. "Someone has to lead these 'culture shocked' students back into the game."
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When asked about House bill 1375, a bill introduced by a Democratic delegation from Wyandotte county asking for a 25 per cent across-the-board pay increase. Blount said:
KU Student Peace Union. He published the International Peace Directory in 1963. In 1964 he established Wilcox Collection (extremist literature) and donated it to KU's library.
Caused uproar
"Seldom has a majority party taken a bill from a minority party. That bill is still in committee."
From 1963-64 when he was chairman of the SUA Minority Opinions Forum, he caused an uproar by bringing George Lincoln Rockwell, then head of the American Nazi Party, to speak to KU students.
Monday is cut-off day for all bills other than appropriations and taxes, he added. "I don't know where that bill will be."
"Rockwell was useful man to have around, because he was a visible, tangible example of the danger of the far right," he said.
Wilcox, no longer involved in politics, is disenchanted with the New Left as represented by young white university students.
"The good years of the New
Left ended about '65," he said.
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"Now it's nothing but a kids' movement. Black activists are disgusted with these kids and are working on their own. It's a fad, a hip thing to do. Most of the kids find an emotional catharsis
in protest. They're getting back at mom and dad," he said.
"The New Left is dangerous." he said, "because it's getting more corrupt than the society it says it's revolutionizing. Gangsterism, anti-intellectualism, coercion and escapism are common to it now.
"The New Left," he continued, "has the false image of being America's conscience, and students are hesitant to acknowledge its excesses because of this."
Wileo is still a member of the American Civil Liberties Union even though he no longer involves himself in politics.
"I'm anti-ideological now. I've spent most of my time the past few years reading and thinking things over. I'm suspicious of the 'true believer' as Eric Hoffer describes him," he said.
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