LSD

A hallucinogenic drug discovered by Swiss chemist Albert Hoffmann, LSD helped define the COUNTERCULTURE of the 1960s.

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was discovered in 1943 and made available to select researchers by Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in 1947. One of the earliest American groups to show an interest in the powerful new hallucinogen, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), authorized a secret LSD research program (“MK-ULTRA”) in 1953 as part of its long-standing search for a truth serum. The program attracted an unorthodox crew to begin with, and, as agents tested the drug on themselves, their experimental designs became increasingly bizarre. Perhaps the most disturbing was the 1955 Operation Midnight Climax, in which unwitting men were lured from bars to an agency-funded bordello where they were dosed with LSD and observed through one-way mirrors. Despite such efforts, researchers never found LSD to be of any value as a mind control drug, and in the early 1960s the program closed up shop.

In addition to its own ill-fated operation, the CIA had also channeled funds to legitimate psychological researchers intrigued by the prospect of a psychosis-inducing drug. As the decade wore on, attention turned from “model psychoses” to LSD’s therapeutic potential. Two main strategies emerged. In “psycholytic” therapy small doses of the drug were administered as an adjunct to psychoanalysis. In “psychedelic” (“mind manifesting”) therapy, introduced by Canadian LSD pioneer Henry Osmond in 1957, a large dose was used to telescope years of therapy into a single session. Such techniques briefly became fashionable, especially in Los Angeles’s art-and-film colony.

Attached to the growing numbers of clinical researchers, a loose network of lay partisans saw hallucinogens as sacramental portals to a more profound metaphysical realm. Aldous Huxley, the famed English novelist, was one of the earliest of these LSD proselytizers. His series of rhapsodic, yet highly literate, books on the subject, including The Doors of Perception (1954), Heaven and Hell (1956), and the psychedelic utopian novel Island (1962), advertised the existence of hallucinogens to a widening circle of followers. By the late 1950s, Huxley’s circle had merged with the LSD therapy circuit, bringing together psychiatrists with notable intellectuals and artists. On the East Coast, a similar network was springing up around a young Harvard psychologist named Timothy Leary, whose hallucinogen research seminar had evolved (with some help from poet Allen Ginsberg) into a never-ending series of what could best be described as drug parties.

The surreal genteel atmosphere of these early psychedelic explorations did not last for long. Researchers were experimenting on themselves, and, as with the CIA, the results were unpredictable. Some became messianic about the drug’s transformative potential, and their research programs later tended to evolve into plans for a chemically engineered cultural revolution. By the mid-1960s, this radical mind-set had taken hold of a highly visible vanguard of evangelists, some of whom had become youth culture heroes. Leary became one of the best known of these drug gurus, famously exhorting Americans to “turn on, tune in, and drop out” as he continued his research in the stately New York mansion that served as his headquarters after his expulsion from Harvard in 1963 for allowing undergraduates to participate in experiments after promising not to involve them. Even stranger than Leary’s actions were the inspired antics of novelist Ken Kesey, who had begun his LSD career as a volunteer research subject. Later immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), Kesey and his band of “Merry Pranksters” sponsored LSD festivals known as “Acid Tests” that helped California become the center of a rapidly expanding psychedelic movement.

Egged on by enthusiasts like Leary, Kesey, and an ever-widening pantheon of cultural icons like the Beatles, a growing number of young people experimented with LSD. San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, already the unofficial capital of the “hippie” world, became the mecca of the new distinctly antipolitical movement. In 1967, the huge “Human Be-In” capped a series of LSD festivals. But the Haight, ecstatic as it seemed in its best moments, was far removed from the carefully structured setting called for by LSD researchers in their earlier, more sober days. Already in 1965 observers had begun to note an alarming rise in the frequency of “bad trips,” many of which ended up in emergency rooms. As negative publicity mounted, the government took steps to combat America’s “LSD epidemic.” By the end of 1966 the drug was illegal in all 50 states, and the Food and Drug Administration had effectively halted further medical research. Within a few years, the psychedelic movement’s most visible leaders, Kesey and Leary, were either in prison or in hiding. Many, like Kesey himself, claimed to have moved beyond drugs in their search for transcendence; Leary’s former colleague Richard Alpert, for example, returned from India as the (more or less) clean-living guru Baba Ram Dass. Americans continued to take LSD recreationally, but the momentous sense of doing so as part of a revolutionary movement had permanently faded.

Further reading: Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond (New York: Grove Press, 1992).

—David Herzberg

Luce, Henry See Volume VIII.

MacArthur, Douglas (1880-1964) Allied commander in World War II

Douglas MacArthur served as a commander in the Philippines during World War II, as occupation commander of post-World War II Japan, and as head of the United Nations (UN) forces during the Korean War.

MacArthur was born on January 26, 1880, in Little Rock, Arkansas, the third and youngest child of Arthur MacArthur, Jr., and Mary “Pinkie” Pinckney. He graduated from West Point in 1903 with the rank of second lieutenant. His first assignment sent him to the Philippines where he contracted malaria and was forced to transfer back to the United States. He held stints as a military aide to President Theodore Roosevelt and as a company commander at Fort Leavenworth, an army training center. MacArthur went on to serve on the U. S. Army General Staff, followed by an assignment to Veracruz, Mexico, in 1914, during the Mexican Revolution.

MacArthur quickly rose through the army ranks. As a major, he assisted Franklin D. Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the navy, in implementing the expansion of the army for service in World War I. His idea to incorporate National Guard units into the army resulted in his promotion to colonel and chief of the newly established 42nd “Rainbow” Division. In Europe, between 1917 and 1919, MacArthur fought in numerous battles and received several commendations for his skill and bravery, including a promotion to brigadier general. He returned to the United States in the spring of 1919 and for the next two years served as the superintendent of West Point. Then new orders sent MacArthur to the Philippines, where, in 1925, he received a promotion to major general. In 1928, he was reassigned as army commander of the Philippines Department.

From 1930 to 1935, MacArthur served as head of the army. During this time, he directed his efforts toward preserving the army’s strength in the midst of Great Depression-era budget constraints. In 1935, he went on to serve as military adviser and field marshal in the Philippines.

After an admirable career, MacArthur retired from the army in 1937.

In 1941, at the age of 61, MacArthur was recalled into active duty to shore up military forces in defense of U. S. interests in the Pacific against an impending Japanese invasion. MacArthur’s troops valiantly attempted to delay Japanese seizure of the Philippines, despite being cut off from supplies and weakened by disease and hunger. With the landing of Japanese troops in the Philippines, Roosevelt ordered MacArthur and his staff to Australia in 1942. MacArthur was named supreme commander of the Southwest Pacific area, with orders to defend the territory. His forces established defensive posts in New Guinea and successfully expelled the Japanese from the island in 1943. Bolstered by Allied military reinforcements, MacArthur launched a series of offensive maneuvers designed to seize strategic areas of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Ultimately, his soldiers succeeded in neutralizing Rabaul,

General Douglas MacArthur (Library of Congress)

Formerly a Japanese stronghold. Maintaining his momentum, MacArthur’s forces advanced toward the Philippines, attacking the islands of Morotai, Leyte, and Mindoro in 1944. Finally, despite fierce opposition from Japanese military units, American troops entered the Philippine capital of Manila. Within a month, MacArthur established U. S. control of Manila. Six months later, he secured the remaining islands.

For his leadership in the war effort, MacArthur was given the rank of five-star general, and an appointment as commander of army forces in the Pacific. As commander of the Pacific troops, MacArthur planned to direct an invasion of Japan. After the United States dropped the first ATOMIC BOMB on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and another bomb on Nagasaki, the Japanese opened negotiations for surrender. MacArthur’s subsequent appointment as supreme commander of the Allied Powers and Far East commander included directing the U. S. occupation of Japan. Between 1945 and 1951, MacArthur single-handedly administered a series of orders that demobilized the Japanese military and restored the economy. In addition, he initiated a series of reforms in the areas of education, public health, labor, and land redistribution.

President Harry S. Truman’s administration gradually decreased MacArthur’s authority. With the start of the Korean War in 1950, MacArthur, now at age 70, became involved in implementing strategies for defending American interests in Korea. The United Nations Security Council named him commander of the operation, and with few combat-ready troops available, he was ordered to defend South Korea. In September, his military assaults quelled the North Korean advance toward Pusan, as his naval forces landed at Inchon. This action resulted, initially, in the retreat of North Korean troops, and the UN control of Seoul, South Korea’s capital. Seeing a quick end to the war, MacArthur ordered his troops beyond the 38th parallel and into North Korean territory in November. He launched a simultaneous naval assault near Wonsan, on the east coast. Meanwhile, MacArthur assured Truman that there was no threat from Chinese forces in Manchuria. Yet, in November, massive Chinese forces launched a counterattack, which yielded 11,000 casualties for the troops under MacArthur’s command, and forced MacArthur to retreat. MacArthur went back on the offensive, and two months later he stabilized the front line just south of Seoul.

For his public disagreement with U. S. and UN policy in Korea, along with insubordination and an unwillingness to contain the war, Truman relieved MacArthur of his command on April 11, 1951. MacArthur received a groundswell of popular support, until negative publicity from a Senate investigation of his dismissal quelled public opinion. The delegates to the 1952 Republican convention considered MacArthur a possible presidential nominee. During that same year, he became board chairman of the Remington Rand Corporation. In 1959, with the death of General George C. Marshall, MacArthur became senior officer in the U. S. Army.

MacArthur lived the remainder of his life in New York City. He died at the age of 84 on April 5, 1964, in Washington, D. C., after complications following gallbladder surgery.

Further reading: D. Clayton James, The Years of McArthur, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1970-1985); William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978); Geoffrey Perret, Old Soldiers Never Die: The Life of Douglas MacArthur (New York: Random House, 1996).

—Michelle Reid

Malcolm X (1925-1965) militant civil rights activist, Nation of Islam minister

Malcolm X fought for civil rights for African Americans during the 1950s and 1960s. He preached equality for blacks in America by any means possible and through the teachings of the Nation of Islam.

Malcolm was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Earl and Louise Little. Earl Little was a minister and active organizer in the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), an institution that actively sought to create separate institutions for blacks to be able to prosper. After the Ku Kiux Klan made several threats to Earl for his activity in the UNIA, he moved his family to Lansing, Michigan, in 1930. Only one year later Earl was found dead, near the family’s home, on a trolley car track. Malcolm’s mother Louise was admitted into a mental health hospital in 1939, after she suffered a complete breakdown. Malcolm had already been put into foster care. He received education only up to the eighth grade, when his older sister Ella asked him to join her and her husband in Boston.

Malcolm worked in Boston for a short time. By 1942, he had moved out of Boston into the Harlem area of New York City, where he worked in a dining car on a railroad. Not satisfied with his pay, he turned to crime, forming a gang that robbed rich households in the neighborhood. In February 1946, he was caught during a robbery and sent to a Charlestown, Massachusetts, prison for seven years. In prison, Malcolm came to know the teachings of the Nation of Islam led by Elijah Muhammad. He converted to Islam in prison, dropped his “slave” name Little, and adopted only the X.

In 1952, Malcolm was paroled and he immediately went to work for the Nation of Islam as an administrator and a minister. Malcolm was a charismatic speaker, and African Americans flocked to him to hear him preach. The

Malcolm X (Library of Congress)

Black youth of America were looking for a more militant leader than Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm preached that African Americans should fight for equality and freedom from white oppression by any means necessary; if violence was the only way to achieve this freedom, then that was the answer. The Nation of Islam spread quickly among the black community in urban areas, and Malcolm established new mosques in Boston, Philadelphia, and Hartford. In only a few short years, the Nation had exceeded 30,000 members. Malcolm’s message went to mainstream America after a television interview with Mike Wallace, on a show called The Hate That Hate Produced. During the program, Malcolm explained that the black population of America would no longer stand for the oppression and violence that was being carried out against them by whites. He encouraged African Americans everywhere to join the Nation of Islam, and to break the chains of more than 300 years of oppression.

In 1963, Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad found themselves pitted against one another in charting the future of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm had become the voice of the Nation of Islam, and his popularity had far exceeded that of Elijah Muhammad, which created tensions within the organization. Malcolm left the Nation of Islam and founded Muslim Mosque Inc., where he began to take a less militant stance, and he started to preach for a more secular black community in America. For many years, Malcolm and King had been at odds with the Civil Rights movement and its approach to gaining equality. Malcolm now promoted a less aggressive form of change, as King had been doing for years. Malcolm wanted black communities to take control of their own neighborhoods, not by violence or force, but through the ballot box. In 1964, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and there his views changed most significantly. He found himself sitting, eating, and praying next to white Muslims. He thought that if this could be achieved in Mecca, then surely it could occur in other places as well. Malcolm changed his position on segregation from the white race to integration; he also officially changed his name from Malcolm X to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. When he returned from Mecca, his first step toward integration was the acceptance of contributions from white supporters.

In 1965 The Autobiography of Malcolm X was written by author Alex Haley based on interviews conducted shortly before Malcolm X’s assassination. Chronicling his life in prison, conversion to Islam, travels to Africa, and other notable events, the book captured Malcolm X’s emergence as a political leader and the development of an ideology that significantly influenced African-American activism in the 20th century. While Time magazine named The Autobiography of Malcolm X one of the most important nonfiction books of the 20th century, Malcolm X’s family, as well as the Nation of Islam, accused Haley of inaccuracies and of fictionalizing parts of his story. Haley denied the allegations.

Malcolm X was stopped before he could ever bring his plan of integration and equality to mainstream America. On February 21, 1965, while giving a speech in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City, he was assassinated by several black gunmen from another part of the Muslim movement.

Further reading: George Breitman, ed., Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1965); Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 1966).

—Matt Escovar