By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / September 29, 2025
This review is a cross post from Alice Embree’s Substack.
Rag Radio with guest Martin Murray:
Alice Embree was cohost with Thorne Dreyer on Rag Radio interviewing author Martin Murray on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin. Listen to the interview.
Austin Book Events featuring author Martin Murray:
4:00 p.m., Tuesday, October 7 / Briscoe Center for American History / Sid Richardson Hall, Unit 2 / 2300 Red River Street, Austin, TX 78712 / Doors open at 4:00 p.m.
1:00 p.m., Thursday, October 9 / Batch Craft Beer and Kolaches / 3220 Manor Road, Austin, TX 78723
Martin Murray’s Insurgent Politics in the Lone Star State provides an insider’s view of Austin’s antiwar movement between 1967 and 1973, exploring that period in depth through his own personal narrative, scholarly research, and a focus on surveillance.
Martin’s own story begins in California where he graduated from the University of San Francisco and decided to file as a conscientious objector rather than be drafted into the war. He arrived in Austin in the fall of 1967 as a graduate student.
His personal journey unfolds with a sense of urgency and unknown outcomes. As the Vietnam War escalates, the protests evolve and tactics change. Martin lets us view this from a participant’s vantage point – the moral outrage as the death toll mounts, the debates as the movement shifts from protest to direct action and disruption, and the organizing taking place on many fronts.
Martin also brings a scholar’s eye to the story, documenting pivotal events in Austin with well-researched detail. He covers the 1968 Don Weedon Conoco demonstrations, and devotes forty pages to two events in 1969 – the Waller Creek tree protest and the Chuck Wagon riot. No writer has covered this period with such detail. Researchers will appreciate his timeline and endnotes for years to come.
Martin writes that “The Austin SDS chapter operated on a model of persuasion and consensus, tapping into the deep roots of Texas irreverent populist traditions.” Martin describes the unique character of the Texas movement and the cast of characters. At a protest of Marine recruiters, he remembers Dick Reavis responding to a heckler who tells him to “Go back to Russia.”
“Dick, who was holding his Coke bottle by the top of the long neck (as he always did), slowly spilled out his words in a distinctive southern drawl: ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m kind of partial to China myself.’” [p. 61]
Martin’s book adds to the Texas lore, something I always appreciate.
In one lengthy sentence, Martin provides this synopsis,
“The thread running through seemingly disconnected events – perhaps starting with the March 1969 SDS National Council meeting in Austin, followed by the 1969 Chuck Wagon uprising, the anti-ROTC demonstrations (spring 1970), the May 1970 mass mobilization after the invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State killings, the Armadillo May Day Tribe and the May Days demonstrations in Washington, DC, (May 1971), the protests at the LBJ Library dedication, and the mass students strike in spring of 1972 — was increasingly heightened security presence.” [pp. 34-35]
The author’s expedition through surveillance was motivated, in part, by a desire to research his own life. What he found instead was a “Historical Doppelganger,” a ghostly representation of his life where he was frequently confused with his twin brother.
Martin’s focus on surveillance is thorough. He has the passion of a sleuth, tracking down material from the FBI through the Freedom of Information Act, and delving into sources at the University of Texas Briscoe Center for American History. He pored over the archived papers of Lt. Burt Gerding, the Austin Police Department’s head of Criminal Intelligence, Allen Hamilton, chief of the University of Texas campus police, and George Carlson, head of security for the University of Texas System.
Martin accessed thousands of pages from FBI reports. He shared some of those as he was finalizing his manuscript. I was surprised to read a lengthy description of Arkansas communes, many of them familiar to me. Martin uncovered some gems at the Briscoe as well, including a taped interview with Burt Gerding conducted by Briscoe archivist Sara Clark. Lt. Burt Gerding was in a class by himself — both blowhard and provocateur. He often bragged about the havoc he was able to create. Martin followed up with several targets of the havoc. They contradicted Gerding’s “intelligence.”
What did the various agencies find out about activists through their surveillance, photographs, and network of informants? Martin argues that those who spied were hobbled by their own biases, always looking for an organization or affiliation to explain the scale of the insurgency. The surveillance apparatus missed the point. The antiwar movement was reacting to an escalating War in Vietnam, to the draft required to feed that war effort, to atrocities like My Lai, and to the official lies used to justify the war.
“The security agencies could not break from their underlying premise that the Austin movement was a creature not of its own making but an entity put in motion by some secret puppet master orchestrating our every move.” [p. 30]
I was eager to see this book make it into print. It describes the history that was adjacent to my own. I was involved in the early years of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the University of Texas at Austin. I left Austin in the summer of 1967, following a major free speech battle in which I was a central figure. Martin arrived in the fall. I missed a lot of the period Martin describes.
Martin was part of a later incarnation of Austin SDS. He documents the vibrant antiwar activity that took place with SDS leadership and continued even as SDS splintered apart in 1969. That is an important contribution for historians — a unique take on the continuity of antiwar activism.
Insurgent Politics in the Lone Star State is a great addition to the history of antiwar activism. What happened in the Lone Star State didn’t always get attention from the national press. Martin’s book is a timely read in an era that once again requires insurgent politics and faces new forms of surveillance.
Martin’s narrative and analysis conforms quite closely to my sense of the history that he presents in this book – at least until I left in early 1971.y thanks to him for his work.