I wrote about the fall quarter of my senior year at the University of Georgia in a previous installment of this series. Here’s the rest of the story, covering the winter and spring of 1974.
My final two quarters at UGA were an eventful time that saw protests, lots of naked students, tear gas, foosball being outlawed briefly in Athens and those all-important job interviews.
And I was in a prime spot to be a part of it all, as three weeks into winter quarter I was named executive editor of The Red & Black student newspaper.
As a journalism student hoping to get a job with a daily paper after graduation that June, being named to such a position was a great resume-builder. But almost as important was that it also got me a much-prized all-zone parking permit! On a sprawling campus clogged with too many cars, that was a major prize.
(The UGA publicity office sent out a photo of me and Susan Wells, who was named editor at the same time, and it ran in quite a few papers in Georgia, including the Jan. 31 edition of The Atlanta Constitution. My mother, who had encouraged me to pursue journalism, was thrilled.)
Part of my job as executive editor was doing the front-page layout for each day’s R&B. I also wrote some of the institutional (unsigned) editorials and continued writing columns for the editorial page (ranging from political satire to commentary on issues of the day). I also continued with my For Singles Only music column (I wrote that I loved Steely Dan’s “My Old School” — I still do), as well as other pieces for our Lookout! entertainment section, including an essay on Feb. 7 marking the 10th anniversary of The Beatles’ arrival in the U.S.
And Lookout! reran a well-received column I’d written for the R&B the previous summer lampooning the idea of a Bible-themed amusement park I’d read about. One writer of a letter to the editor accused me of being anti-Jesus, though.
I also did a column during winter quarter about a day I’d recently spent at the Georgia General Assembly in Atlanta as part of an assignment in a magazine-writing class I was taking. I’d arranged to follow Hugh Logan, one of Athens’ members of the state House of Representatives. I took my brother Jonathan and one of his friends, Paul, along with me, since Logan (a friend of my father’s) had arranged for them to spend the day as legislative pages.
Paul had very long hair, and when we were introduced to newly elected Speaker of the House Tom Murphy, the small-town legislator greeted him by saying, “How do you do, young lady.” Paul just rolled his eyes.
The column I did for the R&B focused on Lester Maddox, the infamous segregationist former governor who at that time was lieutenant governor and preparing to make another gubernatorial run. (He lost, thankfully.)
I introduced myself to Maddox, who shook my hand and then, surprisingly, drew me close and in a confidential tone asked me something about some statement he thought I’d made about some big event coming up that week. Having never met or spoken to the man before, I was puzzled. All I could think of to reply was, “I’m Bill King of The Red & Black.”
He didn’t seem to notice and kept right on talking about me being the one who had said something about whatever he was concerned with. I repeated, “The Red & Black?”
My lack of awareness went right over his head, and he continued. Finally, I said, “Governor, I don’t think I know what you’re talking about.” (It was a political courtesy that even former governors were addressed with that title.)
He nodded and seemed ready to begin anew when our state rep came to my rescue and reintroduced me. Maddox smiled and turned to talk with someone else. (I never did find out who he thought I was.)
Then, another legislator standing nearby said something about changing some practice so that the solons would “know what’s going on.” Maddox turned to me and said, with a chuckle, “Politicians ought to know what’s going on but some of them never will.” I just smiled.
By the way, during that same session, the Georgia House voted 104-72 against the Equal Rights Amendment, which was a big national story at the time.
Other news that the R&B was covering that quarter included a running story about the city of Athens outlawing foosball under an old ordinance banning pinball machines. However, the game soon made a return to local bars and game rooms after the old ordinance was amended. Also, the Student Senate voted no confidence in UGA President Fred Davison (which had no effect at all), the university was beginning work on plans for the upcoming U.S. bicentennial in two years and the price of gasoline had topped 50 cents a gallon!
Meanwhile, ads were placed in the R&B by a new venue, aptly called the Loser’s Club, which was located at the site of a short-lived concert hall that had failed a couple of months earlier. The ads announced upcoming shows by Cheech and Chong, Waylon Jennings (with his name misspelled) and Kris Kristofferson.
A full house of fans paid their admission fee for the show, but Cheech and Chong were nowhere to be seen. And no refunds were given.
It turned out the comic duo never had been booked, the club had no business license or pouring license, and the “owner,” who had checks bouncing all over town, had disappeared. A few weeks later, he was arrested in Wisconsin after another scam.
The efforts of local authorities to shut down the city’s X-rated theater continued that quarter, with workers at the Paris Adult Theatre charged with violating various laws by showing the film “The Devil in Miss Jones” the previous fall. The jury returned with sort of a split verdict: They ruled the film was indeed obscene, but the workers were ruled innocent of violating state law by showing it.
Meanwhile, a right-wing campus party was advocating the return of playing “Dixie” at UGA sporting events and also wanted the Redcoat Band to restore Dixie to its name. And local authorities arrested the occupants of three local houses of ill repute on Elm Street — which had been known collectively for years as Effie’s. The buildings eventually were burned down by the local fire department as part of a training exercise and some enterprising soul started selling some of the bricks to UGA alums as a “piece” of old Athens.
Then, 19-year-old heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped in California by a small urban guerrilla left-wing group called the Symbionese Liberation Army. Fellow R&Ber Steve Oney recalls he was drinking a Coke and listening to the jukebox in the Bulldog Room snack bar in the student center when he heard the news. “Shortly after that, the Stones singing ‘Angie’ came on. I will always associate the Hearst kidnapping and that bittersweet song with the end of innocence.”
(It’s funny how the Bulldog Room jukebox seemed to provide a soundtrack for our college years. Whenever I hear Ike & Tina doing “Proud Mary” or John Lennon’s “Instant Karma,” I think of sitting in there between classes during my freshman year.)
A couple of weeks later, the story took a sort of local twist when, on the eve of the annual Georgia Press Institute meeting at UGA, Atlanta Constitution Editor Reg Murphy was kidnapped by someone claiming to represent a similar terrorist group, this one on the right. (It turned out to be just one guy.) Of course, all the newspaper editors gathered in Athens were a bit nervous.
Campus news then started to heat up as William Shockley, a conservative icon who had suggested only intelligent people should have children, was set to appear on campus in early March to debate the topic of inherited intelligence with a UGA psychology professor. The appearance, sponsored by the Demosthenians, a campus debating society, drew about 200 mostly Black protesters, who forced an early end to the event.
That wasn’t the first time that had happened at a Shockley appearance on U.S. campuses, so the debate brought some reporters to town. Good timing, as that same week saw the national streaking craze — where people would run around naked in public — hit UGA.
Chris Jones, a recent UGA grad who was working as a newscaster at radio station WRFC in Athens, was there at the start of the streaking in Athens as the week began. He got a phone tip that Sunday night saying there would be some streaking on Milledge Avenue, a main thoroughfare that was home to many of the fraternities and sororities, so he staked it out. He wasn’t alone. “Milledge Avenue was packed 5 to 10 rows deep on both sides up and down … as far as I could see,” he said.
After about two and a half hours, Jones said, “someone drives a green Mustang down Milledge, and perched as the hood ornament was a blonde, in the nude. The crowd roars. And it was on. Streak Week had begun.”
The next night, a group of about 25 naked students streaked the Coliseum at halftime of the UGA-Tennessee basketball game. Later that evening, Athens police tear-gassed a crowd of about 2,000 that had gathered after a male streaker was arrested outside one of the dorms during an old-fashioned panty raid. The crowd staged a sit-in in the middle of Baxter Street to protest the arrest, and the local cops (against the wishes of the campus police) decided to gas them.
Andy Johnson (not the football player of the same name) was a resident assistant at Russell Hall, a nearby dorm, and recalled that “when folks, including the campus police officers, started flooding inside, we were helping everyone get to our wing’s restroom showers to wash the tear gas from their eyes. That was a crazy night.”
“That week was wild,” Jones agreed. “Every night of the week, we had the WRFC news cruiser on the streets, chasing down reported sightings.”
Some streakers were charged with public indecency, but the public nakedness continued. Gubernatorial candidates were in town and someone streaked the Maddox event. Five folks parachuted nude onto the intramural field and male and female streakers were seen atop the dorms that week and running through the Bulldog Room. (Our staff photographers captured much of this activity, but we had to be very careful in choosing which pictures we published, so that the Board of Student Communications didn’t close us down.)
“I recall one night where a completely naked coed rode a horse across the quadrangle in front of Reed Hall, where I lived,” Mike Webb said.
And Clissa England, a friend from my high school days, recalled the guy she was dating at the time “was on campus watching and got carried away and stripped behind a bush and tried to join the streakers. However, he was too late to be part of the crowd and ended up hiding behind another bush, trying to figure out how he’d get back to his clothes, get dressed and disappear.
“Unfortunately, he got picked up by the campus police and spent an hour or so sitting at their station trying to read a newspaper while hiding behind it. He said it was a miserable situation and he regretted his last-minute decision to join in.”
She added that the campus cops “finally decided he was totally mortified” and let him go.
George Mize, who was a pharmacy student, remembers officials of that school attempting to identify streakers who’d been seen wearing only the white lab coats they wore in class and sneakers.
One evening during Streak Week, a group of us from the paper walked around campus, taking in the unusual sight of scores of people just walking around naked while lots of naked rear ends hung out of the windows of one of the high-rise dorms.
Another UGA student at the time, Doug Thornton, recalled “a seemingly endless stream of naked folks” crossing the bridge by Sanford Stadium and gathering in the Reed Hall quad. He said he was “amazed at how quickly I became desensitized to being surrounded by naked folks.”
There also were scores of naked students atop the nearby Hardee’s, and we later heard that people were having sex up there, as well. A high school classmate, Tom Hodgson, summed it up as “a week of debauchery that will never, ever be equaled.”
Meanwhile, someone had decided that UGA should try to break the record for a mass streak, which reportedly was held by the University of South Carolina or the University of North Carolina Greensboro (depending on the source).
The “championship” streak took place that Thursday as some 3,000 people gathered to view all the naked people. (I later was told that university administrators sat on a balcony of Memorial Hall and watched with amusement.)
The final count was reported as 1,543 streakers (I don’t know who did the counting) and UGA was declared the new record holder. (To bring the story up to date, there’s talk in Athens of trying to top that number in the spring of 2024 to mark the 50th anniversary of UGA’s mass streak.)
Media in town to uncover what was going on included AP, UPI, The Atlanta Journal and the Constitution, three TV networks, Time, Newsweek and “60 Minutes.” Soon, the subject of streaking even started showing up in advertisements in the student paper placed by local businesses as well as national brands!
The R&B ran a two-page spread of photos headlined “That Was the Week That Was!”
What else was going on winter quarter? Well, on the sports scene, the UGA men’s basketball team placed last in the SEC for the second time in four years with a season record of 6-20. … Five UGA football players went in the NFL draft, including my old Athens classmate Andy Johnson, who was taken by the Patriots.
And the UGA Athletic Association decided to take complete charge of the funding and administration of the women’s intercollegiate athletics program, which previously had been under the women’s P.E. department. The previous fall, an HEW complaint had been filed against the university for not properly funding women’s teams and Athletic Director Joel Eaves admitted that “might have had an effect” on the decision.
Meanwhile, local eateries still offered deals like “all the draft beer you can drink” with meals, the celebrated local headshop known as Glass of Hill Wall held a fourth anniversary sale, and a new store called the Clothesline was selling scarf dresses, tube tops, halter tops and dresses, cut-off jeans, sandals and straw hats.
On the music scene that winter, Larry Gatlin (billed as a Kristofferson and Johnny Cash protégé) played the Last Resort, the Platters performed at the B&L Warehouse, Clarence Carter and Rufus Thomas both played the J&J Center, the Sussex Club apartments still were putting on beer bashes featuring bands such as Grains of Sand, my friend Owen Scott’s band Zambo Flirts played The Hedges in the Normaltown neighborhood and one concert put on at the UGA Coliseum featured the Spinners, while another had the double bill of New Riders of the Purple Sage and Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. In the arts, Marcel Marceau performed at the Fine Arts Auditorium.
Popular songs that winter included Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle,” the Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker,” Al Wilson’s “Show and Tell,” Ringo Starr’s “You’re Sixteen,” Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were,” Love Unlimited Orchestra’s “Love’s Theme,” John Denver’s “Sunshine on My Shoulders,” Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” and Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.” Big winter albums included Bob Dylan’s “Planet Waves,” Paul McCartney and Wings’ “Band on the Run,” “Chicago VII” and the soundtrack from “The Sting.”
Going to the movies remained a mainstay of dating in Athens (along with drinking at bars such as TK Harty’s Saloon) and films playing Athens that winter included “A Clockwork Orange,” “The Sting,” “The Way We Were,” “Papillon,” “Dirty Harry,” “Billy Jack,” “Sleeper” and “The Exorcist.”
William Friedkin, director of “The Exorcist,” appeared on campus to discuss the film, a horrific tale of a young girl who gets possessed by a demon after playing with a Ouija board. And that led to me having a phone encounter with Friedkin in March, when the movie’s publicist called the R&B and offered a chance to talk briefly with the controversial movie’s director.
No one else was available, so I chatted with Friedkin, who wanted to clarify something he had said in his talk at UGA in late January. He had made headlines at the time by saying that the 24 prints of the movie then in circulation (this was before the days of films having mass openings) would be recalled and the film’s ambiguous ending would be replaced with a new ending.
However, Friedkin told me that he now had decided that the ending of the film would remain the same, and he would not add an additional shot clarifying it. He said he had changed his mind after receiving “a lot of mail” saying that the film’s ending was just fine the way it was.
When “The Exorcist” finally opened in Athens, a group of us from the R&B went together to a late-evening screening. The film definitely was an intense viewing experience, and on my drive home I half-expected to see the distorted face of the demon’s young victim in my rear-view mirror.
I’m not sure I buy the idea of demonic possession, but I did suggest to Mom that we not play with her homemade Ouija board any longer.
And, after the R&B received a press release about a do-it-yourself home exorcism kit, I wrote a humorous piece for Lookout! that ran along with a fun cartoon by our talented staff artist, Brad McColl.
As we moved into spring quarter, life at UGA moved outdoors. “I loved sitting outside Memorial Hall during spring of 1974 when the UGA Jazz Band played,” Steve Oney recalled.
Meanwhile, I ended up bailing out two current Red & Black staffers (along with a former R&Ber now working for an area weekly) who’d been arrested up in Northeast Georgia’s Hall County, where authorities were digging up the remains of some Dixie Mafia victims. The cops apparently didn’t want reporters snooping around. I had just finished a picnic with friends when the call came in that they’d been arrested, so I went to the Winn-Dixie store near my house and the manager cashed my latest R&B paycheck. Then some of us drove up to Gainesville, where I paid bail for the arrested journalists. (They all paid me back, and I believe the charges against them later were dropped.)
Other news that spring included Teddy Kennedy on campus as the Law Day speaker, the move to impeach President Richard Nixon gaining steam in Washington, the Georgia Board of Regents voting to end segregated colleges in the state, Hank Aaron hitting No. 715, the second Great Oconee Raft Race being held on the river cutting through town, and reports that rowdy students continued trying to run the women’s tennis team off the courts where they were practicing.
Speaking of sports, UGA had a mediocre spring, placing fifth among the conference’s 10 schools, with only our men’s tennis team finishing in first place.
Meanwhile, some friends from the R&B and I drove over to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for a college newspaper gathering. While there, we saw blues-rock guitarist Roy Buchanan in concert. Also, the 14 hours we spent listening to AM radio on the way to and from Tuscaloosa resulted in one of my For Singles Only columns, in which I detailed what we heard. Popular tunes on the radio at that time included Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown,” Grand Funk’s “The Locomotion,” BTO’s “Let It Ride,” the Doobie Brothers’ “Another Park, Another Sunday,” Wings’ “Band on the Run,” the Guess Who’s “Star Baby,” Anne Murray’s cover of The Beatles’ “You Won’t See Me,” Chicago’s “Searching for So Long,” Jim Stafford’s “My Girl Bill,” Marvin Hamlisch’s “The Entertainer” from “The Sting,” the Carpenters’ “I Won’t Last Another Day Without You,” Leon Russell’s “If I were a Carpenter,” Harry Nilsson’s “Daybreak,” Athens native Flo Warner with “We’re Over,” Paper Lace’s “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” and ZZ Top’s LaGrange.”
Jimmy Moore, who liked to hang out on the wall in front of Park Hall between classes, also remembers “Terry Jacks’ ‘Seasons in the Sun’ playing everywhere.” (The song, a lachrymose lament about a dying friend, was No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for three weeks in March and still was getting airplay around Memorial Day.)
Popular albums that spring included Joni Mitchell’s “Court and Spark,” David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs,” “Queen II,” King Crimson’s “Starless and Bible Black,” Steely Dan’s “Pretzel Logic,” Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” Aerosmith’s “Get Your Wings” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Second Helping.”
Also that spring, Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts played the J&J, Mac Frampton performed at the Fine Arts, Dr. Who and the Medicine Show and Goose Creek Symphony topped a bill at the Athens Speedway, and the Coliseum saw concerts by Mandrill and Leon Russell.
Films on view in Athens included Dick Lester’s “The Three Musketeers,” yet another run for “MASH,” “The Last Detail,” Truffaut’s “Day for Night,” “Cinderella Liberty,” “Conrack,” “The Sugarland Express,” “Blazing Saddles,” “The Day of the Dolphin,” “Zardoz,” “The Other,” “Arnold” and a now forgotten obscurity called “The Spikes Gang,” starring Lee Marvin, Gary Grimes, Ron Howard and Charlie Martin Smith.
Most Friday afternoons that quarter, the core of the R&B staff would retire to the back “patio” (a gravel-covered area with some old wooden cable spools turned on their sides as tables) at Hoagie’s sandwich shop downtown, to drink beer. Next, we’d move to Cecelia’s Golden China restaurant in the old Georgian Hotel (the first — and just about the last — time I ever tried to eat with chopsticks). Then we’d finish off the evening at TK Harty’s, drinking some awful dark beer that was popular at the time. Occasionally, we’d go dancing to Southern boogie bands at the B&L and then stand out in the parking lot to cool off.
In the meantime, my search for a post-graduation job was going on. Thankfully, the colleges at UGA organized job interviews for graduating seniors. As Tom Hodgson, a business major, recalled, “I remember having interviews to be a bank teller, a life insurance salesman and a traveling ‘product specialist’ at Coke. As Tom Petty might say … the future was wide open.”
The journalism school brought in representatives from various papers to interview us, and I met with editors from Macon, Fort Myers and Atlanta. Then, a former R&B editor who was working at The Atlanta Constitution called to say that an opening was coming up there and I should contact the managing editor.
I did, made an appointment and drove to Atlanta on a Friday afternoon to meet with the notoriously taciturn Jim Minter. He mentioned that maybe I should get a couple of years of daily newspaper experience in some smaller market like Macon before coming to the Constitution. Then he lapsed into silence, and I just decided to sit there until he told me to leave. Suddenly, he asked how my grades were. I told him I had just been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, “if that means anything.”
He grunted. “It means a helluva lot.”
He gave me a couple of sheets of paper and told me to use his typewriter to make up a story about the university chancellor resigning. I quickly wrote something and then he told me he’d have to see if he could “work something out,” and that I should call him on Monday.
I was pretty nervous when I placed that call from my desk at the R&B on Monday. I said, “Mr. Minter, this is Bill King at The Red & Black. Were you able to work anything out?”
“No,” he replied, “but I’ll hire you anyway. When can you start?”
I told him I graduated on June 12 and could start anytime he wanted. “You’ll be working the rest of your life,” he said, “so take a couple of weeks off and start July 1st.”
(A couple of days later, I also got an offer from the Fort Myers News-Press, which I turned down, of course.)
It was a relief to have lined up what I figured would be my first job. I never could have predicted that I’d end up staying at the same paper for more than four decades.
From that point on, my senior year seemed to streak toward the finish line. And, I have to say, my college career wound up much more successfully than I’d anticipated back in the fall of 1970, when I’d been saddled with a less than thrilling schedule of philosophy, P.E., geology, geography and Air Force ROTC.
As school wound down, I picked up some honors, was invited to a banquet thrown by the alumni society and — with my parents, brothers and an aunt and uncle in attendance — graduated summa cum laude in a ceremony at Sanford Stadium.
Best of all, though, was the smile on my father’s face when he said how proud he was of me and that he was especially pleased that he’d been able to pay my way through college.
Since they’d lived through the Great Depression and a world war, that was much more of a financial achievement for my parents’ generation than it later would be for us baby boomers. I always figured I’d pay for my children to attend college.
Still, I think I got an inkling of how Dad felt, years later, when my own two kids graduated from UGA.
Anyway, having nailed down how I’d be earning a living, I was ready for my four years at the University of Georgia to end.
I’d really enjoyed my time there, especially my senior year with The Red & Black and all the close friends I made through the student paper. But I was ready for new adventures.
Bill King
You can read about the first quarter of my senior year here.
Read about the up-and-down 1973 UGA football season.
My junior year at UGA was a time of change.
Read about the 1972 UGA football season, which saw the first Black players on the varsity.
Find out about college life at UGA in 1970, my freshman year.
Read about changing times at UGA and in Athens in the fall of 1971, my sophomore year.
You can look back at how the Georgia Bulldogs did in my freshman year here.
Read more about the Georgia Bulldogs’ great 1971 football season in my Junkyard Blawg.
Quick Cuts With Bill King 
Great article…I was there.
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I had moved to Carrollton, GA due to my Daddy’s work. There was a few instances of streaking around West GA College (now University of West GA). I went to the Omni to see the Beach Boys and during their show a few people streaked across the stage. It was a disappointing show because the Beach Boys were touring without Brian Wilson and all of the streakers were guys.
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I’ve enjoyed reading about your time at Georgia as well as growing up in Colbert. My maternal grandmother lived in the Colbert area for a time. One of her cousins was the original owner of the Swamp Guinea. I began my years at UGA the next fall after you graduated so many of the places you have written about are very familiar and great memories.
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Thanks, glad you’ve enjoyed them!
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Thank you so much for making all these posts available, I started at UGA in 1971 so there’s a lot of overlap in your time there with mine. I’m not a writer and didn’t keep a daily journal, so much of what you write about is a seismic jog to my own memories and experiences, reading about the music of the time, the local eateries, the movies and local news is helping greatly to fill in some rather sizable gaps in what I can recall.
However, I was out there on Baxter Street in 1974 photographing the Streaking and got my very first whiff of tear gas, no trouble remembering that night, it’s etched more permanently than so many others.
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