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Patty Hearst and the Troubled 1970s

51 years ago, the FBI captured Patty Hearst, a heiress and fugitive. Dr. Flamm will explore her story and what the reaction to her saga and trial suggest about U.S. politics and culture in the 1970s.

Fifty-one years ago on February 4, 1974, the FBI captured Patty Hearst, a young heiress and wanted fugitive, in San Francisco. A year earlier, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a tiny group of urban radicals committed to violent revolution, had kidnapped Hearst from her home in Berkeley, California. Months later, she announced that she had joined the SLA and as "Tania" brandished an assault rifle in an armed bank robbery. Was Hearst a willing accomplice or a brainwashed victim? What does the public reaction to her controversial saga and subsequent trial suggest about U.S. politics and culture in the 1970s? In this multimedia presentation, Dr. Michael Flamm will explore these questions and many more.

Speaker Bio

Professor Michael Flamm received the Welch Award for Scholarly Achievement (2022) and the Welch Meritorious Teaching Award (2012) at Ohio Wesleyan University, where he taught for twenty-five years. The author or co-author of five books and an audiobook, he served as a Fulbright Scholar and a faculty consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the College Board, and the National Academy of Sciences. He was also an elected member of the executive board of the Organization of American Historians, the largest professional association dedicated to the teaching and study of U.S. history.

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