In turmoil of 1968, Clinton found a new voice

“Just because a person cannot approve of snicks’ attitude toward civil disobedience does not mean he wishes to maintain the racial status quo,” Ms. Rodham wrote as a freshman to Mr. Jones, the Methodist minister.

After Dr. King’s assassination provoked riots in cities and unrest on campuses, Ms. Rodham worried that protesters would shut down Wellesley (not constructive). She helped organize a two-day strike (more pragmatic) and worked closely with Wellesley’s few black students (only 6 in her class of 401) in reaching moderate, achievable change — such as recruiting more black students and hiring black professors (there had been none). Eschewing megaphones and sit-ins, she organized meetings, lectures and seminars, designed to be educational.

“I was rooted in a political approach that understood that you can’t just take to the streets and make change in America,” Mrs. Clinton said in an interview. “You can’t just give a speech and expect people to fall down and agree with you.”

‘A sense of disorder’
Even so, the killing of Dr. King created “a sense of disorder that was both unsettling and catalyzing” to Ms. Rodham, recalled Mr. Schechter, the political science professor and a mentor to her. Friends observed that she was less restrained and less deferential after Dr. King’s death.

At a panel discussion for a group of Wellesley alumni in mid-April, Mrs. Clinton bemoaned the “large gray mass” of uninvolved students. At another meeting, she argued with an economics professor who suggested that the strike take place on a weekend.

“I’ll give up my date Saturday night, Mr. Goldman, but I don’t think that’s the point,” Ms. Rodham told the professor, Marshall Goldman, according to the April 25, 1968, Wellesley News. “Individual consciences are fine but individual consciences have to be made manifest. Why do these attitudes have to be limited to two days?”

Ms. Rodham had traveled to New Hampshire several times that winter to volunteer for Mr. McCarthy, the Minnesota Democrat challenging President Lyndon B. Johnson for the Democratic nomination. Mr. McCarthy’s message — that the antiwar movement should operate within the system, not on the streets — appealed to Ms. Rodham. The candidate urged his supporters to be respectful, prompting the young activists to cut their hair, shave their beards and be “Clean for Gene.” That summer, Ms. Rodham took to the streets herself, albeit as a safe observer. While home in Park Ridge, she and a friend, Betsy Johnson, kept hearing about all the commotion downtown at the Democratic Convention. They drove Ms. Johnson’s parents’ station wagon into Chicago to view the spectacle.

Slide show Clinton cartoons MSNBC.com's editorial cartoonists weigh in on Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton's candidacy. msnbc.com

“We thought we had seen all there was to see in our sheltered neighborhood,” recalled Betsy Johnson Eberling, another former Goldwater Girl. “It was a radicalizing experience for us, to some extent.”

Mrs. Clinton has said repeatedly how “shocked” she was at the brutality she witnessed — protesters throwing rocks, police officers beating protesters — but describes the bedlam with almost scholarly detachment. In her memoir, “Living History,” she recalls spending hours that summer arguing with a friend over the “meaning of revolution and whether our country would face one.” Even if there was a revolution, the two friends concluded, “we would never participate.”

Keeping a toe in the G.O.P.
For all her leftward movement, Ms. Rodham still kept a toe in the Republican Party, working as an intern in Washington that summer. Mr. Schechter, who supervised the Wellesley internship program, sent her to work for the House Republican Conference, then headed by Mr. Laird, the Wisconsin congressman who would later become President Richard Nixon’s defense secretary. “My adviser said, ‘I’m still going to assign you to the Republicans because I want you to understand completely what your own transformation represents,” Mrs. Clinton recalled of Mr. Schechter.

“I remember her being very bright, very aggressive and not very Republican,” said Ed Feulner, who managed the summer interns in the office and now heads the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group.

Picking the president — the candidates Click a name below to visit that candidate’s MSNBC page • Joe Biden                 • Sam Brownback     • Hillary Clinton          • Chris Dodd • John Edwards         • Rudy Giuliani           • Mike Gravel              • Duncan Hunter • Mike Huckabee        • Dennis Kucinich     • John McCain           • Barack Obama • Ron Paul                    • Bill Richardson      • Mitt Romney            • Tom Tancredo • Fred Thompson To subscribe to a candidate page RSS feed, click here.

MORE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times Section Front

NYT: Similarities to Iraq surge mask Afghan risks NYT: Wider Pakistan drone use OK'd NYT: S.C. rift highlights debate in GOP NYT: Medical debt spurs more bankruptcies Health bill revives abortion groups Drug firms raise prices ahead of reform For thrillers, Glenn Beck is new Oprah Analysis: Victories rekindle GOP’s hope The New York Times Section Front