It’s noon on Saturday and Caroljean Brune — CJ to her friends — stands in front of the Douglas County Courthouse on Massachusetts Street, a white peace flag in hand. She has shown up every Saturday for the last four years to protest the war in Iraq.

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On a similar afternoon 37 years ago, Brune chained herself to the front of the KU Military Science Building to protest the war in Vietnam.

Brune is one of those rare activists who came of age on the KU campus in the turbulent 1960s and is still active today. She was arrested three times during protests when she was a student here, including the takeover of a building by a group of feminists now known as the February Sisters. Today, she is a KU employee, working for the same University that expelled her for her political radicalism. During the week, she is business manager of the School of Education. But on Saturdays, she puts on her jeans, grabs her white peace flag and heads for the anti-war rally on Massachusetts Street.

The Lawrence home she’s had since 1970 is a living history of her activist past, its walls displaying black and white photos of past rallies, vintage protest posters, bumper stickers and pins, its garage stuffed with old campaign signs.

Sitting cross-legged in front of a wall of books, Brune tells her story.

“It’s really gigglesome, the things I did,” Brune said.

Brune was on the “graduate in eight” plan. She enrolled at the University of Kansas in the summer of 1964 and received an undergraduate degree in psychology in 1972.

Getting kicked out of school three times, getting married and having two kids slowed down her undergraduate process, but she regrets nothing from her past.

“Looking back, it was really worth it,” Brune said.

Brune married a good friend after her first year of college. She said they both knew it wouldn’t last and they later divorced. However, she said she still valued the relationship because her two sons came from the marriage. Gregor Brune, 40, Brune’s oldest and only living child, works at the Lawrence Public Library. Her younger son Charlie died in his sleep from a seizure shortly after turning 25. Brune went on to receive an MBA from the University. She’s been the School of Education’s business manager for seven years, and every other job she’s had has been with the University. She’s even worked in some of the very buildings where she was arrested during her time here as a student.

The first time Brune was expelled was after a sit-in in 1965. At the time, some landlords near campus refused to rent houses or apartments to blacks and even advertised in The University Daily Kansan, “no blacks.” Brune was one of 200 people arrested in the chancellor’s suite in Strong Hall and taken away in the “paddy wagon.” A local black minister posted bail for each incarcerated protestor: $10 a pop.

“We got out of jail,” Brune said, “and got right back at protesting again.”

Brune’s next legal trouble came in a protest against the Vietnam War military draft. Brune was arrested after she chained herself to the door of the Military Science building. Her children, then three years old and one year old, attended the event and consequently were “arrested,” too.

Gregor Brune said he was not as politically active as his mother, but he shared her values and beliefs.

“I may be a little biased, but my mom has been a terrific person to be raised by,” Gregor said. “She took me to anti-Vietnam war protests with her when I was too young to know what was going on, and still today I have marched with her in protest against the current war,” Gregor said.

“The kids were really cool,” Brune said. “Still are, actually.”

Brune recounted the time the legendary baby doctor, Dr. Spock, came to speak at the University.

“He told us — many of us families with small kids — ‘It doesn’t matter how you bring your kids up. There’s going to be a point in time when they’re going to rebel against you. Just accept it,’” she said.

Brune had joined the Quaker Church to provide her children with a religious reason for avoiding the draft. After hearing Dr. Spock’s advice, however, she quit going.

“I figured, what’s the point? They’re not going to turn out to be like me.” Brune said. “But they did. It makes me have a renewed conviction that this is the right way to think.”

Because she had two small children and a husband while she was a full-time student, Brune said she realized the need for on-campus childcare. At the time, on-campus childcare wasn’t available, so her kids went with her to most of the protests. Women’s issues plaguing the University at the time ­— such as a lack of women in the KU administration, no women’s studies program and a Watkins Memorial Health Center that refused to dispense birth control information or contraceptives — were what sparked the events that led to Brune’s third arrest.

In February 1972, a feminist protest took place in the then East Asian Studies Department building, which was later torn down. Brune and 14 other women took over the building and locked themselves inside. When the press came to look for a spokeswoman and a name for the protestors, Robin Morgan, one of the protestors, offered off-the-cuff “February Sisters.”

“It was a group of women in February,” Brune said. “Made sense.”

Today, the February Sisters is a campus organization that brings feminist forums to the University. Last February the Sisters celebrated the 35th anniversary of the original sit-in.

The original name stuck, but the original group of protestors did not.

“We never did anything together again,” Brune said. “It’s so funny to think this one thing, one action that we did, stuck.”

Less than a year after the initial demonstration, Hilltop Child Care Development Center opened, a women’s studies program was created and annual February Sisters educational forums on women’s issues began.

Brune remains close friends with another original February Sister, Christine Smith. They have been friends since 1965, when they met at a meeting called to integrate the Lawrence swimming pools.

“The work she did is solid. It touched lives,” Smith said of Brune. “It made a statement.”

Morgan, the February Sister who named the group, is the former editor of Ms. Magazine, which covers feminist issues and politics, and lives in New York City.

Brune’s present-day passion is participating with around 15 other protestors from the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice to protest the Iraq War in front of the Douglas County Courthouse.

On a recent Saturday, Brune stood next to Smith, her fellow February Sister who was holding a sign that said “No Escalation,” chatting with Louise Hanson, another activist, about a recipe for green bean casserole.

“We’re forcing people to think about what they think,” Hanson said.

The Coalition meets weekly to plan protests and other events.

When she’s not working her regular job or on her political endeavors, Brune spends time in her 6,000-book home library. Gregor Brune recently helped his mom alphabetize her library, an event that took six weeks.

“Perhaps the greatest legacy I have inherited from my mother is a love of reading,” Gregor said. “I am in awe of her enormous book collection, and she has inspired me to be the bookworm I am today.”

One book in her collection, “Prairie Power,” features Brune herself in the last chapter of the book, written by Robbie Lieberman in 2004 that focused on former student radicals at the University of Missouri, Southern Illinois University and the University of Kansas.

“It’s kind of weird to be in a book,” Brune said. “So many people were active in my time.”

Lieberman said she wrote the book to explore the meaning of “prairie power” and how it fueled the activism on college campuses. The book is sold at the KU Bookstore for $50.

“But don’t buy it,” Brune advised. “It’s too expensive.”

Brune participates regularly in marches and protests and said she would go just as far as the law allowed, not wanting to jeopardize her upcoming retirement. But would she break the law again and risk arrest if the cause was important enough?

“Absolutely, without batting an eye,” Brune said.

Kansan staff writer Bethany Bunch can be contacted at bbunch@kansan.com.

— Edited by Ashley Thompson