The May 1970 Rebellion

THE MAY 1970 REBELLION

Day to Day Narrative of the National Student Strike

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by

Frank Gormlie

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Published by

Ocean Beach Rag Press, 2024

Published by

Ocean Beach Rag Press

c/o OB Rag

8161 Lincoln Street

Lemon Grove, CA 91945

or

PO Box 7012

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U.S.A.

[email protected]

(619) 962-4804

The May 1970 Rebellion

Copyright August 23, 2024 by Frank Gormlie

ISBN 979-8-9904017-0-9 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-9904017-1-6 (ebook)

Cover art by Forrest Seguin

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

FRANK’S INTRODUCTION

Over the decades, I became acutely aware of the lack of journalistic or historical accounts of what happened during May 1970 and understood that this had created a huge gap in the record of America’s modern history. When I began looking for materials for this book, I was shocked to find that even though there were limited accounts, chapters and summaries of the rebellion in various books about the anti-Vietnam war movement of the Sixties and Seventies, not one book told more of the full story. I understood then that the book had to be written.

I was there - I was a participant in the Rebellion, being a college student at the University of California San Diego earning a degree in Sociology and living on campus in the married student housing. Truly, I thought of myself as a foot soldier for the revolution during that May and was never in leadership roles nor took part in the planning of actions or meetings. Yet, I personally felt the tensions and excitement, the anger, the hostilities, the comradery, the power of collective actions and the demoralizing attributes of factionalism. I witnessed confrontations and building take-overs and the frailties and vicissitudes of administrators and heard the exhortations of some of the greatest.

Upon retiring from my 20-year law practice – during which I honed my legal research skills – I became a citizen journalist, blogger and editor of an online news platform published in San Diego, the OB Rag. As the 50th anniversary of Kent State and the Rebellion approached, I felt compelled to research and begin writing about May 1970. In the end, the material for this report was researched, compiled and written during the Trump presidency years, through two impeachment trials, during the presidential election of 2020, through the pandemic (my partner, Patty Jones, and I both caught COVID during the summer of 2022) and completed in July 2024 during that year’s turbulent and crucial election cycle.  

Tragically, some of those I was writing for began to pass. Alan Canfora, wounded at Kent State in 1970 in the National Guard fusillade, more than anyone else stubbornly kept the memory of the KSU murders alive both on that campus and nationally. Alan passed away in the fall of 2021. Also, John Mike Williams, who assisted me in the latter months of 2021 with his insightful editing, passed at the end of January in 2022.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author will be forever indebted to the individuals who helped with the book: they include those who assisted in editing and submitted their own story from May 1970—John Mike Williams, Mel Freilicher, Peter Bohmer, and Steve Zivolich, for editing help Arlene Fink, to others who submitted their stories—Kate Bell, Doug Coffey, Anna Daniels, Byron King, William Maltz, Kris Schlech, Bruce Seifer, Ken Wachsberger and Steve Wimmers, to Shawn Drake for his material support, to Forrest Seguin for his cover art, and to Dickie Magidoff for his editing and book cover assistance.

INTRODUCTION TO THE MAY 1970 REBELLION

This is a story of an important but forgotten and buried chapter of modern American history. It’s a story—and record—of the May 1970 Rebellion—a day-to-day narrative of the National Student Strike – the largest student strike in American history.

More chronology than narrative, this indepth review of one month recounts what happened when the President of the United States in late April of 1970 invaded a sovereign nation in Southeast Asia—Cambodia. The response by American college, university and high school students – who wisely saw the military incursion as an expansion of the Vietnam war – brought much of the nation’s higher education system to a halt. And the ensuing repression – mostly notably the massacre of four students at Kent State University in Ohio – provoked America’s students to such a degree that their response rocked the nation, creating a political crisis for the nation and for the Establishment.

The ensuing rebellion forever changed America and its politics. It’s why the song Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young still reverberates today with that generation of Americans who experienced and lived through the May Rebellion. And it’s why then-Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Earl Warren, called it the worst American crisis since the Civil War, and it’s why historian Howard Zinn confirmed it was indeed the largest student strike in history. The President's Commission on Campus Unrest in 1970 reported: The crisis on American campuses has no parallel in the history of the nation. This crisis has roots in divisions of American society as deep as any since the Civil War.

Generally, the student-led upheaval of May 1970 is known in this country, with the main collective memory that of the Kent State murders, and to a much lesser extent the two deaths at Jackson State. Many have seen the iconic photo of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the lifeless body of Jeff Miller laying in a river of his own blood, one of the four who died at Kent State.  

But that’s about it. Nothing else is really known about the tsunami of a rebellion that swept through the country during that fateful May. There is no book about it and certainly no movie or documentary. For over 50 years the real story of what happened, what came down, how young Americans were galvanized that month so many years ago has been hidden, interned, and forgotten - with the actions and voices of the rebels smothered by the dust of official avoidance and denial.

This half century of cover-up of a crucial chapter of our history has been enabled by academia and by the Establishment press, for no reporter nor journalist, nor writer nor historian, nor magazine, book, newspaper, cable television station, university, historical society, academic association has attempted to unearth what exactly happened across the nation during those weeks of protest and rebellion. Until now—until this report—the full story and record have never been told.

A major chapter in the nation’s modern history, it’s the story of the thousands, hundreds of thousands, of the one to four million college students who were involved in the national student strike, its demonstrations, mass meetings, marches, leafletting, lobbying, petitioning, letter-writing, sit-ins, building occupations and confrontations with law enforcement. Students were galvanized and mobilized across the country and the unprecedented movement they created impacted hundreds of campuses.

This story and record of May 1970 is based upon reports from over 700 specific college and university campuses, with the principal sources being the accounts contemporaneously written and published by campus newspapers and strike newsletters that sprang up – all written by participants and observers. This presentation of the record signals that the cover-up is over, and it is the author’s hope that it will inspire others to dig even deeper into the stories of the Rebellion in their own locales and campuses.

The National Student Strike

Once the National Student Strike unfolded in response to President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia, and through the government’s reactive repression, the human toll was stark. Eight deaths were directly attributed to the Rebellion: four at Kent State, two at Jackson State, and two self-immolations in protest of the war. Plus, over 1200 students were injured or wounded during the month.

The first week of the strike was the most intense. During each of the four days immediately following the Kent State massacre on Monday, May 4, there was a daily average of 200,000 students involved in protests, demonstrations, mass meetings and marches. And over a hundred colleges went out on strike each day during that four-day period. Then on Saturday May 9th, 100,000 to 120,000 demonstrators – mostly students – marched and protested in Washington DC alone.

Overall, during May 1970, 1,419 colleges and universities were involved in or affected by the National Student Strike with demonstrations, rallies and mass meetings. Student strikes, class boycotts or school shut-downs occurred at 637 campuses. (In 1970 there were between 7.4 and 8 million college students in the U.S. attending 2500 institutions.)

Over the course of the month, from Maine to California, from Florida to Washington State and many points in between, there was a minimum of 91 violent clashes between students and law enforcement and teargas was used to subdue protesters in 41 of them. 67 live rounds were fired at Kent State, hundreds were shot off at Jackson State, and National Guards­men bayonetted nearly a dozen people at the Uni­versity of New Mexico. Over two dozen people on four different campuses were wounded by police buckshot or birdshot. And overall, 1,228 to 1,307 people were wounded or injured—not including the many hundreds sickened by teargas and/or who didn’t report their injuries—and 170 law enforcement officers were also reportedly injured. Between 4,454 and 4,608 students were arrested (including some non-students) during May, according to our record.

The book SDS reported, Violent demonstrations occurred on at least 73 campuses ... and at 26 schools, demonstrations were serious, prolonged, and marked by clashes between students and police, with tear gas, broken windows.

National Guards

The National Guards of 16 states were activated on 24 occasions and deployed on 15 campuses.[1] and placed on alert near nine others.[2] The book SDS pointed out that it was the first time such a massive response [by National Guards] had ever been used in a nonracial crisis.

ROTC, Sit-ins, Arson and States of Emergencies

During May, campus ROTC programs and facilities were targeted by protesters at 156 schools, including 31 sit-ins or take-overs, 24 fires from arson or attempts, and trashings at 18 schools. There were 83 sit-ins or occupations held in other campus buildings – mostly administrative centers – and most by far were non-violent with little property damage. Vandalism, trashings and arson in non-ROTC building did occur at 51 campuses – four buildings were totally demolished and windows broken and other minor damage at 37 schools. SDS claimed there were 95 incidents of bombings and arson associated with college campuses during May.

In direct response to the Rebellion, the governors of four states (Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and South Carolina) declared campuses in a state of emergency, and the governor of California shut down the entire state system of public education for four days—19 colleges and 9 universities. Nation-wide, curfews were established and enforced on 14 colleges.

Street, Freeway and Traffic Blockades, Newsletters and Memorials

Street blockades – the classic insurrectionist tactic – were erected at a minimum of 40 campuses where protesters shut down roads and blocked access by law enforcement and delivery trucks in efforts to bring business as usual to a halt. Human blockades in front of campus buildings occurred at another 17 schools.

Students were involved in 26 take-overs, sit-ins or human blockades of major roads – most of them close to campus. In a signal of a new militancy, on nine different occasions students ran out onto active freeways, blocked traffic and brought them to a halt. At some, students distributed flyers and talked to motorists about their strike and the war. In a dramatic twist in the Mid-west, demonstrators sat-down and blocked railroad tracks for hours. A Honk Your Horn for Peace protest outside a Virginia university disrupted traffic throughout the city.

Students used an array of tactics: (these are minimum numbers) informational picket lines at 83 campuses; teach-ins, seminars and workshops on the war and related issues at 119 schools; Free Universities or alternate courses at another 14; strike newsletters or sympathetic student newspapers on 81 campuses; and 12 schools sponsored regional strike conferences. Defense contractors on campuses were an issue at 25 schools—with 11 involving protests – half of which were sit-ins or building occupations. Also, students from four campuses led demonstrations at defense plants or factories over the month.

Strike newsletters that sprang up usually operated in conjunction with strike organizing committees and published announcements of protests, teach-in schedules, and sympathetic opinion pieces about the strike. Many carried reports and news of protests from across the country, keeping local strikers up-to-date with the progression of the nation-wide movement.

During May, 136 memorials were held in honor of the Kent State Four and 12 for those murdered at Jackson State College and one for George Winne’s self-immolation at UC San Diego. Lowering the American flag to half-staff in honor of the Kent State students was an issue at 43 campuses, whereas the burning of the American flag in protest occurred at only four. Twenty-seven protest hunger strikes were staged, campus referendums on Cambodia, Nixon and related issues were held at 42 schools, and protest tent cities or student encampments were set up at 14. Twenty-eight protests at local draft or induction centers were held, mainly organized by students, and between 1600 to 2100 draft cards were either collected and sent to a national antiwar center or burned.

Door-to-Door Canvassing, Marches to Downtowns and State Capitols

Canvassing campaigns were organized by students at 49 campuses where people went door-to-door in local neighborhoods with peace petitions and information about their strikes. Students from at least 11 campuses leafletted local factories or joined picket lines at worksites, and a minimum of 13 schools sponsored leafletting at malls and shopping centers.

Students and their allies marched on 32 state capitols during May and organized another 79 protest marches to local downtowns—sit-ins and street occupations were held in 34 of them. Federal Buildings, courthouses and Post Offices were non-violently targeted in 39 demonstrations whereas in contrast, merchants’ windows were broken in 22 incidents during protests; fires were set in businesses in seven towns or cities. Seven schools had boycott campaigns against local merchants to pressure them into supporting student antiwar and civil rights efforts.  

Around Armed Forces Day in late May, there were 15 protests or rallies where students joined antiwar GIs at or near military facilities. Most were entirely peaceful, but military authorities used an array of tactics in efforts to decrease GI turn-out—from arrests of organizers to the wide distribution of weekend passes.

This detailed report of the responses during May 1970 by American students is a chronology organized geographically, telling the story day-to-day, week-by-week, campus-by-campus, and state-by-state, beginning with colleges and universities in the Northeast and ending with those in Southern California. Each chapter proceeds through the six regions of the nation: the Northeast, the Southeast, the Midwest, the Southwest, the Rocky Mountain region and the Pacific (the regions utilized by the US Post Office).

Why Rebellion?

The protests of May 1970 were not simply another student springtime outburst but the high water mark of American students’ resistance to the Vietnam war and the policies of the Nixon administration. (See Epilogue.) At the same time May was not a revolution as some wished or feared, not even an insurrection that others fantasized, but a rebellion – often defined as an act of violent or open formidable resistance to an established government or ruler, that is usually unsuccessful.

Establishing the record of what happened during the May 1970 Rebellion was my task. And now, the voices and actions of the young of yesteryear speak and act for themselves. And for the rest of us.

Organizations Referred to in the Text

Students for a Democratic Society was the key organization of the student New Left. Founded in 1960 under the Port Huron Statement, it called for participatory democracy in America, and by 1969 had grown to 304 chapters with a membership somewhere between 30,000 to 100,000—mostly at college campuses. SDS played a leading role in the growing anti-Vietnam War movement and was especially focused on challenging university complicity such as campus ROTC programs. It was also very active in movements against poverty and racism, on and off campus. With time, SDS became increasingly anti-imperialist, in support of Third World revolutions and the civil rights and Black Power movement within the US. However, due to major divisions among its factions and members, SDS fell apart after a 1969 convention in Chicago.

Progressive Labor (PL) a minor but national force within the anti-war movement, PL became active in SDS beginning in the mid 1960's, having broken from mainline American leftists to form a Maoist and pro-China organization. Socially conservative, PL focused more on class-based change and away from support for the Black Panthers and Black Studies departments. Working through its campus group, the Student Worker Alliance, it gained a growing influence within SDS and stacked the 1969 SDS convention with a majority of the delegates. When other factions broke off from SDS, PL was only too happy to take control of the disintegrating national organization for its own. 

Weather Underground was a prominent faction of SDS and in 1969 most its leadership formed the Weathermen organization with a focus to engage in militant actions in support of the Vietnamese revolution and the Black liberation struggle in America. After the 1969 convention, they abandoned SDS to focus on building Weathermen, and decided to become totally clandestine. In doing so, these veteran student activists and SDS leaders were not available nor involved in the May Rebellion. And for a number of years, they conducted a bombing campaign against imperialist targets—careful not to injure people in their actions. They disbanded in the mid 1970's although some members continued in clandestine work, and over the decades, many resurfaced.

Socialist Workers Party (SWP) became a major anti-Vietnam war group in forming the SMC (Student Mobilization Committee) in the mid 1960’s and took a leadership role in many of the large anti-war demonstrations. They called for immediate U.S. withdrawal but did not support the National Liberation Front and North Vietnam. In the demonstrations they led, they believed that Vietnam should be the only issue, and did not ally with other struggles such as Black Liberation, and believed protests should be massive but without civil disobedience.

The Chicago 8 Conspiracy was a group of eight defendants involved in the anti-war and counterculture protests in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, who were then charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with conspiracy, crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot and other related charges. The Chicago Eight were Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner and Bobby Seale – the chair of the Black Panther Party. They became the Chicago Seven after the case against Bobby Seale was declared a mistrial. Eventually, all of the defendants were acquitted of conspiracy, and in the end, all other convictions were reversed on appeal, and the government declined to retry the case. For many young people the group became symbols of the youthful and rebellious counter-culture within the anti-Vietnam war movement. Members of the Conspiracy traveled the country, speaking mainly on college campuses to hugely receptive audiences.

The Black Panther Party was a left-wing Black power political organization founded by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. It gained an early militant reputation and following for its practice of cop-watching while armed which challenged the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. In the late 1960s, the Party created the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, community health clinics, and advocated for class struggle, rather than a racial struggle. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the party the greatest threat to the internal security of the country, and ordered the FBI to conduct campaigns of illegal sabotage and covert counterintelligence gathering under COINTELPRO, including surveillance, infiltration, police harassment and even assassinations. Two party leaders, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated in 1969 with FBI assistance during a raid of the Chicago Police Department, while other members were involved in fatal firefights with police. Initially however, government persecution contributed to the party's growth among African Americans and the political left. With a national newspaper and hundreds of chapters nation-wide, its membership peaked in 1970. The party gradually declined over the next decade, due to its vilification by the mainstream press and infighting—caused in part by COINTELPRO.

Chapter 1

THURSDAY APRIL 30 – SUNDAY MAY 3

Good evening my fellow Americans, President Richard Nixon said as he began his 22 minute televised address to the nation the evening of Thursday, April 30, 1970. Sitting behind a desk and stern faced, Nixon immediately acknowledged that just ten days prior he had announced a withdrawal of 150,000 American troops from Vietnam over the coming year. Yet, within seconds of that acknowledgement, he told the nation that due to the actions of the enemy, he had concluded that the time has come for action. The only choice for the U.S. was to go to the heart of the trouble. He described the action. In cooperation with the armed forces of South Vietnam, attacks are being launched this week to clean out major enemy sanctuaries on the Cambodian‐Vietnam border. He also announced that air strikes against North Vietnam were being made.

The attacks were already underway. Tonight, American and South Vietnamese units will attack the headquarters for the entire Communist military operation in South Vietnam, he said. This key control center has been occupied by the North Vietnamese and Vietcong for five years in blatant violation of Cambodia's neutrality. Nixon did not mention the blatant violations of Cambodian neutrality the U.S. made, such as the 14-month covert air campaign he had authorized in 1969 which had flown over 3,000 sorties and dropped 108,000 tons of bombs on eastern Cambodia. He also didn’t acknowledge the military aid to pro-US General Lol Nol who, just weeks earlier, had overthrown the neutral government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.

Then, Nixon blurted out: This is not an invasion of Cambodia. It wasn’t an actual invasion, he claimed, because the territories being attacked were under the control of North Vietnamese forces – the enemy. Once the enemy was driven out of these sanctuaries, he pledged to withdraw American troops from Cambodia. After a nod to the American people’s desire for peace and an end to the war, Nixon launched into a classic Orwellian twist. He told the nation, We take this action not for the purpose of expanding the war into Cambodia but for the purpose of ending the war in Vietnam and winning the just peace we all desire. Nixon stood up and moved to a large map off to his right, pointing out the different countries and where VC sanctuaries were on the map, colored in red, naturally. He did this a couple times during the speech.

Near the end of the spiel, Nixon, threw the gauntlet down at the feet of the American anti-war movement and the thousands of college students who made up its base. My fellow Americans, he repeated, we live in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home. We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations in the last 500 years. Even here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed. And certainly, the U.S. couldn’t act like a pitiful, helpless giant, against the anarchy and forces of totalitarianism that threatened American freedom and its free institutions. Before he said good night to his audience, he asked them to support our brave men fighting tonight halfway around the world, not for territory, not for glory but so that their younger brothers and their sons and your sons can have a chance to grow up in a world of peace and freedom, and justice. That was it. U.S. military forces were engaged in an invasion of yet another country. From here on out, people spoke not about the war in Vietnam but about the wars in Indochina.

In power since 1955, Prince Sihanouk had maintained Cambodia’s neutrality by tolerating North Vietnamese use of his territory and not responding to US airstrikes inside his country. After the US maneuvered Sihanouk’s ouster, Lon Nol, now openly supported by the Pentagon, tried to kick the North Vietnamese out of Cambodia, but this led to the Cambodian civil war and the Khmer Rouge’s bloody takeover five years later. The Cambodian coup and Nixon’s invasion also disrupted the secret peace talks in Paris that Presidential advisor, Henry Kissinger, had been holding with the North Vietnamese.

Nixon told at least three lies in his April 30 address to the nation. He had claimed, that there has been a great deal of discussion with regard to this decision, when in fact, Congress had not been consulted, and neither had the secretaries of state and defense. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers had been so obviously opposed to his illegal invasion of Cambodia that he had cut them completely out of its preparations. He also claimed that American policy had respected Cambodian’s neutrality – a blatant false statement as the US was a major supporter of Sihanouk’s ouster. Thirdly, he had asserted that the invasion would attack the headquarters of the entire North Vietnamese operation in South Vietnam, despite Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird’s repeated statements to Nixon that no such target existed. It wasn’t the first time the American public would be deceived about the Vietnam war, nor would it be the last time that an American president lied about the reasons the nation was going to war.

Twenty-four hours earlier, on the evening of April 29, twenty members of the New Mobe coordinating committee were meeting at the New York City home of long-time peace activist Cora Weiss. The leadership of the New Mobe – short for the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam – had mustered together to deal with a whole range of issues. At the top of their agenda was how to keep the flailing antiwar network together. The New Mobe itself seemed to be at an impasse; it was broke, it had suffered some recent setbacks, and its leadership was split on what to do. It had organized the successful Vietnam Moratorium, a series of nationwide anti-war demonstrations during the fall of 1969, but the network had dissipated. The New Mobe’s attempt to resurrect the Moratorium in protests in mid-April of 1970 was ineffectual and didn’t mobilize the turnout seen during the Moratorium. On top of all that, one of its major partners was sounding like it wanted to go it alone; the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was pushing for tactics that other Mobe steering committee members and allied groups didn’t think were effective and worthwhile.

Then the phone rang. Veteran peace activist Dave Dellinger picked it up. What he heard visibly shocked him. With blood draining from his face, Dellinger turned toward the group. Someone in the administration was leaking explosive news to the peace movement. Nixon had just ordered US troops into Cambodia and the first prong of the invasion had already begun. The word invasion hushed the room and immediately all dissension disappeared. In an instant, everything changed and the Mobe – and the country – were now in a state of emergency.

The Mobe had to act. There was an immediate and unanimous agreement that night in Weiss’ home that the Mobe had to initiate a call for a major demonstration in Washington, DC as soon as possible. It couldn’t be the upcoming weekend – so, Saturday, May 9, was chosen. But it was only ten days away – nothing like it had ever been attempted in such a short amount of time. How could they do it? Just hours before, it would have been crazy to attempt such an impossibility, but this was an urgency they couldn’t avoid. Steering committee members Brad Lyttle and Fred Halstead left for Washington to begin making arrangements. Activist Norma Becker called together 20 to 30 others to her New York apartment, and in one night, they accomplished a 10,000 person mailing about the event. Others got on the phone and activated their networks. 24 hours later, Nixon made the announcement public.

The reaction from college campuses was swift. Immediately, protests and calls for strikes were held on at least a half dozen campuses. Nearly 6,000 anti-war student demonstrators across the nation acted that night. It was just the beginning.

Northeast

University of New Hampshire – Durham

When President Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia on April 30, the University of New Hampshire campus was already embroiled in controversy. Two weeks earlier, student body president Mark Wefers had invited three members of the Chicago 8 to speak at the school on May 5 about the Vietnam War: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and David Dellinger. The three had been touring college campuses speaking out against the war, about their trial and the suppression of dissent and free speech in the country. The Chicago 8 had been charged with conspiring to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and their trial had turned them into an antiwar cause celebre. (The other members included Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner and Black Panther leader Bobby Seale. Seale was separated out from the other defendants by Chicago judge Julius Hoffman, and a mistrial was declared in his case.)

But Wefers wasn’t getting much support from the campus administration. After all, UNH sat in Durham, a quiet, tree-leafed New England college town. Politically, the campus hadn’t been very active. Wefers was also having trouble getting solid commitments from Rubin & Co., so, Wefers and his main cohort, Peter Riviere, editor of the campus newspaper, came up with a plan. Using Abbie Hoffman’s oft-repeated phrase, ‘any news is good news,’ Wefer and Riviere tipped off the Manchester Union Leader—one of the most ultra-conservative newspapers in the country – that Chicago 8 members would be coming to town. They knew the Union Leader would play it up - which it did. It ran daily cover stories about how these America-hating hippies were going to cause riots and take over the campus in Durham.

Then two things happened. The tres amigos agreed to come and speak on May 5. And the University’s Board of Trustees tried to block them. First, the trustees went to court to get an order cancelling the speeches – but they weren’t successful. Then they maneuvered to get the speeches, originally scheduled for 7 pm, moved up to sometime between 2 and 5 pm. They feared a night rally would cause riots and attract noncampus outside agitators. Wefers pushed back and petitioned the U.S. District Court in Concord to block the university from dictating when the movement celebrities could speak. For Wefers, it was a matter of freedom of speech. But the court only half-agreed. In its split-decision, the court stated the university was enjoined and restrained from enforcing their directive, but the trio would be allowed to speak only between 3:30 and 6:30 pm.

To get a sense of the venom against Hoffman and friends, a local mainstream newspaper, Fosters, featured a university professor’s letter to the editor on the front page, which claimed the Chicago 8 members were a major reason, if not THE reason, our country is in its present condition of turmoil. Russell Eagert, who taught in the plant science department, wrote: "Democratic free speech does not give license to defile, desecrate, degrade, and to advocate violence and destruction of our flag, our country, its laws or our institutions. It is time that the people of this state, our Legislature, Board of Trustees, University Administration, faculty and responsible students recognize for what they are, these internal attempts to destroy our nation."

This sentiment reverberated within the New Hampshire State House. A week before the rally, the House passed a resolution barring the three from speaking at UNH. The measure stated the potential danger of violence and a certain disruption of university activities make it appear that the three individuals should be denied the use of facilities. However, over on the other side of the state legislature, the Senate had a different reaction. According to a May 1 report in The Concord Daily Monitor, When Senate President Arthur Tufts received the emotion packed resolution, he quickly assigned it to the Rules Committee — and the item was never heard from again.  Interestingly, the UNH administration didn’t respond. It turned out that University President John McConnell had compiled a detailed dossier on the three members of the Chicago 8 – later revealed by the newspaper Fosters - and after reviewing 40 speeches by the trio, did not turn up a single instance where the speeches could be shown to have incited either rioting or violence. McConnell had a change of heart and acquiesced to their speaking on campus.

Yale University - New Haven

April 30 – May 3

Weeks before Nixon announced his invasion of Cambodia, the Black Panther Party had called for supporters and sympathetic activists to come to New Haven, Connecticut, the weekend of May 1-3 to show solidarity for eight of its local party members and the national chairman, Bobby Seale. They were all facing trial on kidnaping and murder charges—viewed widely as being trumped up and part of the continuing pattern of government repression against the group. In 1970, the Black Panther Party was probably at its zenith, with 68 offices across the country and with an international reputation.

Founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, the Panthers monitored police harassment and brutality against African-American communities. But unlike other public organizations, the Panthers advocated armed resistance to the police – who they called pigs – and its members routinely carried weapons. But that’s not all the Panthers did; they also carried food to needy people in their communities, established Free Breakfast programs for neighborhood children, ran schools for ghetto kids, and published a national newspaper. Their actions ignited sympathetic Black youth across the country, and over the four years since their founding, dozens of urban chapters had been established. The Panthers were also an inspiration to other people and helped to motivate the formations of the Brown Berets, the American Indian Movement, Young Lords in Chicago, the radical anti-racist White Panthers, and the Gray Panthers, who were militant senior citizens.

The push-back on the Panthers was predictable. Arch-conservative Governor Ronald Reagan of California freaked out when Panthers showed up in Sacramento carrying arms in 1967. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called them the greatest threat to America, and ordered his agents to infiltrate, harass, spy on and set up Black Panther members with the ultimate goal of discrediting them and causing their demise.

Local police departments were also whipped up against them – there were a number of police-Panther shoot-outs, most notably in Los Angeles and Chicago. (The Chicago incident was more of a bloody massacre by police - where Panther leader Fred Hampton was assassinated. Panther leader Mark Clark in Peoria was also killed by police.)

In New Haven in May of 1969, police alleged several Panthers had tortured and killed 19-year-old Alex Rackley because they thought he was an FBI informant. Police found his body and arrested nine Panthers. Two other people eventually confessed to the crimes but implicated Bobby Seale – who coincidentally was in New Haven at that time. To the American left, it plainly appeared to be a frame up of Seale, and his case became a cause for the movement.

As early May 1970 approached, there were rumors of tens of thousands of protesters heading to New Haven, encouraged by members of the Chicago 8. The local establishment believed their town was in for a violent weekend and a definite aura of thick tension and fear of violence enveloped the area.

Some of it was justified; just two weeks earlier in Cambridge’s Harvard Square, there had been street fighting between police and activists that had raged on for more than four hours. Police used nightsticks and tear gas to disperse a large pro-Panther and anti-war crowd that peaked at 6,000 to 8,000 people. When the dust cleared, up to 300 people had been injured, including 14 police officers; 28 demonstrators had been arrested. The incident had involved over a thousand policemen from Cambridge, Boston, and surrounding communities, while 2,000 National Guardsmen had been placed on stand-by. After the riot, Abbie Hoffman was said to have predicted New Haven would burn to the ground.

In response to the rumors, Connecticut Gov. John Dempsey warned Nixon’s Attorney General John N. Mitchell there was a strong possibility ... of weekend violence in New Haven, and requested federal troops. Mitchell agreed, and the troops were flown into New England and deployed in armories on the outskirts of town. Gov. Dempsey also called out 5,000 National Guardsmen to be on the ready. Many New Haven merchants boarded up their windows, and Yale officials removed sensitive files from the campus. Armageddon was coming.

But in an effort to avoid another repeat of Harvard, Yale President Kingman Brewster and his assistant Henry Chauncey traveled to Harvard and met with Archibald Cox, the assistant to the Harvard president. (Four years later Cox gained fame during the Saturday Night Massacre which led to Nixon’s resignation at the end of the Watergate scandal.) Cox told Brewster and Chauncey that Harvard had made a huge mistake when it had tried to keep the protesters out by literally locking the campus gates. Cox said, Look ... when we tried, it failed. Everybody’s failed. You got to think of something new.

Prompted to do something new, Brewster came up with a plan; he would open the campus and actually welcome the visiting radicals; they would be invited to sleep in Yale’s 12 residences; the campus dining halls would feed them 3 meals a day. Negotiations between the administration and the protesters were initiated, and Brewster and Chauncey met with Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Anne Froines, Allen Ginsberg - the famed poet, and Chicago 8 attorney Bill Kunstler (Kunstler had been a college classmate of Brewster’s). As Chauncey recounted years later, We convinced the radicals we were decent people; we would listen to them. We were talking nonstop, 12-14 hours a day. It was exhausting.  Finally, at 3 am on Friday, a deal was struck. As Chauncey remembered, The deal was we would do everything in our power to keep the police and National Guard out of sight of the [New Haven] Green, to use as little tear gas as possible. They promised not to change their rhetoric, but to preach nonviolence. They could say ‘f-ing this and f-ing that, but today is not for violence.’ It was a big gamble for President Brewster – but would it work?

Friday, May 1

Between 15,000 and 20,000 people, mostly students, converged on New Haven on Friday and gathered on the Town Green for the first rally, preceded by a rock con­cert. Over at a Yale chapel, 1,000 Yale students and other anti-war activists met and hammered out on a set of three demands. MIT student Peter Bohmer was at the chapel and remembered, many years later, that in the aftermath of the invasion of Cambodia, There was outrage among anti-war people. So, the meeting at the Yale chapel was a response to the invasion and to the issue of political prisoners. Many hundreds, maybe a thousand attended from colleges and with anti-war radicals from many, many cities.

Out of this meeting three demands were formulated: 1. U.S out of Cambodia; 2. An end to all university complicity with the U.S. wars in Indochina; and 3. free all political prisoners. These would become the demands supported by many student strikes across the country over the course of the next several weeks. Yale students also voted to extend their own 2 ½ week old school boycott in support of the national strike.

Throughout the weekend, Panther organizers and their allies including Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman continuously stressed that the event was a non-violent demonstration in support of the Panthers. But everybody knew there were groups of white radicals who were willing to push it to the edge. And Friday night they did. The trouble stemmed from a late afternoon workshop given by Jerry Rubin. Two men in attendance who claimed to be Black Panther members told those at the workshop that police were suddenly making unprovoked arrests of other Panthers. This caused no small measure of outrage. A fired-up group gathered and marched towards the New Haven Green and by the time they reached it, it had mushroomed into a small army of 1,500. A confrontation with police erupted with rocks, bottles and bricks being thrown, and police responded with tear gas. Then in a major show of force, police swept through the Green and cleared out the area. As a counter force, dozens of the organized marshals joined hands in a human chain and pushed as many as 1,500 people back onto the Yale campus and away from the Town Green. Police ended up arresting 17 people - mostly for disturbing the peace. Later, spokespeople for the Black Pan­thers said the two men at the Rubin workshop were not party members but were police provocateurs.

For good reason then, event organizers blamed Friday night's violence on provocateurs – who had caught unwitting White crazies and self-indulgent troublemakers up in their own shenanigans. Over the entire weekend, Panther leadership had stressed their goal of holding a peaceful event. Panther leader Doug Miranda had warned everyone, spon­taneity leads to suicide, and that radicals shouldn’t go into the streets to fight against over­whelming odds. The Panthers were adamant against any violence because they knew there was a strong possibility it would overflow into the Black community that bordered Yale university. One Panther said, It's our community which must bear the brunt of pig action if some shit breaks out this weekend. We must live here even after this weekend. We must serve the people even while we are freeing Bobby.

Saturday, May 2

Panther leaders and members of the Chicago 8 spoke and engaged in workshops on Saturday—a warm and sunny day in New Haven. By the time a rock group set up and played around 1:30, the militant affair had become a political festival, despite its serious undertones. One observer noted that the Yippies were the most prominent group: they passed around marijuana joints, danced and chanted, Off Nixon, Fuck Spiro — Bobby Seale is the People’s Hero. (Yippies were the Youth International Party that rose to some prominence during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago; Rubin and Hoffman were its most visible national spokespeople.)

At a 4 pm rally, a series of speakers addressed the crowd. Artie Seale, Bobby Seale’s wife, had brought a taped message he had recorded in jail just three hours earlier, which she broadcast for the assembly. In the message, Seale clarified earlier reports of him saying he would get a fair trial in New Haven. What I said was that I understand I’m SUPPOSED to get a fair trial after getting assurances from the judge. But I know that I can’t get a fair trial, just as no Panther can get a fair trial on trumped up charges. Doug Miranda of the Black Pan­thers expressed amazement at the sheer number of participants, especially in view of the presence of thousands of police, state patrolmen, and national guardsmen. Miranda warned the crowd of pigs and provocateurs in the movement and urged self-disci­pline among movement people. He said, There are those among us with long hair, beards, Afros who shout revolutionary slogans who will lead us into suicide. In every white man, there is a John Brown and an Adolph Hitler just as in every Black man there is a Huey Newton and a Booker T. Washington. It is up to us to de­cide who we really are.

When Jerry Rubin introduced himself, he said, Hi, I'm Johnny Cash, come to en­tertain all you prisoners here at Yale Prison. He declared all universities were prisons and called for all of them to be shut down. He went after Yale President Brewster - Kingman Bre­wer or whatever his name is - as long as he’s a univer­sity president, he's the enemy. Rubin then led thousands in a resounding chant, Fuck Kingman Brewster! Fuck Kingman Brewster!

Tom Hayden, up next, strolled to the microphone. A little over 30, Hayden for the past decade had been deeply involved in political activism from the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam war work, to helping found the New Left and Students for a Democratic Society, SDS. He would go on to run for US senator from California and serve nearly two decades in the California legislature. On May 2 at Yale, Hayden called for a summer of sol­idarity – and more. He warned that liberals must take a clear moral stand — for repression or against it. We are at the point, he said, where liberals and 'neutralists' like Kingman Brewster, who advocate ‘fair trials,’ will be forced to be ‘neu­tralists' like Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia who gave aid and sanctuary to the NLF (National Liberation Front). Hayden continued, And, if these middle people and other well-intentioned people want to be good Germans paving the way for fas­cism, this generation will not back down. This will require a crazy commitment from us, doom­ing us for our lives. He said, It will necessitate an end to our rhetoric, our male chauvinism and self-indulgence on a scale of commitment that neither we nor the anti-war movement has ever displayed before. It will necessitate acting, not talking.

And then surprising even his friends and comrades, Hayden exclaimed, this is probably the last speech I’m ever going to give. Hayden – who had helped mold SDS into the foremost national student anti-war organization – urged the massive crowd to join him in shutting down their own college campuses in response to Nixon’s escalation of the war. Then he made the call – a call for a national student strike of colleges, universities, and high schools across the country. It would begin Tuesday, May 5, he declared. The crowd went wild and began chanting, Strike! Strike! Strike! He read off the three demands of the national strike; the immediate suspension of political repression of dissident groups or individuals, and the immediate release of all political prisoners, notably the New Ha­ven Nine; cessation of the United States expansion of the war into Laos and Cambodia and unilateral with­drawal of all military forces from southeast Asia immediately; and an end of all Defense de­partment and counterinsurgency research in universities and the abolition of ROTC - immediately. It wasn’t Hayden’s last speech of his life, but it was probably his most important.

Other speakers also rose before the crowd, including Dr. Benjamin Spock, Jean Genet, John Froines, and representa­tives of the gay liberation and feminist movements. A Yale assistant professor announced a demonstration in Washington against the Cambodian invasion that upcoming weekend – Saturday, May 9. As the rally wound down, there were pleas for movement solidarity and a reiterated call for the national student strike of high schools and colleges. And then it was over. The weekend rally was abruptly adjourned. There had been plans to have the event continue the next day with a rock music festival, but attendance was flagging; the crowd on Saturday was less than half of the size of the throngs that assembled on the Green on Friday.

That night, there were some skirmishes, more spontaneous outbursts, more incidents of rock throwing, teargassing and arrests. Over the weekend three fires had been reported including a molotov cocktail explosion on Friday night at the Ingels Skating Rink and a fire at a building at Yale Law School. New Haven Police Chief James F. Ahern reported the outbreaks did not appear to be planned and the demonstrators’ activities were generally peaceful and orderly. It was true – outside of a few minor incidents, the weekend had been peaceful. The Panthers were praised for their organization, their leadership and insistence of non-violence. One observer wrote, The New Haven campus was trans­formed into a communal living experience composed of students, Panthers, and sympathizers from every section of the country. The activities, violence, and speeches have all been exploited by the media, but the implications of the rally upon uni­versity students can only be manifested through support of the planned national student strike. One result of the weekend was the formation Saturday in New Haven of the National Strike Committee to try to coordinate the strikes across the country. At a press conference at their regional office, the group named their four strike demands, which mirrored the three demands cited by Hayden on Saturday with the addition of the impeachment of President Nixon. 

With the departure of the last of the thousands of demonstrators and the 3,000 National Guardsmen brought in to help police, New Haven returned to normal. Yale President Kingman Brewster’s gamble had paid off. 20,000 radicals and Panthers had come to town over the weekend and New Haven had not burned down, as many had predicted. In time, three of the Black Panthers on trial were convicted on lesser charges than first-degree murder. Seale's trial ended with a hung jury, and prosecutors did not seek a retrial. Kingman Brewster remained at the helm of Yale until 1977 and then was appointed ambassador to Great Britain.

Sunday, May 3

On Sunday, May 3, at Columbia University in New York City eleven student newspaper editors – inspired by Tom Hayden’s call for a national student strike—convened to craft a statement in response to the Cambodian invasion and in support of a strike. They declared Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia had placed America in a state of emergency and that a strike across the country’s campuses would demonstrate classroom education becomes a hollow, meaningless exercise in the face of massive violence. The call urged undergraduates, faculty, administrators and staff to participate in the nationwide protest, set to begin on Monday, May 4, and end on Friday, May 8. In rapid fire, over a dozen college newspapers endorsed the strike editorial including Cornell, Rutgers, University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Dartmouth, Brown, Princeton, UCLA, Berkeley, Stanford, Colgate, Sarah Lawrence, Columbia and Harvard.

The National Call to Action

We do not call for a strike by students against the University, but for a strike by the entire University—students, faculty, staff, and administrators alike. The reasons for such a strike are manifold. First, it is a dramatic symbol of our opposition to a corrupt and immoral war. It demonstrates clearly our priorities, for the significance of classes and exams pales before the greater problems outside the classroom. Moreover, it recognizes the fact that within a society so permeated with inequality, immorality and destruction, a classroom education becomes a hollow, meaningless exercise.

But the necessity of a strike extends far beyond these reasons. The strike is necessary to free the academic community from activities of secondary importance and to open it up to the primary task of building renewed opposition to the war. It is necessary to permit the academic community to first solidify its own opposition and then to act immediately to extend this opposition beyond the campuses.

We ask the entire academic community to use the opportunity to go to the people and bring home to the entire nation the meaning of the President's action. A massive, unprecedented display of dissent is required.

We urge that this strike be directed toward bringing about the following changes: 1) an immediate with­drawal of all American forces from Southeast Asia, 2) passage of an amendment to the Senate military appropriations bill to deny all aid for our military and political adventure in Southeast Asia, 3) the mobi­lization of public support for anti-war candidates in the upcoming primary and general elections, 4) a re­allocation of American resources from military involvement abroad to domestic problems, in particular, the problems of our beleaguered cities, 5) the end of political repression at home, in particular the government's systematic attempt to eliminate the Black Panther party and other political dissidents, and 6) the building of support for a massive demonstration in Washington on May 9 to bring our opposition home to the nation’s capital in unprecedented numbers.

The stage has been set, the issues clearly drawn, the need apparent. It is now time to act.

In addition, the National Student Association also made a call for a nationwide student strike for one day, Monday, May 4. NSA president, Charles Palmer, along with ten student body presidents had made the announcement for a nationwide protest that Friday, May 1. Some antiwar activists, however, didn’t hold the NSA in high esteem as three years earlier in 1967, it was widely reported that its top officers had accepted funding from the CIA in exchange for using students to gather intelligence. But by 1970, it had extricated itself from that funding and was helping to lead the May rebellion and the fight against US foreign policy.  

Brandeis University

Weekend May 1-3

Over the weekend, a large contingent of Brandeis University students had been in New Haven for the Black Panther support rallies. Immediately upon their return to campus, Brandeis students set up an information center for the country-wide student strike inside the Sociology Department in Perlman Hall. Sociology Prof. Morris Schwartz said, I turned it over to them, and eventually allowed the center to use most of the department’s space. Newly named, the National Student Strike Information Center was organized as a collective without an official hierarchy. In time, the center had about one hundred students working there - on a good day. A spokesperson for the 2,200‐student body stated that while Brandeis had tried to help the students in many ways, the information center is completely autonomous from and has nothing to do with the university. The center kept track of the continually growing list of colleges and universities on strike and published a national newsletters, which some days, had multiple editions. Having divided the country geographically into six regions, center workers handled the information which flowed in mainly by phone from students at either regional centers or individual campuses – in those days before cell phones, emails, and Instagram and twitter. Whenever possible, the info was verified before it was sent out in news packets.

Lists of campuses with protest actions of any measurable kind were kept along with contact names and phone numbers of students involved on those campuses. One such list, generated by a giant MIT computer, was 10 feet long and had to be taped to a ceiling. Besides its newsletter, the Center issued reams of mimeographed researched and background material on all the latest issues. Of course, there were always glitches, like the time Grinnell College in Iowa was named that region's strike information center — only to be then closed down by the college administration the next day. A new center had to be re‐established in the home of a faculty member. The lines of communication were constantly getting clogged, which took valuable time to work out.

Kathy Power, a 21‐year‐old junior who worked at the center, was tasked with grappling with its financial problems. Rumors abounded that the telephone bill was around $13,000. Contributions did stream in, Powers said, and added that John Froines of the Chicago Eight was donating the proceeds from his speaking engagements to the Center.

Simmons College

On Sunday night, May 3, students at Simmons College – an all-women’s liberal arts college less than ten miles from downtown Boston - met and formed a Student Coordinating Committee. They drafted a resolution which called for the immediate withdrawal of all troops from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, an end to political oppression of Black people and other minority groups (Justice to Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton), and an end to all war-related research on campus. Another resolution passed became quite controversial in the eyes of many faculty members. It requested Simmons be shut down and so-called blanket passes issued in all courses to allow students to work for the objectives of the strike. Several student groups endorsed the resolutions, including Hillel – a Jewish organization, Newman Club, Women's Liberation, and the Black Students Organization.

University of Massachusetts – Amherst

UMass Amherst students converged on the Student Union Sunday evening for a discussion of the national student strike. In addition, the Student Senate executive board and then the general Student Senate meeting in emergency sessions, voted nearly unanimously to strongly urge...all members of the University community as a matter of individual conscience and moral duty to participate in the nationwide strike to end the war. The campus was to go on strike beginning that Tuesday, the 5th. The Senate also voted 51-15 to approve $1,000 in student monies to publicize the strike and the three national strike demands – which they had endorsed. One speaker, Sid Finehirsh, urged his fellow students to be sure that this is not simply a student action, but that the university becomes a staging area for community action... We have to reach out to bring the community with us.

New York State

In New York, at Marist College along the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, 125 students barged into and occupied the administration building. They demanded the impeachments of President Nixon and Vice-president Agnew.

Bernard M. Baruch College – City University of New York

When President Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia, students at Bernard Baruch College in New York City were already in the midst of their own week-long campaign of protest against a tuition raise. Baruch College, one of the ten senior colleges of the City University of New York (CUNY) – the largest urban public university in the country - had experienced a widespread boycott of classes and militant—but cheerful—demonstrations all week. To resolve the conflict, a committee made up of half students and half faculty was appointed, but by Friday morning, May 1, nothing had been resolved. In response, from 600 to 1,000 students crowded into the campus auditorium that morning and voted overwhelmingly to continue the protest against the tuition increase. Ironically, the Cambodian issue received only brief comment during the assembly. Later that afternoon at the request of student leaders, President Robert Weaver announced a one-hour, college-wide convocation on Cambodia and the war to be conducted by students the next Monday morning.

Hunter College

On Saturday, May 2, 1,200 students in protest mode ransacked Hunter College in Manhattan. Police were summoned after students raided both the cafeteria and bookstore and had broken into President Jacqueline Wexler's office. Since March, students and a few faculty members had been discontented with Wexler due to her indifference toward their concerns around the war and American racial policies, as well as her governance of the school. Each time there was an impasse between her and student activists, Wexler had relied on New York City Police and her unilateral school closures to regain ‘control.’ The Cambodian invasion and calls for a national student strike had ignited students’ activism and had given them a campus target.

Columbia University

Students at Columbia University in New York City put together a campaign on Sunday called Action for Peace to build support for the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment in the US Senate and made plans to take it