50TH ANNIVERSARY
MAY 1970 NATIONAL STUDENT
STRIKE and KILLINGS AT KENT
STATE, JACKSON STATE & THE
CHICANO MORATORIUM
Join Us for a Free Webinar
Featuring Event Participants
Songs by Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary
SATURDAY, MAY 9 • 3-5 PM ET
See it by registering HERE
In May 1970, millions of students from at least 884 colleges and high schools took part in the largest national student strike in U.S. history to protest President Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, the killings of students at two universities, and to demand new national priorities as articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Riverside Church one year before his assassination.
Four white students were killed during antiwar protests at Kent State University. Two black students were killed at Jackson State University protesting racially charged intrusions onto their campus. Three Latino demonstrators were killed during the Chicano Moratorium antiwar and social justice march in East Los Angeles that summer.
Join us May 9 to commemorate these events, honor their victims, and reflect on the implications for today.
Four white students were killed during antiwar protests at Kent State University. Two black students were killed at Jackson State University protesting racially charged intrusions onto their campus. Three Latino demonstrators were killed during the Chicano Moratorium antiwar and social justice march in East Los Angeles that summer.
Join us May 9 to commemorate these events, honor their victims, and reflect on the implications for today.
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| Jackson State students in front of women's dormitory damaged by police attack |
PARTICIPANTS
·
Amanda Miller, compiled the interactive
map of the National Student Strike for the University of Washington's "
Mapping American Social Movements" project. (map)
·
Brewster Rhoads, present at Yale
University when the strike was launched and an organizer of the protest that
shut down his school, Williams College.
(article)
·
Alan Canfora, wounded at Kent State
University where National Guard killed four students. (article, website, video)
·
Frank Joyce, a peace activist who was
informed of the Kent State shootings by his hosts while visiting a village in
North Vietnam that had been bombed by the U.S.
·
Gailya Porter, injured during the
racially charged police shooting at Jackson State where two students were
killed, a precursor of Black Lives Matter. (video, article)
·
Guadalupe Cardona, Jorge Rodriguez,
Co-chairs of the Planning Committee, 50th Chicano Moratorium where
two demonstrators and an LA Times journalist were killed by police during a
peace march in Los Angeles. (article , video )
·
Songs by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and
Mary.
·
Moderated by John McAuliff, Vietnam Peace
Commemoration Committee.
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Watch the moving 50th anniversary commemoration at Kent State here. See additional aspects of the observance here. PBS broadcast schedule of Fire in the Heartland documentary here
**********************
ABC Television report on May 9th march in Washington
https://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/student-strike-1970-vietnam-cambodia-kent-state-10075782
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Books
Kent State: Death and
Dissent in the Long Sixties (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War) by Thomas Grace, Adjunct Professor of History,
Erie Community College, wounded as a student at
Kent State
Steeped in the Blood of
Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State
College by Nancy K. Bristow, Professor
of History, University of Puget Sound
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Fifty Years Ago This Spring, Millions of
Students Struck to End the War in Vietnam
Students Struck to End the War in Vietnam
BY STEVE EARLY
The strike brought together a wide range of undergraduates, faculty members, and administrators — despite their past disagreements about on-campus protest activity. Thirty-four college and university presidents sent an open letter to Nixon calling for a speedy end to the war. The strike also united students from private and public colleges and local public high schools in working-class communities. On May 8, in Philadelphia, students from many different backgrounds and neighborhoods marched from five different directions to Independence Hall, where a crowd of one hundred thousand gathered outside. City high school attendance that day dropped to 10 percent, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Hamilton College professor Maurice Isserman, coauthor of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s, believes that it was the more moderate students, those “who were anti-war but turned off by the rhetoric of the late ‘60s New Left” who “emerged as the leading force” in the aftermath of the upsurge. Indeed, many new recruits did gravitate toward anti-war lobbying, petitioning, and electoral campaigning rather than further direct action.
Yet the Scranton Commission viewed the politicization of higher education as a victory for student radicals. According to its later report, “students did not strike against their universities; they succeeded in making their universities strike against national policy.” To prevent that from happening again and get campus life back to normal, the commissioners agreed that “nothing is more important than an end to the war.”…
Universities and high schools are now experiencing a shutdown
of their campuses, albeit of a very different kind. But when these institutions
open back up, conditions will require a new set of political demands. A return
to normal will not be good enough. When school is
back in session, the history of a strike occurring after the shadow of death
fell on campuses fifty years ago, thanks to Richard Nixon, may become more
relevant to challenging “national policy” under the equally toxic Donald Trump.
*************************************
Additional Reading
LA Times Project on the Chicano Moratorium
**************
We Must Not Forget The Jackson State Massacre
Fifty years ago, the police fired into a crowd at the historically black college, killing two.
By Robert Luckett professor of history at Jackson State University New York Times May 14, 2020 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/opinion/Jackson-state-shooting-police.html
*****************
UCSD Student George Winne Burned Himself to Death in Protest of the War – May 10, 1970
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A kaddish for Kent State -- and Jackson State
by Jeffrey Salkin Religion News May 5, 2020
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Four Dead in Ohio
by Frank Joyce Counterpunch May 4, 2020
The enduring challenge to the history and role of the anti-war movement by a webinar panelist who was visiting North Vietnam at the time of Kent State.
The Kent State shootings marked the end of the 1960s, and the beginning of our era of political polarization.
By Richard M. Perloff, Cleveland State University.
May 4, 2020 New York Times Opinion
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Column: Haunting photos from Kent State made me wonder: Where were the black students?
50 Echoes of Protest
Will Bunch column in Philadelphia Inquirer about Kent State May 3, 2020
https://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ODN/PhiladelphiaInquirer/Default.aspx
**********************
50 years later, how should we remember the Kent State massacre?
by Benjamin Ivry Forward.com May 3, 2020
As the 50th anniversary of the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970 approaches, the question arises, what should the Jewish response be today to what was, in some ways, a Jewish tragedy?
Three of the four students fatally shot on May 4, 1970, by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio were Jews: Allison Krause, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and Jeffrey Miller. The fourth victim, non-Jewish, was William Schroeder.
This is a statistical oddity, as in 1970, a student population of about 15,000 at Kent State only included about 750 Jews, or five percent of the total.
https://forward.com/culture/440835/50-years-later-how-should-we-remember-the-kent-state-massacre/
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Sure, Let's Talk About the Vietnam War
By Connie Schultz April 30, 2020
https://www.creators.com/read/connie-schultz/04/20/sure-lets-talk-about-the-vietnam-war
Links to the corona virus crisis from a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University's school of journalism**********************
50 Years Since the Rebellion of May of 1970
**********************Kent State and the War That Never Ended
The deadly episode stood for a bitterly divided era. Did we ever leave it?
April 27, 2020
In Just Months, the Coronavirus Is Killing More Americans Than 20 Years of War in Vietnam
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13 Seconds; 67 Shots
by Jeff Schober Buffalo Tales April 14, 2020
Fifty years ago, these four Western New Yorkers were under fire during the Kent State shootings
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Tragedies 50 years apart affect JSU Class of 1970
JACKSON, Miss. —
Fifty years ago, a tragedy canceled a Jackson State University graduation ceremony. This year, the graduating Class of 1970 was to receive special honors, but this year’s ceremony has been canceled because of COVID-19.
In May 1970, a fatal shooting broke out on the JSU campus, days before graduation.
“I don’t call it a riot. I call it a massacre. It’s obvious that God had to be with us because more students would have been killed and wounded,” said JSU alum James Lap Baker. “James Green was killed on the side of the campus where I was by B.F. Roberts Dining Hall. Phillip Gibbs was shot and killed on the opposite side, that’s where you had most of the students wounded at Alexander Hall.”
Play Video
Several others were wounded in the tragedy witnesses will never forget.
“They removed pellets, shrapnel from my hands, my arms and of course my legs,” said JSU alum Gailya Porter.
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