Now and then: student springs
On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard shot and killed peaceful student protesters. In 13 seconds, soldiers fired 67 rounds killing four students, and wounding nine other.
The images of these killings rocked the country.
The images emerging from over 200 campuses today call upon us to support and protect our young people and their demands for peace and justice. The use of force to silence students is reprehensible. No city or state police should be allowed on to a campus. No National Guard should be called in. History tells us where this leads.
Unless we act now to protect and support the freedom of people to gather and demonstrate against injustice, those in authority will only accelerate their use of violence.
We call upon university authorities to protect the rights of students to protest injustice; to bar all city and state police from campuses, to ensure the well-being of all students; to reinstate those they have expelled; and to take steps to actively engage with students on discussions of university policies and for socially responsible ways of using their resources.
Our history tells us that violence is a quick and frequent response by those who run universities. Our history tells us that young people, not university officials, stand for justice.
Two years before the murders at Kent State, on February 8, 1968, 28 students were injured and three killed in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Most were shot in the back or side by state police while gathered around a bonfire. Cleveland Sellers, a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist, was arrested in his hospital bed for inciting a riot and sentenced to a year of hard labor. The gathering of students had been sparked by the refusal of a local bowling alley to allow access to it by a Black Vietnam War veteran.
Then, as now, the press, police, and university officials lied. They said it was gunfire by students that provoked the response. Then, as now, “outside agitators” were blamed for the violence. Then, as now, those who benefited from injustice, were willing to go to any means necessary to stop students challenging them.
In late May of 1969 the largest National Guard deployment on a college campus happened at North Carolina A & T in Greensboro. Days of demonstrations at several campuses had been kicked off by a disputed high school government election. The National Guard chased students into dorms, opened fire and killed one young man, wounded eight and hurt hundreds. More than 300 students were arrested.
On May 15, 1970, days after Kent State, police opened fire on students of Jackson State University at a demonstration protesting the US invasion of Cambodia, racism, and the repression of dissent on campuses. Two young people were killed, Phillip Gibbs a 21-year-old law student and James Earl Green, a 17-year-old local high school student. Twelve other people were wounded.
These killings by local, state and federally armed forces happened because university presidents invited violence to their campuses. Then, as now, they claimed they were making the campus safe.
In the spring of 1970 Richard Nixon had accelerated the Vietnam War and had begun to bomb Cambodia. In response, the country witnessed the first general student strike in our history as students from over 400 colleges and universities took to the streets, disrupted graduations, staged teach ins and public protests.
Universities today are run by people steeped in protecting the world of wealth and power. They have welcomed military contracts, research grants, and large donations without thought to their consequences.
Today students are challenging the direction and practices of the places they looked to as sources of learning, meaning, and the development of understanding of our shared responsibilities to one another and our planet. These challenges by young people gathered on campuses and street corners, are calling on all of us to choose a path toward peace.