New York's Columbia University had descended into civil war over issues related to both the Vietnam War and civil rights.
For eight days, two different protest groups — one rebelling against Columbia's plans for a segregated gym and its encroachment into Harlem, the other against Columbia's recently revealed connections to a Department of Defense-affiliated weapons think tank — battled with both student counter-protestors and the police, who eventually moved in with tear gas to put an end to this round of demonstrations.
Tragedy struck again at a domestic level in May 1970. Early that month, Kent State University students congregated to protest President Nixon’s recent expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. The protests brought thousands of people to the Ohio university campus, as well as the National Guard.
After days of demonstrations, dozens of National Guard members would open fire on demonstrators, killing four students and wounding nine.
In court, guard members said they shot out of fear for their lives. Of the four students killed that day, the closest stood 225 feet away from the guards. Two were walking to class.
In response to the Kent State shootings, students around the country participated in a nationwide campus protest. According to a National Student Association spokesman, students from more than 300 campuses boycotted classes in early May 1970.
In California, demonstrations grew so raucous that then-governor Ronald Reagan shut down the entire California university system for a week.
1. Photo of clashes.
Bettmann/Contributor via Getty Images
2. Kent State Massacre
Wikimedia.
3. An anti-war demonstrator at the University of California, Berkeley throws a tear gas canister at police.
Bettmann/Contributor via Getty Images.
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Ms. Que Banh
