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A House Divided
By: Brett Hoover, HepsTrack.com
Forty years ago this morning, clean-cut former Eagle Scout William Schroeder
-- with a notebook in hand -- was walking to class when a shot from
an M-1 rifle, 125 yards away, tore into his back, pierced his lung and exited
his shoulder. Rushed to the hospital, all live-saving attempts failed and the
high school basketball and track standout was dead at the age of 19.
He didn't go alone that day. Three other unarmed students -- none
who had yet turned 21 -- were shot and killed at Kent State University
by the Ohio National Guard, placed there by a governor running for the U.S.
Senate on a "law-and-order" platform.
It was a defining and desperate moment for a generation of young people. Just
two years before the hopeful voices of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy
had been silenced by assassins' bullets. Kids with whom they'd grown
up were being cut down in a faraway land for reasons they couldn't understand.
Now, the warmth and comfort of the college campus was giving way to government-issued
gunfire.
Neither before nor since the spring of 1970 has there been such a striking contrast
in the venerable institutions of the Ivy League and the U.S. military academies,
which made up the Heptagonal Games at the time.
A simple glance would have yielded no obvious change at the academies, but upon
closer inspection inside Memorial Hall in Annapolis, for example, newly-framed
photos of the graduates killed in Vietnam were displayed on large easels. Plebes
would be shocked the first time they would witness hardened seniors staring
at the images with tears streaming down their faces.
Even a quick scan of the Ivy-covered campuses gave an appearance unlike before.
Rebellion carried the day. The previous spring in Ithaca, for example, there
had been an armed takeover of a campus building by black students which resulted
in the cancellation of exams.
But by 1970, the atmosphere had grown even more tense. The anti-war movement
-- already growing stronger -- was getting added fuel from more radicalized
factions. At the same time, race relations were coming to a boil as the government
was working overtime to squash the black power movement by waging war with the
Black Panthers. Government distrust, especially at America's colleges
and universities, was at an all-time high.
Yale President Kingman Brewster shocked the establishment in late April when
he issued a personal statement to the school's faculty regarding an upcoming
Panther trial in New Haven. "I am skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries
to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the United States," he said. "In
large part, the atmosphere has been created by police actions and prosecutions."
While many state and national officials were condemning Brewster's declaration,
President Richard M. Nixon, reportedly for the fourth time in the month, was
screening the film Patton which featured George C. Scott's award-winning
portrayal of controversial Gen. George S. Patton. The following day, in one
of his "go-for-broke" moments, Nixon elected to send troops into
Cambodia, a sovereign country that he had been covertly bombing for a year.
Nixon's efforts to keep the Cambodia incursion quiet didn't work
and within days he addressed a national audience on television, not only confirming
the mission into Cambodia, but adding that "even here in the United States,
great universities are being systematically destroyed."
The following morning, May 1st, Princeton President Robert Goheen issued his
own statement:
"President Nixon's announcement of the decision to extend U.S. military
efforts in Cambodia has shocked and alarmed a great many of us in Princeton.
A large proportion of the University community shares, as I do, deep dismay
-- almost a feeling of betrayal -- over this decision and wishes to
make clear its response to an action that affects us in such important ways.
"The collective expression of sentiment against President Nixon's
action and against the war, represented in the strike action called for last
night, is consonant with the views held by many of us. I sympathize with that
action, so long as the proposed strike is not coercive and does not for an extended
period of time interfere with the basic educational commitments that involve
us all."
While those sentiments were being shared on other campuses, two in particular
were on the brink of riot. On the "Strip" in Kent, as bars let out
that night a spontaneous anti-war rally broke out in the streets. Windows were
broken, a bonfire began. The stage was unknowingly being set for the events
of May 4.
And at Brewster's stately Yale, tanks were taking up positions along the
streets of New Haven as an organized May Day rally in support of the Black Panthers
was scheduled. Although tensions were high, the rally was peaceful. But late
that evening, bombs ripped through the school's hockey rink, blowing out
glass windows and cracking an arch in the ceiling.
While things would ease in New Haven over the weekend, Ohio Governor James Rhodes
sent his National Guard to Kent. Taking time to call the protestors "the
worst type of people we harbor in America, worse than the brown shirts and the
communist element," he also stirred tensions by claiming that he would
'use whatever force necessary to drive them out of Kent!'"
Forty years ago this morning, his Guardsmen, with bayonets affixed to their
rifles, opened fire with unnecessary force. It was Monday morning. Outdoor Heps
was slated for Saturday. In New Haven.
To read the rest of Brett Hoover's fascinating five-part piece on Outdoor Heps
'70, please click here.
