Hell No We Won't Go Campus Protests Panel

The decade of 1965 to 1975 brought with it campus protests that ranged from large to small, peaceful to violent. Student activists protested issues relating to civil rights, race and gender, poverty, and the Vietnam War. During larger protests, students even occupied campus buildings, essentially shutting down parts of the school in an effort to bring about change. While most colleges and universities experienced some level of protests in this era, some in particular encountered larger, more violent movements, including Columbia University; Cornell University; Harvard University; Jackson State University; Kent State University; University of California, Berkeley; University of Georgia; University of Michigan; and University of Texas at Austin. University of California, Berkeley’s protest movements gained ground with the Free Speech Movement starting in 1964. In May of 1965, the first teach-ins at Berkeley attracted around 35,000 participants in 36 hours. The next few years saw continued protest: on October 23, 1968, Berkeley students barricaded themselves in a building to protest the Regents’ refusal to allow Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver to teach a course. By February 1969, California governor Ronald Reagan had declared “a state of extreme emergency” on the UC Berkeley campus. Demonstrations took a tragic turn at Kent State University and Jackson State University in May 1970. On May 4th, around 3,000 demonstrators and 1,000 Ohio National Guardsmen gathered on Kent State’s campus. While it remains unclear if the troops were given an order to shoot, Guardsmen opened fire and 4 students were shot and killed. Dubbed the Kent State Massacre, it inspired 4.35 million students at 1,350 universities to participate in demonstrations in the days that followed. One such protest occurred at Jackson State. Rioting on campus during the night of May 14th brought police to the scene to disperse crowds. As the police approached Alexander Hall, they fired into the building, killing 2 and wounding 12 others. It is also worth pointing out the difference in media attention that these two campus attacks received; Kent State, a predominantly white university, gained significantly more press nationwide than Jackson State, a largely African-American university.