Protest!
By William B. Crawley, Jr.
William B. Crawley, Jr., historian of the University of Mary Washington and distinguished professor of history, is writing a history of the institution’s first 100 years. The book will be published in conjunction with the 2008 Centennial Celebration. Between now and then, UMW TODAY will publish excerpts from the book. This issue’s excerpt is about the effect of the Vietnam War on the Mary Washington campus.
At no time in the history of Mary Washington did the behavior of its student body change so significantly or so abruptly as at the end of the 1960s, as students moved from purely insular concerns toward involvement in a variety of political and social issues beyond the campus. With stunning speed, the blasé attitudes of the past vanished, as disinterest turned dramatically to activism. The primary catalyst at Mary Washington, as on campuses across the country, was the Vietnam War.
At a college that lacked male students until the 1970s, and that did not have such antiwar irritants as ROTC units or government-military research contracts, concern about the war might have been expected to be less than at larger coeducational research institutions. Yet, there were several factors that led to unusual intensity of interest in the Vietnam conflict among MWC students. For one thing, many students came from Northern Virginia – an area that had extensive governmental ties, either political or military – and were thus reared in an environment of heightened sensitivity to issues of foreign involvement; a significant number came from families who were either in the military or were civil servants.
More important, again as a function of the college’s location, there was the U.S. Marine Corps connection. Located only 20 miles from Quantico, Mary Washington with its more than 2,000 female students was an alluring source of dates for the young officers being trained there. In the 1960s particularly, formal social events on campus were notable for the grandeur of the young men in their spiffy dress uniforms. On a weekly basis it was the Marines who supplied many of the dates for Mary Washington girls, leading to relationships that often eventuated in engagements and ultimately marriage.
But the Vietnam War cast a pall over this felicitous arrangement – sometimes in an all-too-literal sense. This was because, in a war in which the Marines played an extensive combat role, the young officers who were often in the forefront of battles were the very men who had trained at Quantico. As the conflict became protracted, and the casualty lists mounted, the grim reality of it too often came home to Mary Washington in a personal way, as word arrived that boyfriends or fiancés had been wounded, or worse.
The president of the class of 1968, Pamela Tompkins Huggins, poignantly recalled, more than 30 years later, the trauma of those days:
Even girls who didn’t date or become seriously involved with a Marine could not escape the very personal toll that time exacted from all of us.…It became an ever-present cloud on our minds and hearts. In those days, we didn’t have cell phones or personal lines in the rooms, so we all shared hall phones. One of my most vivid memories of my senior year is sitting around gabbing in one of our rooms at night and upon hearing the phone ring down the hall, we would all sort of freeze and stare at each other. Calls at odd hours were rarely good news. I particularly remember one time after we had had several very bad-news calls, when the phone rang, one of the girls jumped up and said, “Let me answer it. I don’t think anyone I really love is over there right now.”
So it was that the war, to many Mary Washington students, was not an abstraction. And when they began to protest against it, their actions often came not just from an ideological position, but from anguished personal experience.
At Mary Washington, as on most American campuses, opposition to the war developed gradually. In the early stages, most MWC students supported the war, apparently accepting the prevailing notion that it was a necessary measure in defense of American ideals against the perils of communist encroachment.
Then there was the personal aspect. As one student recalled, “So many women were dating Marines that just about every dorm room had a map of Vietnam. We had luaus for the girls who were going to Hawaii to meet their boyfriends for R & R.…We weren’t necessarily pro-war. But we were pro-Marines.” Or, as another remembered the era, “I wouldn’t say we were ‘hawks,’ but most of us didn’t relate to the hippy protesters or draft dodgers, as we were raised to be ‘patriotic’ and desperately wanted to believe that all of this loss was for a higher cause.”
Yet, signs of increasing concern about the war began to appear, including a protest against campus recruiters from Dow Chemical, the manufacturer of napalm, who were exhorted by students to “Make Saran Wrap, Not War.” Threatened protests against area visits by the director of the Selective Service, General Lewis Hershey, and by First Lady Pat Nixon were cancelled in order to preclude potentially ugly confrontations.
By the fall of 1969, student opposition to the war nationwide resulted in a call for a Vietnam Moratorium that would include cancellation of all classes on Wednesday, Oct. 15. In light of Virginia Gov. Mills Godwin’s declaration that he would not allow such disruptions at state-supported schools, the MWC administration declined to cancel classes officially, but around campus there was considerable evidence of antiwar sentiment. A letter to the editor of The Bullet, for example, was signed by 28 faculty members who endorsed the objectives of the Moratorium and urged “the college community to observe the day in an appropriate manner.”
The Bullet itself suggested what that “appropriate manner” might be. The Moratorium, it counseled, should be “a very peaceful affair,” advising,
We can all wear black armbands to class. Or, if black armbands have an unsavory connotation, there are neat little blue badges to display in place of fraternity pins. We don’t have to picket or rally in the streets or face National Guard bayonets. We don’t have to say anything. Our parents will never know. We can just appear en masse on Wednesday with our little blue badges.…We will all be a part of the grand coalition of students for peace, a faith-restoring example of participatory democracy in action.
The response included, besides the wearing of badges and armbands, a faculty panel discussion in the afternoon and a candlelight service that evening in Ball Circle, replete with poetry readings and songs for peace. Participation in the protest, even in so benign a fashion, was unprecedented at Mary Washington; yet that activism proved to be but a prelude to the antiwar tumult that swept the campus the following spring. The flashpoint was the May 4th killing by Ohio National Guardsmen of four Kent State University students who had been protesting President Richard Nixon’s expansion of the war into Cambodia.
It is certain that Mary Washington College had never witnessed anything remotely like the May antiwar protest that followed. Events occurred so rapidly and on so many fronts that The Bullet resorted to printing mimeographed “special editions” in an effort to keep students apprised of developments.
The organization of the protest efforts began with two meetings of the student body on May 4 – the first, attended by an estimated 250 students and faculty in Lee Ballroom at 9 p.m., and the second, held in Ball Circle at 11 p.m., with approximately twice that many present. Out of these meetings a Strike Committee was formed, headed by senior Susan Randolph, with student coordinators assigned to handle various areas including community relations, picketing, fund raising, and legal matters.
As at many other colleges, there was a movement to have students in essence “shut down” the institution by boycotting classes. Urging the crowd in Ball Circle to consider such a tactic, Strike Chairman Randolph put the matter forcefully: “This is your chance. I’m not telling you to boycott classes – that’s up to you. But.…if we all sit in the dorms on our little fannies we won’t accomplish a goddamn thing.”
Though, as it turned out, there was no general strike, the normal campus routine was disrupted during the first weeks of May by an extraordinary variety of activities related to antiwar efforts: a memorial service for the Kent State students was held on Ball Circle, professors frequently devoted their classes to discussion of the Vietnam War, and several faculty forums addressed the East Asian situation.
A number of prominent antiwar activists spoke on campus, among them Arthur Waskow, author of From Race Riots to Sit-Ins. Speaking to a capacity crowd in Lee Ballroom, Waskow declared, “We are now at a crossroads in human history.…This is going to be a turning point for the future of the world. We must turn back from the road of self-destruction.” A bloodbath could be averted, he said, “if millions of us are together and [are] clear about what we want.”
Addressing the same audience, religion professor Burton Cooper, one of the most outspoken faculty members on the issue, sounded a similarly apocalyptic note. Asserting that the solution to the current crisis was creation of a society based on principles of human love, Cooper proclaimed, to a standing ovation, that “we had better start loving, or – to quote James Baldwin– there will be a ‘fire next time.’ ”
A group of students traveled to Charlottesville to participate in antiwar activities at the University of Virginia, whose grounds were also seething with protest. A particular attraction was the appearance by two high-profile activists, William Kunstler, a longtime radical gadfly; and Jerry Rubin, who had gained notoriety as one of the “Chicago Seven.” To a tumultuous University Hall crowd, estimated at 7,000, Kunstler declared: “Every institution that can be shut down must be shut down. [Our] fists have to be clenched and in the air, and if we ever have the power to open them again,” he warned, “I hope it is in friendship and not around the trigger of a rifle.”
Among MWC students, the peace movement culminated with a march to Washington D.C., to participate in a massive demonstration on the weekend following the Kent State incident. Aided by donations collected at a special amphitheatre concert, approximately 80 students left campus at 8 a.m. Friday to begin their trek up U.S. 1. As described by the local newspaper, the group departed with “bed rolls strapped to their backs, wearing what has come to be the regulation attire of the antiwar advocates – jeans, Army fatigue jackets, hats or bandanas, and heavy walking shoes,” and carrying with them such items as bug spray, suntan lotion, Band-aids, and blister medication.
Declining offers of transportation along the way, most continued mainly on foot, arriving by evening at the Alexandria home of a movement sympathizer who invited the Mary Washington entourage to spend the night on her lawn. Early the next morning, the polite protesters, having taken care to clean up all their litter, decamped for Memorial Bridge, where they were joined by other students and faculty, bringing the MWC contingent to approximately 150. From there they walked in a group to the Ellipse, where they joined other demonstrators from colleges across the country. Most stayed until late afternoon before returning to Fredericksburg. The Washington march was the last notable antiwar activity by MWC students.
In retrospect, the period of antiwar protest appears as a tableau of academe in a troubled time: students – many of them acting from a heartfelt desire to end a war they believed unjust and immoral; others acting from the mere impetuosity of youth, motivated by no compelling ideology – confronting an establishment that had never witnessed, and could not fathom, student behavior so aggressive, so confrontational, so.…rude. For a while, the worst on each side was on display.
With the end of the semester, the celebration of commencement, and the coming of summer vacation, emotions cooled. When classes resumed in the fall of 1970, student life on campus had returned more or less to normal. But not quite. A residue of unrest remained, continuing – however subtly – to influence the ambience of the campus. From time to time, antiwar protests of varying types and sizes emerged, and The Bullet persisted in its opposition. “Sooner or later, the United States is going to lose this war,” the paper declared in April 1971. “There is no longer a question of victory.…There is no reason why American troops must continue to be killed and wounded while the nation continues to play a foolish and deadly waiting game.”
As it turned out, the antiwar movement had crested with the demonstration in May of 1970. But things would not quite be the same again. Although complex factors were at work – not just the antiwar protests – any effort to explain the evolution of the college cannot ignore those turbulent spring weeks. May days of a very different kind indeed.
