"This Summer I Feel the Drumming"
Sprio is our hero was a bold statement just a few months after massive anti-government protests rocked NC State and the entire nation. But the campus, and the country, remained divided about the war even while news of a massacre at My Lai was becoming common knowledge.
“Students no longer see their educational experiences limited to four years and confined to the four walls of a classroom, but rather an evolving process that encompasses every day to day experience.”
-Cathy Sterling, August 24, 1970
In late May 1970 two students were killed at Jackson College during a Vietnam War protest. There were almost no events of protest on NC State’s campus, nor many other universities across the country. Had anti-war activism expended itself? Probably not. Instead, most of the critical mass energy released by the Kent State protests was now being re-routed. Aggressive, reactionary protests, though common in larger liberal schools, were no longer a recurring event at NC State. Now, the most common scene were Peace Retreat meetings, large Convocation discussions and arguments in the school newspaper. The energies released after the Kent State protests were being re-directed, with important results.
Following the summer break, students returned to NC State, and many continued protests against the Vietnam War. Yet America’s war in Vietnam was changing, largely thanks to the massive protests which swept the country. Throughout 1970, President Nixon began lowering the number of soldiers in Vietnam by over 100,000. The war which had been killing 200 American soldiers a day in May 1970 were down to just 35 deaths a day in May 1971. A protest in Washington DC involved more than 200,000 civilians. Worst, in late 1970 rumors began to spread about a massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. soldiers. News of My Lai was getting out.
The energies awakened from the Kent State shootings were still with the collegial populace. In October 1970 Vice President Spiro Agnew visited NC State. He was met by a crowd of 7,000 split fairly evenly between supporters and protestors. A massive sign draped on the coliseum wall stated support for “Spiro our hero” while protestors brought swastikas with Agnew’s name on them. Yet the protestors were never violent or aggressive towards the Vice President. This was a lesson learned from earlier events—Kent State’s protestors threw bricks and were damned by some for it.
Since the Technician was the best way to get word of protests and their ilk out, Sterling made it a priority of the Student Government that all students have access to the newspaper. One particular event gained cross campus attention. In January 1971, anti-war activists threatened to burn a puppy on the brickyard. Hundreds arrived to damn the exercise and were relieved when the activists only poured an inflammable liquid on the dog. The activist then questioned the crowd: “You are so concerned about the possibility of burning a dog. Why are you not protesting the fact of American violence in Indochina?”
For the remainder of the Vietnam War there were anti-war protests on NC State. An anti-war organization announced in 1972 that its membership had tripled since May 1970. What caused the change on the campus and among protestors? Why was May 1970 so important? The Vietnam War was already quite unpopular by the beginning of the seventies, thanks to government lies, the Draft, and the unfortunate coinciding of war with large scale racial strife dating back the 1930s. Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 by promising to end the war. A full year after his inauguration nothing had changed in the war. Therefore, the announcement of an invasion of Cambodia on April 31 seemed a terrible lie. Instead of ending the war, Nixon was expanding the conflict. While students—already furious over the war—protested Cambodia, news of the Kent State shootings ignited fears of the war reaching onto their campuses. If students in Ohio could be killed over the Vietnam War, they could be killed anywhere.
NC State itself reacted more intellectually than other universities in the area. Partially this was because of the long conservative history of the campus; unlike UNC and Duke which shut down completely after Kent State, NC State remained open for the remainder of the semester. An important reason the school was not closed was because there were too many business-minded or conservative students on campus. They would not have put up with a school closure. Instead, a compromise was reached wherein those who wanted to, could engage in events protesting the war and examining their role as citizens in American society. All of this remained part of the 1960s revolution on campus when the school changed from a college to a university, gaining a liberal arts program, doubling its size and bringing in large numbers of black students. The expansion into a university continued throughout the 1970s as NC State students took a more activistic stance on issues such as poverty, world hunger, the Cold War and of course, foreign military ventures.
The May 1970 protests may not have opened a new paradigm for NC State’s students, but the march on Raleigh and Peace Retreat were part of a major transformation on campus and an excellent litmus test for what the changes meant for the university and its future.