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Student protestors assemble
on May 7, 1970 |
May 1970 was a heady time for students at the University. A few months earlier, President Nixon had announced the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, forcing 150,000 more men into the draft. Then came word May 3 of a clash between Ohio National Guard troops and protesters at Kent State University that left four students dead.
The Kent State killings touched off four days of protests on Grounds, including marches to Carr’s Hill and student occupation of ROTC offices in Maury Hall. The situation escalated May 5, when Yippie leader Jerry Rubin and radical ACLU lawyer William Kunstler spoke at University Hall. "[Kunstler] really could have been charged with inciting to riot," recalls Cullen Couch (Col ’73), then a first-year student.
"The fact that we were rioting at the time was just shocking" for a university not known for its activism, Couch says. "The sense of community was profound. We felt very empowered."
With a weekend looming, University President Edgar F. Shannon Jr. requested additional state police be posted around Grounds. That’s when Charlottesville’s commonwealth’s attorney decided it was time to invoke Virginia’s riot act, under which no more than three people were allowed to gather in any one place.
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State troopers storm the Lawn
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The week of unrest climaxed on Friday evening, May 7. Student protesters massed on the north side of the Rotunda as police in riot gear lined University Avenue. Oddly, the annual Restoration Ball was under way that same night in the Rotunda, and several well-dressed ball-goers strolled past. Then police abruptly charged the demonstrators, who fled around the Rotunda and down the Lawn.
"Burned in my memory is looking back at the line of troopers in black silhouetted against the white of the Rotunda at night," says Couch, who escaped. Others weren’t as lucky; history records 67 arrests that night, including a few ball-goers and a deliveryman bringing pizza to Carr’s Hill.
The crisis abated the next day when Shannon managed to get some of the state troopers withdrawn from Grounds. Two days later, in a speech from the steps of the Rotunda, Shannon declared his opposition to the war. Five thousand people signed his statement and forwarded it to Washington, and the Grounds were again calm.
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