Today marks 56 years since the notorious Kent State shootings that left four unarmed college students dead at the hands of the Ohio National Guard while protesting operations in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. It was a boiling point for intranational tensions in a turbulent time of civil rights struggles, antiwar sentiment, and a skyrocketing distrust towards authority.
As footage of frightened, wounded, and killed students spread across America, the imagery carried with it the same bleak message as the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr., Sharon Tate, or Meredith Hunter: the sixties were over. Peace and love had failed. In the words of Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, “we blew it.”
While the shootings at Kent University were a watershed moment in American counterculture that inspired many protests in reaction to the campus tragedy, it had originally been one of several demonstrations in reaction to President Richard Nixon’s announcement on April 30th, 1970, that he would be invading Cambodia, rather than keeping his promise to end the conflict in Southeast Asia. Following Nixon’s announcement, protests spread across the country from Seattle to Cincinnati to Princeton.
One of these displays of activism took place at the University of Maryland. In March 1970, UMD student activists took over a building in response to two beloved professors being denied tenure. 87 students were arrested, inciting the formation of a student-faculty solidarity group.
The activists rallied beginning on May 1st to protest the invasion of Cambodia. After the May 4th Kent shootings, protesters aimed their outrage at the authorities for violating the civil rights of American students. It wasn’t long before Governor Marvin Mandel sent the National Guard and Maryland State Police to intervene.
At the UNT Libraries Special Collections, our Bell Helicopter Records collection contains a large compilation of Maryland State authorities utilizing Bell helicopters for medical evacuations, fires, car accidents, train derailments, and other emergencies.
Tucked away in the 16mm footage is about a minute-long clip of the state police clashing with the student protesters on the University of Maryland campus.
View the edited clip on the UNT Special Collections channel “Archive Rewind” here: State Police and Protesters Clash at University of Maryland, May 1970 (Bell Helicopter Records)
Protests continued across the country to demonstrate solidarity with the students that lost their lives at Kent State University at the hands of American law enforcement. Marches and strikes took place at campuses including Ohio University, Wesleyan, University of Virginia, Yale, University of Texas at Austin, and here at North Texas.
On May 9th, 1970, tens of thousands of protesters marched on Washington to let President Nixon know that they the American youth would not tolerate authoritarian violence overseas or on their campuses.
Over 50 years later, it is hard not to find disturbing parallels to our current political climate rife with tensions both foreign and domestic. Promises of peace have devolved into declarations of war. Speech and education feel under attack. The American Dream seems more like a Silicon Valley Deepfake. But fear not. The actions in Maryland, Kent State, and many other college campuses should be a reminder that everyone has a voice and the right to wield it for the cause they deem worthy. The sixties are long over, but peace and love are evergreen. As long as truth, solidarity, courage, and justice prevail, we didn’t blow it yet.
