A student wrestles with an officer for control of a baton during a clash between demonstrators and police outside of Woody Hall in January 1970.
“We believe it is urgent that Americans of all convictions draw back from the brink.”
— “Report of the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest”[1]
The first shot fired in the Battle of Woody Hall was a pie to the face. It changed the tone of protest on the SIU campus, giving demonstrations an angry edge. Maybe it was the influence of Lee Weiner, one of the Chicago 7 defendants, who 10 days before, in a speech at SIU Arena, had chastised the student body for being apathetic.[2] Maybe it was the consequence of idealistic young people trying to force their will on a world resistant to change. Maybe it was just inevitable.
“…A long-haired blonde, said to be a close friend of the girl arrested at the police car, stood in the gutter and screamed at a policeman. She was near hysteria, and later friends led her away trembling and unable to speak. Her ski parka was open despite the cool weather.
“Across the street, at the same time, a long-haired brunette wearing blue-tinted granny glasses harangued a policeman, who remained calm and pleasantly chatted in reply. He said he was a SIU student. She asked why he didn’t leave. He asked her the same thing. She said the crowd would leave when the police did. He said the police would leave when the crowd did.
“A young man with longish hair walked down the line of policemen who stood with clubs grasped in both hands. To each, he offered his string of blue love beads. … No one accepted them.”[3]
Lenny Granato doesn’t remember how he learned about trouble at Woody Hall, an administrative office building in the northeast quadrant of the SIU campus, just down the hill from piles of charred bricks from the Old Main fire a year before. Granato does recall being inside the building on January 30, 1970, with Security Office police, then following them outside as they engaged a crowd of up to 500 young people gathered around the steps at an entrance to the building. He wrote the story that appeared the next day in the Daily Egyptian.[4]
John Lopinot chanced across the scene as he crossed the campus between classes. He took up a position near the steps and watched the action through the viewfinder of his camera, which he always carried with him. Lopinot described the scene:
Blood streams down the face of a student injured in a clash with police outside Woody Hall.
“There was a huge crowd there, and some students had gone in and occupied the building or done something to the building. I don’t know if they were trashing it or what they were doing. But they were being escorted out of the building, and on the way out, past the line of police on the steps, one of the students either in the crowd or coming out of the building took a swing at one of the cops. The cops all had helmets on and clubs, and they started swinging at the students. The crowd surged forward, and a couple of people got cracked and bloody heads.”[5]
At the eye of the storm was the Center for Vietnamese Studies and Programs, which had its offices at Woody Hall. The center served the same function at SIU as defense industry recruiters or ROTC buildings did at other college campuses; to anti-war activists, it was a symbol of the university’s unholy collusion in the Vietnam War. SIU had conducted vocational and teaching education in South Vietnam since 1961 under contract with the federal Agency for International Development. In June of 1969, AID awarded the university a five-year, $1 million grant to create a center for the study of Vietnamese language and culture.[6]
Antiwar activists began circling once Wesley R. Fishel was recruited as an adviser to the new program.[7] Fishel had been the director of an AID-funded technical assistance program at Michigan State University during the 1950s that the CIA reputedly had used as a cover for covert operations in South Vietnam.[8] Fishel had helped SIU prepare the grant application; he was hired by SIU for the 1969-70 academic year as a visiting research professor of government.[9]
University officials insisted that the center had a purely scholarly mission, but the presence of it and Fishel attracted anti-war forces like gnats to rotting fruit. There were other issues that contributed to the volatility of the Carbondale campus, but none generated as much heat as the Vietnamese center controversy. Activists were convinced that Fishel had come to SIU to resurrect the Michigan State spy program.
Bob Carr, the Daily Egyptian’s main contact with campus activists, thought they made a good case. “It was confirmation, locally, of what was going on in large part in other parts of the country and the world. It was an easy rallying point. There was always the assumption of nefarious activity, particularly when it was exposed that it was not what it appeared . . . that the university had opened itself up to the Agency for International Development, a CIA front organization.”[10]
Daily Egyptian writer Jim Hodl wasn’t convinced. He was the ying to Carr’s yang at the Daily Egyptian, often presenting the opposing side of the study center controversy in stories and editorials. “For some reason, there were protests that were portraying (Wesley) Fishel as this big monster; when you met him face-to-face, he was your typical drab professor,” Hodl said. “They needed something to talk about, and the Vietnamese study center seemed to be a good thing to protest.”
Granato took classes taught by Fishel and found him to be a knowledgeable and approachable academician. “He could have been a ‘spook’ for all I know. He had that diplomat’s air of confidence and superiority and being on the inside,” Granato recalled. “The people who took his classes tended to be conservatives. I was the skeptic in the class; I did not think it was a good idea we should be in Vietnam. … Radicals picketed his classes and in the final days invaded his classroom in a sit-in to shout him down and prevent him from talking. … He handled being the focal point of antiwar activity in stride. I remember thinking that he was remarkedly cool and controlled about things.”[11]
The trial of Wesley Fishel
The morning before the assault on Woody Hall, an informant alerted the FBI office in Springfield to an action set for noon that day in the University Center cafeteria by members of SDS and SIPC.[12] University security was alerted, and plainclothes officers were in position when a “mock trial” of Fishel took place for alleged crimes against the Vietnamese people. At the trial’s conclusion, a student representing Fishel got a shaving cream pie in the face.
Campus security then swarmed the proceedings and grabbed the person acting as judge. A scuffle ensued between police and up to a dozen protesters; it started inside the cafeteria and migrated outside. More police arrived, and eventually six persons were arrested, all of whom gained immediate notoriety as the “Carbondale 6.” They were identified as two SIU students, two former students and two Carbondale Community High School students.[13] At least three of those arrested had FBI case files due to their involvement with SDS on campus, according to FOIA documents.
The FBI received another tip around noon the following day, January 30, that a “group of about 200 hippies” was on its way to the third floor of Woody Hall where the Vietnamese study center had its offices.[14] H.H. Jacobini, director of the center, heard chanting outside his office and called for help. Negotiations ensued between SIU officials and students for copies of center records. As talks continued into the afternoon, the crowd of young people outside the building grew larger and more restive.[15]D
A student uses a bullhorn to address protesters outside Woody Hall on January 30, 1970.
Granato and Lopinot were still at Woody Hall when the Illinois State Police arrived to support SIU security against what was now a throng of several hundred students surrounding the building, some of whom were throwing tomatoes and apples at helmeted officers guarding the entrances. Students and police engaged in a series of scuffles before both sides agreed to go home after a four-hour confrontation.[16] Police arrested 10 people, mostly on charges of aggravated assault or disorderly conduct. Three officers and an unknown number of students suffered minor injuries.[17]
Granato decided to write the story himself for the next day’s issue of the Daily Egyptian. “For a wire service rewrite man/reporter, it was a piece of cake, but to a student reporter, it was a daunting task.”[18]
Off-AID conference
The next clash over the Vietnamese student center came just three weeks later, and it confirmed SIU President Delyte Morris’s long-held fears about outside forces targeting his campus for radical action.
The FBI got wind of an upcoming protest on Feb. 5, when a source reported that a coalition of SDS and SIPC members were planning a “Midwest Conference on Vietnam” in Carbondale for Feb. 20 and 21. Invitations had been extended to other universities to participate in two days of marches and rallies against the Vietnamese study center. Organizers expected as many as 2,000 people to attend.[19]
In the days leading up to the conference, the Springfield FBI received reports about other schools sending contingents to Carbondale. They included the University of Illinois, Eastern Illinois University, Illinois State University, Northern Illinois University, and Illinois Wesleyan University.[20] The FBI also was warned that a group of students from the University of Illinois intended to blow up the study center with dynamite.[21] (Carbondale police chief Jack Hazel later told the Southern Illinoisan newspaper that a panel truck from Champaign reportedly loaded with explosives had been stopped and searched, but no explosives were found.)[22]
Morris could have been aware of these reports when he defended the study center in a speech to the Herrin Chamber of Commerce two days before the so-called “Off-AID” conference began. He declared that SIU would not do anything for any outside agency, “including the United States government, that is undesirable” or not in the best interest of the university.[23] Dismissing criticism of the center as “distorted” or “fabrications,” Morris warned of a larger agenda at work. “It’s very clear this (center) is a national target for student dissidents to pour in and try to destroy. This matter may be just beginning.”[24]
The start of the conference on Friday, February 20, coincided with a regularly scheduled meeting of the SIU trustees in the second-floor ballroom of the University Center. About 90 minutes into the meeting, an estimated 250 demonstrators approached the room, chanting “Off-AID.” They were allowed past security police on the condition they not be disruptive. A spokesperson presented the board with demands, which included terminating the AID contract for the Vietnamese center, eliminating security files on students and granting amnesty for the “Carbondale 6.”[25] Board Chairman Lindell W. Sturgis, of Metropolis, accepted the statement “as information,” and the board moved onto other business. The demonstrators left the meeting after the board rejected a Student Senate proposal for coeducational study hours – a relaxation of “women’s hours” – in residence halls.[26]
A daylong program of films and speakers took place without incident; not so activities that night. About 300 conference attendees, many not SIU students, left campus around 8 p.m. following a rally in support of the “Chicago 7” defendants, who that week had been found guilty of conspiracy to riot during 1968 Democratic National Convention. The mass of students took a familiar route for protest marches in Carbondale – north on Illinois Avenue (U.S. 51) through the business district and returning via University Avenue to campus. Along the way, store windows in the Campus Shopping Center were shattered by bricks thrown from the crowd. Police cars followed but did not interfere.[27]
Upon returning to the University Center around 9:30 p.m., a fire was started in a trash can, prompting SIU police to clear the building. The ousted students congregated at the entrance, chanting “Kill the pigs.” Rocks and fireworks were thrown at officers, who charged the crowd, which then broke into small groups. Some protesters headed downtown to resume breaking windows. Others fled to the Brush Towers residential complex just east of the main campus, where SIU Security had its offices. That was where Daily Egyptian photographer Ralph Kylloe had a close encounter with a police baton. His camera took the worst of the blow.[28]
“It really infuriated me, and the next day, I called the head of the police department and said, ‘Look, you guys broke my camera.’ … This policeman laid into me like you would not believe. He went on and on and on about how I was just a lowly protester and I had no right to be doing anything and I was out for the destruction of America,” recalled Kylloe, who said he realized that local police were navigating unfamiliar waters. “These were country bumpkin cops who the worst thing they had ever dealt with were parking tickets. For them to be under the stress that they were under, that was not a good thing for them.”[29]
An after-incident report filed with the FBI office in Springfield concurred with newspaper accounts that the trouble was caused by “outsiders” and not SIU students. Windows were shattered at about 20 businesses, in addition to windows broken at the University Center.[30] The FBI also was informed that while the Illinois National Guard had been placed on alert for the conference’s second day, no troops were deployed after a scheduled march and rally were peaceful. For the entire weekend conference, police reported making only two arrests.[31]
Hearts and minds
The day after Friday’s window shattering protest march, President Morris toured the downtown business strip and apologized to Carbondale merchants whose storefronts had been victimized.[32] Property damage was estimated at $15,000, both off-campus and at the University Center. Another $14,000 to $16,000 was estimated as the cost for police overtime, extra SIU security personnel and for activating 149 Illinois National Guard troops for duty in Carbondale.[33]
Divisions created by a month of violent protests over the Vietnamese study center showed up in newspaper editorials and in letters to the editor in both the Daily Egyptian and the Southern Illinoisan, the Carbondale area’s newspaper of record.
“The limits of tolerance must be those of any democratic society – let everyone do his own thing so long as it does not interfere with the rights of others to do theirs,” opined the Southern Illinoisan after the January 30 confrontation at Woody Hall. “Then trust in the supremacy of ideas over force, patience over intolerance, progress over action for action’s sake.”[34]
The Daily Egyptian published no editorials of its own, but it did run signed, student-written opinion pieces. Bob Carr’s editorial page contribution on the opening day of the Off-AID conference argued that the weight of public opinion could ensure the study center’s mission remained purely academic. He wrote: “The only conceivable means for ‘cleaning up’ possible dirty aspects of the center or to move it off campus altogether is to bring public pressure to bear on the university, state and national administrations. It must be done.”[35]
Not all opinions favored protesters.
James Hodl, in an editorial published after the Off-Aid conference, accused the center’s critics of being closed minded. “Center opponents seem to be practicing Charlie McCarthyism, puppeting the dialogue given them to say and never opening their minds to whether there may be more discussion than just opposing the center for the sake of opposing the center.”[36]
Letter writers chimed in from both extremes, finding bias in coverage of the controversy. The Daily Egyptian was knocked in separate, student-written letters published on the same day as being both a stooge of the SIU administration and a mouthpiece for activists.[37] A man from Royalton, Ill., writing to the Southern Illinoisan, likened the Jan. 30 Woody Hall protest to treason, noting that a Viet Cong flag had been seen in the crowd of students. “Now is the time to rid our schools of organized crime. If the police do not have the authority to do this, it is time we gave it to them. It is time to put out an oily rag so that the pigs can rid us of the lice.”[38]
A SIU senior’s letter in the Southern Illinoisan emphasized that local students were not to blame for the Off-AID conference violence. “It was instigated by outsiders and supported by the same,” he wrote. “I ask that you, as residents of Carbondale, not judge your campus students on the basis of those outsiders who I wish were in jail right now!”[39]
The Big Muddy Gazette, an underground newspaper edited by SDS activists, took a different view of the protests. In the opinion of its writers, the Woody Hall violence was a reaction of students to a police attack on peaceful demonstrators.
“How can you restrain yourself when you see your own friends taking blows from those damn clubs?” an anonymous Gazette correspondent wrote in an edition published the week after the Woody Hall incident. “It was pretty clear that not many students expected or wanted violence. There were no helmets, no weapons, no protection of any sort. So, who shows up? Armed pigs!”[40] The Gazette predicted the end of peaceful protests in Carbondale. It advised students to learn self-defense and to dress appropriately for protests: heavy, high-collared shirts and coats; hard shoes or boots; and thick layers of newspaper taped to forearms and shoulders.[41]
Another article edition addressed the SIU administration directly in a piece titled “Whose (SIC) Afraid of SDS?” It was written by George Graham, a well-known SDS leader, who often wrote under the pseudonym “Dirty Old George.” In the article, Graham disputed the notion that SDS was a terrorist organization. “Those who are terrorized most are the administrators who fear that when the people gain power, we will treat them as badly as they have treated us. They may rest at ease. Oppression destroys both the oppressor and the person oppressed. We want no more oppression – of anyone.”[42]
Wayne Markham, the top student editor at the Daily Egyptian in the spring of 1970, said Carbondale and surrounding towns traveled in a different orbit than the university community. “Because of its location in the southern part of the state, I would describe the communities surrounding SIU as being very much pro-war, very conservative. The fact is that students were widely dismissed as a bunch of hippies, scum and stuff like that.”[43]
SIU security reports and FBI communications routinely described campus protesters as “hippies,” which Bob Carr said was a misreading of youth culture. “Hippies weren’t political,” he said. “Hippies were into peace and love and all that, but they weren’t political. The political kids were looking to change a culture, whereas hippies just wanted people to leave them alone to do what they wanted to do. That’s a significant difference that I think a lot of folks in authority didn’t understand at the time.”[44]
The rites of spring
SIU’s student government pressed its demand for coed study hours even as Carbondale merchants were cleaning up the mess left by Off-Aid rock throwers. An estimated 300-400 male students attempted to enter Neely Hall, a women’s dormitory, on February 25 in support of a Student Senate proposal that had been rejected by the board of trustees just days earlier. The student plan would have permitted unsupervised, in-room visitation by a guest of the opposite sex every day of the week; university rules permitted supervised, open-door visitation only on Sundays and during special events or open houses.[45]
The male students were turned away by Dean of Students Wilbur Moulton, but six members of the student government were suspended (temporarily) when they refused to vacate the premises. Among them was student body president Dwight Campbell and vice president Richard Wallace. Student leaders then called for a campuswide strike.[46] Pickets appeared outside major classroom buildings, but students generally ignored them. A “sick-in” of student workers at the university also did not materialize. Student government leaders then bagged further women’s hours protests for the spring quarter, citing a lack of interest.[47] While a bust in one respect, student government’s persistence led Chancellor MacVicar to craft an alternative plan that the trustees did accept: an expansion of “open house” rules to four days a week.[48]
Bringing the war home
“Bring the war home!” had been the slogan of the SDS/Weatherman rally in Chicago in October 1969, the so-called “Days of Rage,” when the Weatherman’s anti-imperialist vanguard fought pitched battles against massed ranks of police.[49] However, an argument could be made that the war actually came home during the spring of 1970. Richard Nixon had been elected president in 1968 with a promise to end the conflict in Southeast Asia, but the light at the end of that tunnel seemed far, far away.
Nixon had ordered the withdrawal of 50,000 American troops from South Vietnam during his first year in office; another 60,000 were scheduled to leave by mid-April 1970. Force levels were at their lowest point since March 1967, but that still left more than 400,000 U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam.[50] War deaths declined about 40 percent in 1969, compared to the previous year, the high tide of the Vietnam War in terms of U.S. casualties. Yet in 1970, American servicemen still were dying at the rate of about 120 per week.[51] War critics were alarmed by U.S. bombing inside Laos, which they feared would widen the war geographically.[52] Most distressing for male college students was a draft lottery for compulsory military service, which began in December 1969.
“Talk of the draft was a daily conversation,” said Steve Brown, a Daily Egyptian staffer in 1970. “When you’re going to school, you’re trying to get a degree. You’re trying to find a career, and you know, for some of you, your life is going to be interrupted in some form.”[53]
Brown was one of three Daily Egyptian staff members to get a number under 100 in that first lottery, which virtually assured induction into the military.[54] The other two were the Jones twins, Nathan and Norris.[55] Brown found a spot in the Illinois National Guard following graduation.[56] The Jones twins enlisted in the Naval Reserves.[57]
Vietnam pushed the envelope of conflict in the spring of 1970, and campuses were the front line. At the University of Illinois, the presence of recruiters for General Electric, a major Pentagon contractor, triggered riots March 2-5. First hundreds, then thousands of students rallied, marched, attacked buildings and fought with police. A total of 750 Illinois National Guard troops were deployed along with 250 Illinois State Police troopers to maintain order. More than 200 people were arrested. An estimated $20,000 in damage was done to campus buildings and to businesses adjacent to U of I.[58]
In late March, FBI field offices learned about protests planned for mid-April by the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, a national coalition of anti-war groups. Demonstrations were to take place at Internal Revenue Service offices to oppose the use of taxes for the war. Protests also were planned for April stockholder meetings of corporations doing business with the Pentagon, such as GE, Boeing, Gulf Oil and Honeywell.[59]
Defense contractors didn’t have headquarters in downstate Illinois, but SIU activists did have a mid-April opportunity to press their campaign against the Vietnamese study center: The SIU trustees were meeting in Carbondale on April 17.
A group of about 60 students and nonstudents appeared at the meeting to renew their objections to the Vietnamese study center; essentially, they wanted to repeat demands the board had ignored in February. Unlike that occasion, when a spokesperson had been allowed to speak, the trustees had the group removed “because the board said they were too noisy and were not on the agenda,” according to the Southern Illinoisan.[60] The newspaper reported that students held up clinched fists and outstretched hands as the board tried to follow its printed agenda. Some students talked; others stamped their feet. “I am not prepared to talk with all this noise in the room,” board member Eugene T. Simmonds complained. “I don’t know what these idiots are doing here.”[61]
Following their ejection, as many as two dozen protesters walked to the headquarters of the Air Force ROTC unit in a nearby academic building, Wheeler Hall. This group entered the ROTC area, which consisted of classroom and office space, “and proceeded to smash windows and displays with rocks, sticks and umbrellas,” according to a report by the ROTC unit’s commander to the Office of Special Investigations at Chanute Air Force Base near Rantoul, Illinois. Campus police arrested two people for destruction of university property, both identified as nonstudent SDS members. A third person, student body vice president Richard Wallace, was questioned but not arrested. Wallace, as well as one of those arrested, had been among 19 SIU students previously identified in an OSI communique as being a member of or sympathetic to the SDS.[62]
“There was a lot of anger about ROTC being on campus,” Wayne Markham recalled. “For some reason, that became like the litmus test: If the university was going to have that program, it should not be part of the campus setting; it should not be supported by student activity fees; the administration shouldn’t provide space, blah, blah, blah.”
May Fest was stopped by a court injunction a week before its scheduled beginning.
As the month of May approached, there were two items on the FBI watch list involving Carbondale. One was an “All-American Day” parade set for May 2, which the bureau was told might include “hippies,” “Yippies,” anti-war activists and SDS members in the line of march for what was supposed to be a display of patriotism. The other was an outdoor rock concert scheduled for May 8-10 in Jackson County near Carbondale, which local authorities feared might allow “these same elements” to contribute to “confusion and mob scenes and confrontations.”[63] Neither worry materialized. The parade took place without serious incident, even with the participation of Carbondale’s counterculture.[64] The rock concert was squashed by a Circuit Court judge who issued a permanent injunction against it on May 1.[65]
The FBI wasn’t aware that the real threat to domestic tranquility that spring resided in the White House, where President Richard Nixon had prepared a surprise for the nation. In order to end the war in Vietnam, the president announced in a televised address on April 30, he was sending thousands of U.S. troops into Cambodia to destroy enemy bases and supply lines.[66] The action would trigger a student revolt that a national commission later would say had brought the country “to the edge of chaos.”[67]
It also would test the reporting plan that Lenny Granato and Harry Hix had been devising since the January incident at Woody Hall. “We’d been caught on the hop by Woody Hall, and I strongly urged that we could not afford to sit back and try to react to events,” Granato said.[68] Hix agreed: “There were enough of these lesser incidents to indicate a couple of things to us. Number 1, there is the potential for something much bigger to happen at this campus. … Secondly, even these smaller things, if we are going to cover them well, we need to be organized and ready for it.”[69]
NEXT: Seven Days in May
[1] “The Report of the Commission on Campus Unrest,” reprinted in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 October 1970..
[2] “Hoffman, Weiner, visit SIU, rap trail, fest, judiciary,” Daily Egyptian, 20 January 1970.
[3] “Police clash at Woody,” Daily Egyptian, 31 January 1969.
[4] Lenny Granato, interview by author, electronic mail, Carbondale, Illinois, August 24, 2002 to January 28, 2003.
[5] John Lopinot, interview by author, by telephone, 13 September 2003..
[6] Agency for International Development, grant approval notification, n.a., June 30, 1969, Busch Collection.
[7] Larry D. Lagow, “A History of the Center for Vietnamese Studies at Southern Illinois University, 1969-1976,” (Ph.D. diss, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1977).
[8] Heineman, 136-137.
[9] Newsletter, Center for Vietnamese Studies and Programs, September 15, 1969, Busch Collection.
[10] Bob Carr, interview by author, September 2002.
[11] Granato, interview.
[12] Author unknown, teletype from Springfield FBI to FBI director, with copies to U.S. Secret Service and other Justice Department and military intelligence agencies, 30 January 1970. Freedom of Information Act request No. 0991941.
[13] “Six arrested in fracas at Center; trial set Feb. 26,” Daily Egyptian, 30 January 1970.
[14] Op cit.
[15] “10 face charges in SIU disorders,” Southern Illinoisan, 1 February 1970.
[16] “Police, Students,” Daily Egyptian.
[17] Op cit.
[18] Granato, interview
[19] Vietnam Moratorium Committee, Special Agent in Charge, Springfield, Illinois, to FBI Director, 14 February 1970, Freedom of Information Act request No. 0991941.
[20] Op cit.
[21] Special Agent in Charge, Springfield, to FBI Director, airmail, Internal Security – Bombing matter, 20 February 1970. Freedom of Information Act request No. 0991941.
[22] “Molotov cocktails thrown on campus,” Southern Illinoisan, 22 February 1970.
[23] “Morris tells center’s role,” Southern Illinoisan, 18 February 1970.
[24] Ibid.
[25] “ ‘Off AID,’ demonstrators demand,” Southern Illinoisan, 20 February 1970.
[26] “Rally voices opposition to Viet Center, AID,” Daily Egyptian, 21 February 1970.
[27] “Bricks, smashed windows; Friday’s protest aftermath,” Daily Egyptian, 21 February 1970.
[28] ibid
[29] Kylloe interview.
[30] Special agent in charge, Springfield, to FBI Director, teletype, marked “urgent,” 21 February 1970, Freedom of Information Act request No. 0991941.
[31] Author unknown, Springfield FBI, to FBI Director, teletype, 22 February 1970, Freedom of Information Act request No. 0991941.
[32] “Molotov cocktails thrown on campus,” Southern Illinoisan, 22 February 1970.
[33] “Policing cost $14,000-plus,” Southern Illinoisan, 26 Feb. 1970.
[34] “The SIU confrontation,”Southern Illinoisan,” 3 February 1970.
[35] “Public opinion must clean up center,” Daily Egyptian, 20 February 1970.
[36] “Author defends Viet Center stories,” Daily Egyptian, 24 February 1970.
[37] “Egyptian not voice of students, knocked for bias,” and “Charge bias, censorship,” Daily Egyptian, 24 February 1970.
[38] “Entire left besieges Center,” Southern Illinoisan,” 10 March 1970.
[39] “Doesn’t want SIU called riotous,” Southern Illinoisan, 1 March 1970.
[40] “Revolt,” Big Muddy Gazette, February 1970.
[41] “defense-offense,” Big Muddy Gazette, February 1970.
[42] “Who’s Afraid of SDS,” George Graham, Big Muddy Gazette, February 1970.
[43] Wayne Markham, interview, by telephone, 29 March 2004.
[44] Carr, interview.
[45] “SIU experiencing parental pangs over coed hours issue,” Southern Illinoisan, Feb. 25, 1970.
[46] “Campbell, 5 others are suspended by Moulton,” Daily Egyptian, Feb. 26, 1970.
[47] “Massive strike apparent failure; petitions circulate,” Daily Egyptian, March 3, 1970.
[48] “SIU experiencing parental pangs over coed hours issue,” Southern Illinoisan, Feb. 25, 1970.
[49] For a critical analysis of the “Days of Rage,” see Todd Gitlin, “Years of Hope, Days of Rage,” revised trade edition, New York, Bantam Books, 1993, p. 391-398.
[50] “U.S. troop withdrawal completes first phase.” Southern Illinoisan, Feb. 1, 1970
[51] Vietnam Conflict Extract Data Files,” National Archives, https://catalog.archives.gov, accessed May 20, 2019. War deaths for selected years: 1968, 16,899; 1969, 11,780; and 1970, 6,173.
[52] “Laird: Laos policy unchanged,” Southern Illinoisan, Feb. 26, 1970.
[53] Steve Brown, interview by author, in person, 27 February 2003.
[54] The Vietnam Lotteries, Selective Service System website, www.sss.gov, accessed Sept. 4, 2019. The first Vietnam War draft lottery took place on Dec. 1, 1969, for males born between 1944 and 1950. Those who received numbers of 195 or below were subject to induction in 1970, provided they were not already in military service or did not qualify for an exemption.
[55] Nathan Jones, interview, by telephone, 27 September 2003.
[56] Brown, interview.
[57] Jones, op cit.
[58] “Demonstrations at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, protesting recruitment by General Electric Company, March 2-5, 1970,” author unknown, Springfield FBI, letterhead memo, 10 March 1970, Freedom of Information Act request No. 0991941.
[59] “Demonstrations April, 1970, to protest war taxes and the production of war material by corporations,” author unknown, letterhead memo, March 24, 1970, Freedom of Information Act request No. 0991941.
[60] “2 held in ROTC incident,” the Southern Illinoisan, April 17, 1970.
[61] “SIU board ejects protesters,” the Southern Illinoisan, April 17, 1970.
[62] “Student Agitation,” Southern Illinois University,” author unknown, FBI letterhead memo, April 23, 1970, Freedom of Information Act request No. 0991941.
[63] STAG (student agitation), Special Agent in Charge, Springfield, to FBI Director, airtel, May 25, 1970. Freedom of Information Act request No. 0991941.
[64] “Parade for America,” the Southern Illinoisan, May 3, 1970.
[65] “Court blocks rock fest,” the Southern Illinoisan, May 3, 1970.
[66] “8,000 troops go into Cambodia,” the Southern Illinoisan, May 1, 1970.
[67] The Report of the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest,” reprinted in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 October 1970.
[68] Granato, interview.
[69] Harry Hix, interview by author, via telephone, 20 September 2002.
The edge of chaos 