Fifty Years Ago This Spring, Millions of Students Struck to End the War in Vietnam
In May 1970, 4 million students went on strike across the country, shutting down classes at hundreds of colleges, universities, and high schools and demanding an end to the Vietnam War. Fifty years later, their rebellion remains an inspiration, as radical student politics is back on the agenda.
Following the May 4, 1970 shooting of students at Kent State University, students at UNM took over the student union building. Steven Clevenger / Corbis
President Richard Nixon prided himself on the accuracy of his political prognostication. He was never more prescient than in a remark made fifty years ago this month to his secretary, just before delivering a White House address that announced a US military invasion of Cambodia. “It’s possible,” Nixon told her, “that the campuses are really going to blow up after this speech.”
Blow up they did, as Nixon’s unexpected escalation of an already unpopular war in Vietnam triggered a chain of events culminating in the largest student strike in US history.
In May 1970, an estimated 4 million young people joined protests that shut down classes at seven hundred colleges, universities, and high schools around the country. Dozens were forced to remain closed for the rest of the spring semester.
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