Title: History Has Good News for Today's Student Protesters | Time
Headings: History Has Good News for Today's Student Protesters
History Has Good News for Today's Student Protesters
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Content: History Has Good News for Today's Student Protesters | Time
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History Has Good News for Today's Student Protesters
History Has Good News for Today's Student Protesters
The May 18, 1970, cover of TIME
Cover Credit: MICHAEL ABRAMSON
By Lily Rothman
November 10, 2015 2:37 PM EST
I n recent days, as protests over racial issues at the University of Missouri have resulted in the resignation of university president Tim Wolfe, and as thousands of Yale students organized a march in response to racial divisions on their own campus, it’s been easy to compare this latest wave of campus activism with previous such moments in American history. The anti-war demonstrations that swept the nation during the late 1960s and ’70s remain perhaps the most famous moment of American student activism—and, if the comparison holds, they provide at least one reason for today’s activists to be optimistic about the larger implications of their visibility. In 1970, TIME featured the student protests in a cover story at one of the most volatile moments of the anti-war movement. The Kent State shootings had only just occurred, sparking a national outcry among students, and there could no longer be any doubt that something noteworthy was happening on America’s campuses. By TIME’s count, 441 colleges and universities across the country were affected by post-Kent State protests, and some of them shut down entirely. At the largely conservative University of Nebraska, students occupied the school’s ROTC headquarters. At Duke Law School, Nixon’s portrait was removed from the wall and put in storage. At Yale, students wore suits and ties to their commencement so they could donate their cap-and-gown fees to benefit anti-war political candidates. One student group advocated that America’s collegians stop drinking soda until the war ends, figuring that anti-war advocacy from Pepsi and Coke would speak louder than they could alone.