Page Four
Tuesday, Seotember 15, 1970
1 line Largest luireoeH: im
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"Unless we act, this country will
destroy itself...We go on strike to open a
new university, to create a free
university...Today we begin to live the
' dream."
Standing before nearly 9,000 students
gathered in Polk Place on May 7, 1970,
Student Body President Tom Bello spoke
those words and began the biggest
student protest in the history of the
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hi!'.
Not only was the three-week strike
against U. S. involvement in Cambodia
the largest in number, it also brought into
the student protest students who had
never dreamed they would ever march on
a picket line, boycott classes for political
reasons or chant anything at all like. "On
Strike. Shut It Down."
The second night of the strike, May 9,
a Friday, one coed sat in the lobby of
Spencer dorm, crying.
"I don't understand," she sobbed. "I
just don't understand."
She had ignored the initial strike
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Fosters and new dippings displayed
mtside of Bingham Hall informed
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efforts on the Tuesday before when the
teaching assistants in the English
Department walked off the job in protest
of the four killings at Kent State.
Wednesday during the 1 1 a.m. student
body meeting in Polk Place she had
wandered by. She listened to Bello and to
Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson as he read
a telegram to the North Carolina
Congressional delegation.
Signed by Consolidated University
President William C. Friday and the
chancellors of the six CU campuses, the
telegram expressed "concern" at
Richard M. Nixon's invasion of Cambodia
and the tension it had produced on their
campuses.
The coed had talked to her friends, to
neonle she had never seen hefnre And
she decided to join the strike.
She slept out in Polk Place Wednesday
night.
Friday she called her parents. They
gave her a choice: she could put herself
through school at Chapel Hill with no
financial aid from them, or she could live
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students of the events that catylized the
strike. ine
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Enghsh Instructor John Rosenthal Speaks At Polk
at home and go to school at Lenoir
Rhyne.
Like many others who participated in
the strike last Spring, she was doing
something she had never done before.
She was against the invasion and
decided to say so. Doing that brought
home to her what others have felt and
expressed before many times and in many
more words than she used in the lobby of
her dorm.
That coed was the story of the -three-week
strike last Spring-people who
had never been political before joining in
one of the protests that have given this
University its reputation.
And it was those people who made the
strike as big as it was.
The beginning of the strike has to be
placed at the moment Nixon went before
the nation on television and informed the
people of the move into
Cambodia-Thursday, April 30, 1970.
The Student Legislature met that night
in emergency session to consider action
on the move. The meeting, called by
Bello, voted to call for a one-day boycott
of classes to protest the move.
Bello, authorized by the legislature to
call the meeting and the boycott,
declared an emergency meeting of the
entire student body Wednesday, May 6,
at 1 1 a.m.
But before the student body could
meet, the strike began.
Kent State happened. In the middle
of Ohio on the campus of Kent State
University, a school previously
untroubled by disruption or by protests
of any kind, students rioted.
They burned buildings in the
downtown area two nights in a row, and
Monday the National Guard was on
campus and armed.
Monday afternoon four students were
killed. The Guard still maintains that they
were fired upon by snipers. Investigations
by both Congressional Committees and
Knight Newspapers shed strong doubt on
that claim.
Nevertheless, four students were dead.
None of them had actually been involved
iin the protest. One was a ROTC cadet.
1 wo were coeds. . . . ,
Fifteen English graduate students, all
teaching assistants, met Monday night.
They spent all night in their meeting, and
by 8 a.m. they had decided.
They struck. They refused to meet
their classes and set up picket lines
around Bingham Hall: By late that day
the strike had actually begun to be more
than a brief protest.
At noon, approximately 2,000
students gathered around the flagpole in
Polk Place to listen to the English
graduate students explain why they were
on strike.
The meeting became a discussion, and
the mike was opened to all who wanted
to speak. One of those who did want to
speak was a bio-statistics professor from
the University of Wisconsin.
His campus had been one of the more
explosive during the year, and he told the
students, "What you are doing is good.
Stick with it."
On the national scene the National
Student Association and the Student
Mobilization Committee began
nationwide coordination of what had
indeed become a national student strike.
The national action began as boycotts
that soon became strikes. A march on
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Place On The First Day Of The Strike.
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Student Body President Tom
Washington was hastily organized and a
National Strike Information Center was
set up at Brandeis University in
Massachusetts.
Tuesday night three students in
Granville Towers were sitting in a room
talking about Cambodia, Kent State, the
demonstration earlier in the day.
5- p;
Bello Leads Tne Students Down Franklin
.s. W1UHU rtIC OIIins in memory ut The Four Students Killed At Kent State.
They began going throueh the hall rf
the high rise dorms asking students to
join them in a memorial march for the
Kent students. By the time they left
Granville, there were forty students in the
line carrying candles.
They walked from Granville through
the fraternity courts, chanting "On
Street Following Wednesday's
Strike. Join Us. Join Us."
They worked their way across the
campus, past Old East and West, picking
up students as they marched.
When they reached, the back of the
library, there were 200 people in the line.
They marched by Teague, Parker and
Avery chanting, "Join Us," and those in
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Students March To South Campus To Gain Support
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