To Promote Peace

During the height of the Vietnam War, political and social action groups at the University of Minnesota organized to actively fight against war activities. The escalation and continuation of the United States efforts overseas, in turn, ignited both the Student Strike in May 1970 and the Anti-War Demonstrations in May 1972. Students, faculty and staff participated in local rallies, cross-town marches, encampments and occupations of campus buildings to signify their support in ending the war. 

On April 30, 1970, the United States President Richard Nixon announced the decision to move the United States military forces into Cambodia. This continuation of the Vietnam War caused nationwide anti-war protests to escalate within educational institutions. In response to the events of May 4, 1970, when four students were killed by the Army National Guard at Kent State University, student organizations, such as the Ad Hoc Strike Committee, formed at the University of Minnesota and began to occupy Coffman Memorial Union and coordinate strike action efforts. With support of the Twin Cities Campus Assembly, the elected governing body at that time, resolutions were created in support of a peaceful student strike. Rallies and protests continued throughout the month of May and were documented through the created leaflets and fliers that were distributed across campus.  

Escalation of the Vietnam War continued to induce rallies and protests at the University of Minnesota and surrounding Minneapolis neighborhoods into the early 1970s. On May 8, 1972, President Nixon announced the decision to mine Haiphong Harbor and continue intense bombing in North Vietnam. In response, University student organizations mobilized to document their stances and prepared a schedule of anti-war activities, notifications of which were distributed and published across campus.

On May 10, 1972, crowds marched to a Cedar-Riverside housing development and a military draft office in Dinkytown to protest the Nixon administration and military actions. Protestors then began to occupy the intersections on Washington Avenue near Coffman Memorial Union to further block traffic. In the absence of University President Malcolm Moos, who was out of the country at that time, acting Vice President for Administration, Eugene Eidenberg, called upon Minneapolis Mayor Charles Stenvig for assistance. Stenvig ordered a Minneapolis police tactical squad to disperse the crowds through use of force and tear gas. Reinforcements from neighboring law enforcement agencies in Hennepin and Ramsey counties were also called in to assist. This was followed by a request from Stenvig to Minnesota Governor Wendell Andersen, who activated the National Guard. Protestors and barricades remained active for the next two days, but soon the response and tension from those involved began to dissipate across campus. 

“It’s all leafleted and hand billed. All you have to do is walk down the mall, and you can find anything out you want to know because, you know, hooray for the mimeograph machines, it’s simply a fact of life … We wait, we find out, we may know ahead of time, but by the time a meeting is over the leaflets are being distributed… and there is just not that much secrecy! So I really want to do away with the idea that we’re in the business of collecting information that is somehow top secret because it just doesn’t work that way.”

- Robert Ross, Office of the Student Affairs, Speaking on the Anti-War Demonstrations in the July 7, 1972 proceedings of the Commission of Inquiry for the Campus Anti War Demonstrations