The year was 1970. “American Woman” and “ABC” topped the charts, popular shows such as Gunsmoke and Hee-Haw dominated the airwaves, and the young generation in the United States was the most unstable it had been since the Civil War.
By early May, The University of Alabama, like most college campuses, had joined the frontlines in protests against the tyranny of the Vietnam War. It was not the first time the campus had seen demonstrations — it had history with the topic, including the infamous Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, which occurred when Black students Vivian Malone and James Hood championed the beginning of school desegregation in 1963. But campus had never seen protests the likes of these — conducted by students and attended by students, descending on campus and the greater Tuscaloosa area.
After the shootings and killings of student protesters by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State, The University’s student body began to burn with unrest. Demonstrations erupted around campus, including sit-ins and picket lines. The university president at the time, Dr. David Matthews, compounded the unstable atmosphere by sending in Alabama State Troopers to break up the dissenters.
An editorial published by The Crimson White on May 7, 1970 condemned both the student violence and the administration’s response, writing “Though we disagree with their tactics, we support their cause.”
The article’s requests for understanding, which urged the university’s leadership to “listen to the needs and legitimate desires of its students,” stand up even now as a testament to how deep the disconnect between student activistism and a campuses’ institutional power runs.
From the Civil Rights movement to the anti-Vietnam war era, college students have long been at the top of the conscience of the nation. Campuses have always served as both classrooms and battlegrounds; they are places where young people cause the nation’s ideals to be tested, debated and sometimes even rewritten. Young people inherit the world founded by their ancestors, and therefore, they reserve the right to alter those decisions when they prove unsuccessful to the incoming generation.
With just the names changed, that 1970 Crimson White article could easily be reprinted today. Replace “Indochina” with “Gaza,” “Kent State” with “Columbia” or “UCLA” — the message would be the same. When students and protesters demand justice, they have too often been met with suspicion, suppression or outright violence by the systems they are protesting.
The Civil Rights movement was labelled disruptive. The anti-war protesters were seen as ungrateful. Suffragists were hysterical. Every generation’s demand for accountability and reformation has always been framed as an attack on the order by those who benefit from keeping it intact.
Now, as student protests have begun to erupt across college campuses once again, this narrative stays largely the same. Politicians and their supporters accuse students of being “too emotional,” “too radical,” or “too violent” simply for exercising their constitutional right to peacefully protest.
In March of this year, President Donald Trump announced his interest in cutting federal funding from colleges that allow “illegal protests.” The same administration has also made moves to deport international students who identify as Pro-Palestinian. This move would effectively destroy the freedoms of students at the very institutions that are designed to foster and flourish free thought. This irony is extreme: To punish universities for their student’s expressions is to punish education, and the constitution, itself.
Do not be fooled. This is a grave violation of our nation’s founding principles. While no student should feel unsafe on a college campus, and everyone has the right to an education, they also hold the American right to assembly.
There is no need for political violence or riotous protests, but we must also understand that we are being conditioned to see that all student protests fit these criteria. Critics have always tended to call protesters “radical” or “uncivil” but history has never seemed to actually reward simple politeness.
Protest, by its very nature, must be uncomfortable. It has to be able to force other people to look at truths that they would rather choose to ignore. Anger for justice is not cruelty — and student anger, especially, comes from the belief that the world can still be changed. To be young and to protest is to be brave enough to think that our nation can still live up to its initial promises. That is not anti-American — that is patriotism in its rawest form.
As The Crimson White wrote in 1970, “Peace. Remember Kent State.” Today, we might choose to say: Peace. Remember every single student who risked their education to demand a better future.
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