Retro: Center of the Storm
By Wes Mott (CAS’68, GRS’69,’74)
They should have known that I was on their side. I had stayed late to attend the rally in an over-flowing room in the basement of CLA — back before it was CAS — to express solidarity with a handful of students who had been arrested. One of the scruffy leaders grabbed the mike with manic agitation, glared straight at me, and declared that the meeting would not start “until the guy wearing the necktie” left the room. I stayed, the meeting went on, and minutes later the arrested students made a melodramatic appearance to cheers and hugs.
At the time, from my undergrad days in the mid 1960s to graduate school in the early 1970s, the war in Vietnam was a constant back-drop to life at BU. The late-night bull sessions, the teach-ins, and the marches, all focused on the war, built an electric sense of community. With my tie, I was part of a minority who subscribed to the “dress right, think left” principle. Marriage, a suburban apartment — and a draft deferment — also had conspired to insulate me from the wilder aspects of campus activism.
But we were all swept up in the grief, frustration, and rage that followed the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy in 1968. With the TV spectacle of Chicago police viciously clubbing protestors outside the Democratic National Convention, a harder edge formed around the antiwar spirit at BU. Early that October, BU activists provided sanctuary at Marsh Chapel for an AWOL soldier. For five days, while more than 1,000 students prayed and kept vigil, stern men in dark suits and sunglasses conspicuously dotted the campus. My wife, Sandy, and I knew that we had crossed a line for the cause when we brought bags of food and milk. Before dawn on a Sunday morning, the FBI launched a surprise raid and dragged away PFC Ray Kroll.
Rallies at Marsh Plaza became regular events. Now, before marching or demonstrating, we were given instructions over bullhorns on how to protect ourselves against clubs and tear gas; Sandy heeded warnings not to wear hoop earrings (an easy target for vindictive authorities). After one rally we poured elbow to elbow down Comm. Ave., merging at Mass. Ave. with waves of Harvard and MIT students from the north, and Northeastern and Berklee students from the south. Hand-painted signs, banners, armbands, and pins announced a kaleidoscope of political factions: liberal Democrats, anarchists, civil rights activists, feminists, environmentalists, Communists.
Some wanted mainly to smoke pot in the open safety of a crowd; others hoped a rock concert would break out. Rows of mounted Boston police quickened the pulse, but with righteous anger reinforced by that sheer mass of humanity, we felt invincible. As one we packed Boston Common to hear speeches by John Kenneth Galbraith, George McGovern, and Howard Zinn. People we had never met (and mostly never saw again — like the five Rhode Island students we squeezed into our VW Bug after the demonstration and drove as far as Foxboro) instantly became cherished comrades for whom we would risk anything.
On May 4, 1970, four protesting Kent State University students were shot dead by the Ohio National Guard. Next morning, knots of dazed BU students and professors formed on campus, where finals had been canceled. On Bay State Road, a professor wept as she told a cluster of students how, days before, one of the dead Kent State students had been photographed placing a flower in the barrel of a guardsman’s rifle. In nearly silent fury, a seemingly spontaneous march, including virtually every English professor, flooded down Comm. Ave. to the State House, where we shouted for the flag to be lowered. After a tense delay, the flag — at the order of Governor Francis Sargent — began to descend. We stood in silence for several minutes, holding up either the V-sign of peace or a more defiant fist, then quietly drifted back to campus.
And on it went for three more years, amid growing disillusionment, some dropping out, others still trying to fight the system. Those days of collective sorrow and anger at Marsh Plaza faded away — those moments when shaggy radicals, flower children, and earnest political activists of all stripes, thinking we could make a more peaceful, just world, came together on the same side.
Wes Mott (CAS’68, GRS’69,’74) teaches English at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
